Flannel Friday: Pete the Cat and His Four Groovy Buttons

It’s Friday!  And that means that it’s time for one of my favorite parts of the week…Flannel Friday!  As you may be able to tell from all the exclamation points so far, the more I participate in this wonderful group, the more excited I get about sharing my flannel creations.  And, I love that I keep getting inspiration from other people to create even more spectacular flannel boards.  If only the question of where to store them all was solved so easily…

This week in story time, we continued our back to school themes.  Last week, we did colors with an existing flannel board crayon set that my library already had on hand.  This week, we worked on numbers and counting.  Pete the Cat has been appearing each week in story time as we work on our concepts, and this week, he helped us count with the classic Pete the Cat and His Four Groovy Buttons.  The great part was actually being able to talk about what Pete has done so far in story time and remembering the different things we’ve talked about.

What You’ll Need

Since I’ve seen so many other adorable flannel versions of Pete, I wanted to make my own.  Here’s the finished product:

I used this pattern from Kiz Club to create Pete.  My biggest concern was making sure that he was accurate to the book, so I made sure before making the buttons that they are actually the four colors of the buttons that Pete has in the story.  Instead of making felt numbers, I used my previously mentioned magnetic numbers while we were counting Pete’s remaining buttons.

The Story

I tell the story exactly as it appears in the book.  Each button has a tiny piece of Velcro on the back to help it stay in place and keep Pete’s shirt on.

Of course, when we get to the end of the story, we’ve removed all of Pete’s buttons, opened up his shirt, and found his belly button!

Tips for Use

For my toddler group, I told an abbreviated version of Pete the Cat without using the book and adapted it as needed to fit their attention span.  For my preschool group, I read the story at the same time, and my helpers removed a button from Pete’s shirt each time one popped off in the story.  My favorite part was that by the end, my group was helping with the “Pop!” for each button, and singing Pete’s song, too.

Can’t Get Enough?

This week, Mollie at What Happens in Storytime.  For more information about Flannel Friday, visit the website here, or join the Flannel Friday Facebook group, or check out the Flannel Friday boards on Pinterest.  As always, thanks to everyone for sharing their inspiration and making my story times better!

Flannel Friday: Five Yellow Buses

This week in story time, we started our back to school themes.  For the first part of fall, I’m planning story times that have basic school concepts, like colors and shapes.  To get us in the spirit, we started with a school theme this week (one of my most popular themes to date, actually!), and in honor of back to school, this week’s Flannel Friday is my version of “Five Yellow Buses.”

What You Need

The pattern I found at Keeping Life Creative here.  It’s super easy to make, which is great.  We also paired school story time this week with a school bus craft, so the kids got to take home their very own buses to play with.

The Story

The rhyme that I used with this is from Anne Hicks at AnnesLibraryLife:

Five yellow buses,

Around the town they zoom.

One makes a stop

And the others go vroom.

How many yellow buses are there?

Continue counting down until there are no buses left.

Tips for Use

I also recently bought some cheap magnetic numbers at Walmart.  The set only contains numbers 0-9, but I purchased several sets and hot glued numbers together to make numbers up to 25 as needed.  I brought out the numbers this week to match up with the buses, so that we could see the numbers that we were talking about.  One of the things I love about this set is that although this rhyme is for counting down, you can also count up by adding buses, too!  Plus, it can be adapted for several other rhymes.  When paired with our singing of The Wheels on the Bus, this one was a hit!

Can’t Get Enough?

This week, Laura at Library Lalaland is hosting the Roundup.  For more information about Flannel Friday, visit the website here, or join the Flannel Friday Facebook group, or check out the Flannel Friday boards on Pinterest.  I can’t wait to see what other flannel creations are sent in this week!

Flannel Friday: Going on a Picnic

In honor of Labor Day and the end of summer, this week in story time we took on picnics.  After looking through our existing felt boards, I found that we didn’t have anything that had food or picnics in it, so…creation time!

What You Need

The set contains a picnic basket, a blanket, a plate, a napkin, a fork, a spoon, a slice of bread, a piece of meat, a piece of lettuce, a tomato, a piece of cheese, a slice of watermelon, a bag of chips, a glass of lemonade, and a batch of cookies.  I got the idea and the rhyme from Neverlandarling, but I modified the song to fit the pieces that I created.  All of the pieces are created from various Clipart images that matched what I thought we would need on a picnic.

The Story

Here’s an idea of how it would go:

Going on picnic, leaving right away.  If it doesn’t rain, we’ll stay all day.

Did you bring the picnic basket?  (Yes, I brought the picnic basket!)

Did you bring the picnic blanket?  (Yes, I brought the picnic blanket!)

Ready for a picnic, here we go!

Going on picnic, leaving right away.  If it doesn’t rain, we’ll stay all day.

Did you bring the plate?  (Yes, I brought the plate!)

Did you bring the napkin?  (Yes, I brought the napkin!)

Ready for a picnic, here we go!

Going on picnic, leaving right away.  If it doesn’t rain, we’ll stay all day.

Did you bring the fork?  (Yes, I brought the fork!)

Did you bring the spoon?  (Yes, I brought the spoon!)

Ready for a picnic, here we go!

Going on picnic, leaving right away.  If it doesn’t rain, we’ll stay all day.

Did you bring the bread?  (Yes, I brought the bread!)

Did you bring the meat?  (Yes, I brought the meat!)

Ready for a picnic, here we go!

Going on picnic, leaving right away.  If it doesn’t rain, we’ll stay all day.

Did you bring the lettuce?  (Yes, I brought the lettuce!)

Did you bring the tomato?  (Yes, I brought the tomato!)

Ready for a picnic, here we go!

Going on picnic, leaving right away. If it doesn’t rain, we’ll stay all day.

Did you bring the cheese?  (Yes, I brought the cheese!)

Did you bring the watermelon?  (Yes, I brought the watermelon!)

Ready for a picnic, here we go!

Going on picnic, leaving right away.  If it doesn’t rain, we’ll stay all day.

Did you bring the chips?  (Yes, I brought the chips!)

Did you bring the lemonade?  (Yes, I brought the lemonade!)

Did you bring the cookies?  (Yes, I brought the cookies!)

Ready for a picnic, here we go!

Tips for Use

The great thing about this set is that you can use as many or as few ingredients in your rhyme as you want, depending on the number of kids who want to participate.  You don’t have to have a fork and spoon on your picnic, but if you have extra kids – done!  No one has has to be left out and the rhyme can easily be repeated as many times as possible.  When I used it in story time, I asked the kids what they thought we needed for a picnic, and we did the pieces in the order they thought rather than sticking to a particular order from the song.

Can’t Get Enough?

This week, Kathryn at Fun with Friends at Storytime is hosting the roundup.  For more information about Flannel Friday,  visit the website here, or join the Flannel Friday Facebook group, or check out the Flannel Friday boards on Pinterest.

Flannel Friday: Five Little Squirrels

Just in time for fall, this week’s Flannel Friday is another flashback.  This week, we’re taking it back to the first flannel story I ever created for my version of “Five Little Squirrels.”

What You Need

The pattern I found from Earthbound Trading Company here.  There are some other really cute woodland creatures with it, but I haven’t found a use for them yet.  The squirrel is a pretty simple outline, with accents for his neck and belly, and, of course, his acorn.  If I was doing this one over again, I probably would have looked for different colors to do the squirrels, but I think these guys are pretty cute, too.

The Story

The song goes like this (to the tune of “Five Little Ducks”):

One little squirrel went out to play,

Up in the branches one autumn day.

He had such enormous fun

He called for another little squirrel to come.

Two little squirrels went out to play,

Up in the branches one autumn day.

They had such enormous fun

They called for another little squirrel to come.

Three little squirrels went out to play,

Up in the branches one autumn day.

They had such enormous fun

They called for another little squirrel to come.

Four little squirrels went out to play,

Up in the branches one autumn day.

They had such enormous fun

They called for another little squirrel to come.

Five little squirrels went out to play,

Up in the branches one autumn day.

They had such enormous fun

Then all scurried home ‘cause winter had come.

Credit:  Storytime Stuff

Tips for Use

I generally sing this one when I do it, but it can also be done without singing for those who prefer.  As with most “five little” rhymes, it can be fairly easily adapted to what works well with your audience.

Can’t Get Enough?

This week, Melissa at Mel’s Desk is hosting the Flannel Friday Roundup.  If you haven’t checked out her blog, do – her amazing resources have saved my story times more than once!  For more information about Flannel Friday,  visit the website here, or join the Flannel Friday Facebook group, or check out the Flannel Friday boards on Pinterest.

Flannel Friday: Fall Is Not Easy

This week’s Flannel Friday is also a flashback to when I was doing my practicum with the Carrollton Public Library, way back in 2009. (I promise, more recent flannel boards will be coming!)  I got the idea to make this set during a Youth Services Resource Sharing meeting.  One of the librarians from another public library had an adorable felt board set for Marty Kelley’s book Fall Is Not Easy.  The story, if you’re not familiar with it, talks about the different seasons and how the tree hates fall because his colors never turn out right.  Instead, he ends up with leaves in different pictures, like a hamburger our cow spots.

What You Need

I created the tree trunk from a template that I found online, which I printed and free-handed over to make less complex.  The tree top was a little more complex.  I modified a shape that I found online by tracing a leaf pattern (also found online) around the edges to give it a tree-like shape.  This gave me the outline that you can see, with the leaf edges all the way around.  The same leaf was used to make accent leaves for dimension.

In all, there are 12 trees in the story:  a spring tree, a summer tree, a rainbow tree, a happy face tree, a purple tree with yellow polka dots, a red and white striped tree, a hamburger tree, a world tree, a cow tree, an “Eat at Joe’s” tree, a jack-o-lantern tree, and a fall tree.  I made a separate tree top for each, as well as accent leaves for spring and fall and snowflakes for winter.  Each tree has a solid color background, and the accents were then added to make the pictures and give texture.  Each picture is made from the original leaf shapes.  I also cut slits in each top and glue pairs of leaves together to add texture.

I

This picture shows the rainbow tree, which was the most detailed of all the trees. It had several layers of leaves. The underlying piece is red, with each additional color added on top. From this angle, you can see some of the texture from the layering and added leaves.

The Story

Basically, put up the trees as you say the phrases that appear in Marty Kelley’s book.  I’ve read it enough times at this point that I can mostly recite it without even having to look at the words.

Tips for Use

The only challenge that I’ve ever had while using this flannel is to make sure that the trees don’t all fall off at once.  I’ve tried both layering new tops on the trees as the story progresses or taking one top down for another.  Personally, I prefer to remove the previous top rather than layer just because they stick to the board better.

This is the one flannel board that I wish I still had.  It stayed at the library after I left, and it would have been perfect for a fall theme that I did last year.  But, I still have the patterns somewhere, so if I can find a copy of the book, I may make my own version of this someday soon.

Can’t Get Enough?

This week, Mollie at What Happens in Storytime… is hosting the Flannel Friday Roundup.  For more information, visit the Flannel Friday website here, or join the Flannel Friday Facebook group, or check out the Flannel Friday boards on Pinterest.  As always, I can’t wait to see and share more ideas!

Flannel Friday: Hardworking Puppies

Since introducing story times in the spring, the flannel stories that we do have quickly become one of the favorite parts of story time for both me and the kids.  I also recently took over toddler story times (in addition to the preschool and baby story times I was already doing), so I’ve been able to see firsthand what works and doesn’t with each group.  But, with both groups, having a flannel board story has been a great addition!

For summer reading, I wanted to theme each of my story times to a different type of hero.  While I had planned to use some of our existing flannel board stories that were purchased for the library, I found that we just didn’t have what I was looking for when planning many of my themes.  So, it was time to once again get to creating my own flannel stories.

One of my favorites that was created for this summer was this Hardworking Puppies flannel story.  It’s based on the book Hardworking Puppies by Lynn Reiser.  We have a copy in our professional resources, so I’m always guaranteed the book for reference if needed.  But, one of my favorite things about it is that it can told without the book with no problems.

What You Need

First up was creating our 10 puppies.  While the book has several different types of puppies, like Dalmatians and poodles, I decided to have one puppy template for ease of creation.  I found this adorable pattern from Opening the World of Learning on Pinterest.  Instead of having a collar, I put the puppies together into a single piece, then added googly eyes, noses, and tongues for each.

And here is a group shot with all of our puppies:

After creating the puppies, I need something to represent the different careers that the puppies have.  Using Clipart images, I created a visual for each puppy.  For example, a jester hat for the puppy who joins the circus, and a fire hat for the puppy who goes to the fire department.  The final pieces look like this:

The Story

To do this story, I put up the puppies on the board and gave one of the career pieces to each child.  I told about the type of person who needed a puppy to help, and the person with that piece got to select their puppy to help them by putting their piece on top of the puppy.  Periodically throughout the story, we stopped to count the number of puppies who were left who still needed jobs.  This actually worked really well with both the toddlers and the preschoolers, who were excited to pick out a puppy to do a job.  We also enjoyed counting the puppies to make sure that everyone got a job.  I also noticed that the parents encouraged the children to guess what type of job their puppy would get based on their symbol, and even guess what other types of jobs puppies might do.  I can’t wait to use this one again!

Tips for Use

One of the things that I really enjoyed about this flannel was that I didn’t feel like I had to tell the story from the book verbatim.  I used the story as a guideline, of course, but modified based on what was working for the audience.  This is a great flannel for encouraging conversation and introducing new vocabulary.

Can’t Get Enough?

Many thanks to our host is Lisa at Libraryland for collecting this week’s Flannel Friday posts.  For more information, visit the Flannel Friday website here.  I can’t wait to see and share more ideas!

Preschool Story Time: Superheroes

Date presented:  Thursday, June 21, 2015

Even though I love doing story times for all ages, preschool story time is my favorite group.  For the summer, our library is transitioning from two sessions per week to a single session on Thursday mornings.  When I plan each week, the preschool and the toddler groups have the same theme, but they generally have different books and different activities.  Our preschool group also does a craft at the end of story time each week instead of the parachute activities and free play that we do with the toddlers.  I’ve already written about the toddler superhero story time, so here are some notes from the preschool group.

Introduction

I don’t have much of an introduction to my preschool story time.  Since parents tend to be running late, I spend the first five minutes of story time talking to the kids and parents as they come in, and sometimes teasing what we are doing in story time this week.

Welcome Song

We use the same welcome song in preschool story times as we do in the toddler story times:

Welcome, Everyone (Tune:  Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star)

Welcome, welcome, everyone.

Now we’re here, let’s have some fun.

First we’ll clap our hands just so.

Then we’ll reach and touch our toes.

Welcome, welcome, everyone.

Now we’re here, let’s have some fun!

Credit:  Adapted from Public Library Program Ideas

Letter of the Day

We do the same Letter of the Day concept in preschool story time as we use in toddler story time.  However, for my preschool groups, I will give them an introduction to the topic that we are going to do and hint about important words before asking them to guess the letter.  Some weeks the kids guess the letter on the first try, and some weeks we spend a little more time trying to figure out what the letter might be.  And, like with toddler story time, we include how to make the letter in sign language.  I am also considering adding in a simple sign language word that encompasses our letter of the day, but we haven’t tried that yet.  This week was, of course, S for Superhero.

iPad Technology

I mentioned in my toddler post that I was was hoping to incorporate technology into story time with our iPads.  I planned on using the StoryBots “Say Yes to S” video, but our group was so rambunctious that I decided to skip technology this week in favor of getting story time started.

Story Box

This summer, I decided to introduce something a little bit different for preschool story time.  Instead of having the books and activities in a particular order, which is how I normally do story time, I wanted to make it a more interactive experience.  So, I created the Ms. Jaime’s Story Box (pictures to come, I promise).  Basically, it’s a wooden box with a latch that I found at Hobby Lobby and stained.  I glued letters on the outside to label the box, and inside, I put everything that we might need for story time.  This week, I put in all three of our books and my flannel stories.  I also have three painted wooden music notes that represent songs.  The goal is for one of the children to pick something out of the box, and that is where we will start our story time.

1st Book

Our first book was Mighty Max! by Harriet Ziefert.  This is a cute story about a little boy who sits still…but not for long!  He is off to save the world on a variety of adventures.  It’s a cute story, but it didn’t really catch the attention of my group this week.  I think it was just a little too long for them.

Song/Rhyme/Activity

At this point, although my group was very enthusiastic about picking the next thing out of the story box, I wanted to give them a chance for some movement.  So, I did a little prompting to help a music note get pulled from the box.  We did our “Clap Your Hands” song, which gives everyone a chance to do some moving and get some energy out.  It’s something I inherited from the previous children’s librarian, but it’s such a hit that it’s impossible not to use it.

Clap, clap, clap your hands,

Clap your hands together.

Clap, clap, clap your hands,

Clap your hands together.

Clap a little faster now,

Clap along with me.

Clap a little slower now,

Clap along with me.

Continue with:  nod your heads, shake your heads, stomp your feet, and (sometimes), save your hands

Source:  Modified from KIDiddles:  http://www.kididdles.com/lyrics/c119.html. 

2nd Book

The second book that was selected from the box was Do Superheroes Have Teddy Bears? by Carmela LaVigna Coyle.  Originally, I had planned to use Kapow! by George O’Connor, but after using this book in toddler story time the previous day, I thought it was too adorable to pass up sharing with the preschool group.  I don’t regret doing this one at all, because the comments were hilarious!  We decided that superheroes don’t have teddy bears because they’re grown men (and that would just be silly), and they aren’t afraid of the dark because they fly at night, and obviously it’s dark at night.

Flannel Story

Even though I let them pick what we were doing next, I guided them to selecting our flannel story for this week.  In honor of our superhero theme, we did the Ready for Action rhyme from the CLSP Children’s Manual.  I made a boy and a girl set, which gave me more pieces for helpers.  While the set turned out adorable, this did not go as planned.  The kids were super excited to help dress the superheroes, but they never calmed down enough to actually hear the rhyme and dress the superhero in order.  This turned out to be more of a superhero stampede instead.

Song/Rhyme/Activity

I originally planned to do another song here, but since the group was very wired, I decided to skip it in favor of moving on to our third book.

3rd Book

Our final book was Superhero ABC by Bob McLeod.  The kids liked the different pictures of the superheroes, and ended up picking some of the featured superheroes as their identity for their craft.  In hindsight, I probably should have skipped this one since the group was antsy and ready to wrap up, but the kids who did want another book were still interested.

Goodbye Song

We ended story time, as usual, with our goodbye song.  We always sing The More We Get Together and then move to the craft table for the craft.

Craft

We hosted a community carnival event back in the fall, which ended up having much less attendance than we anticipated.  As a result, we had leftover craft supplies.  One of the activities was creating masks, so I used the leftover masks to let the kids create their own superhero masks and identities.  I used this template from Au Pair Buzz, printed on cardstock so they would be a little sturdier.

How It Went

I was really excited to be back for story times for the summer, and this group was very enthusiastic.  I had several new faces for the summer, which made it fun as well.  The story box was a hit, and I am looking forward to using it for the rest of the summer.  This was the largest group that I have done story time for (48 people!), but because of that, it was also a little crazy.  I’m definitely rethinking having a volunteer for preschool story times.  I think this summer is going to be great!

Toddler Story Time: Superheroes

Date presented:  Wednesday, June 10, 2015

I have been planning toddler story times for our librarian since about a month after I started.  But, because our toddler story time is usually on Monday mornings (I work Monday nights), I haven’t been the one presenting the story times.  However, in the summer we have field trips from a local group at the rec center.  To accommodate this group, our toddler story time gets moved to Wednesdays.  So, for the summer at least, I am taking over presenting toddler story times as well.  For our first week of summer reading, we did our story time on superheroes!

Introduction

Since the toddler families are not as familiar with me, I started off story time by introducing myself to them.  However, we don’t really have a set of rules or information that we give before our story time, so my introduction is pretty short and basically includes my name and who I am.

Welcome Song

We start every story time with the same welcome song:  This is the welcome song that has been in place at our library for several years, so it is the one that I inherited.  The parents and children are familiar with it and it is easy for newcomers to pick up, so we have decided for the foreseeable future not to change the welcome song at all.

Welcome, Everyone (Tune:  Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star)

Welcome, welcome, everyone.

Now we’re here, let’s have some fun.

First we’ll clap our hands just so.

Then we’ll reach and touch our toes.

Welcome, welcome, everyone

Now we’re here, let’s have some fun!

Credit:  Adapted from Public Library Program Ideas

Letter of the Day

Each week, we have a Letter of the Day that we highlight.  We have laminated letter cards that we flip over when we show the letter, as well as a set that shows sign language letters.  For summer reading, I created a superhero alphabet set using a great graphic that I found on Pinterest to create replace our normal letter set.  I introduced our topic (and the summer reading theme) before introducing our letter for this week.  When I introduced S for Superhero, the parents helped by making the S sound.  I also show the kids how to make an S in sign language as part of our letter of the day as well.

iPad Technology

My library received a grant that gave us 7 iPads.  As a result, my director has asked me to work on incorporating more technology into story times and programming.  Since we weren’t sure how the parents would respond to iPads in story time, we decided to start with something simple.  I downloaded the StoryBots Learning Videos app (you can also find the videos online on the StoryBots website), which includes adorable videos with little robots singing about concepts.  I had originally only downloaded the ABC Videos app, but I switched to this one since it also includes colors, numbers, shapes, and more that I hope to integrate in the future.  Anyway, for this week, we showed the video “Say Yes to S” to highlight our letter of the day.  The reaction was mixed – the kids seemed to enjoy the song (and some danced along), but they were not particularly interested in viewing the iPad.  I think this is a combination of a new person AND new technology in the same week, so we agreed to give this another chance in future story times.

1st Book

Our first book today was Do Superheroes Have Teddy Bears? by Carmela LaVigna Coyle.  This is a book that we ordered especially with summer reading in mind, and it is adorable!  The rhyming text is easy to read, but this book ended up being a little bit long for the group that I had.

Song/Rhyme/Activity

After each book, we like to do some kind of rhyme or activity to get the kids up and moving and engaged in the story time.  Since this group was not particularly active yet, I decided to move songs around from my original outline and went with S-U-P-E-R, which is basically spelling super to the tune of B-I-N-G-O.  We had our superhero alphabet cards on the felt board so we could point to the letters while we sang.

There was a hero that saved the day

And Super was his name-o

S-U-P-E-R

S-U-P-E-R

S-U-P-E-R

And Super was his name-o.

Source:  Adapted by Julie Dietzel-Glair in the CSLP Early Literacy Manual.

We sang this through twice (without removing any of the letters) before we moved on to our next activity.

Flannel Story

At this point in the outline, I had planned to use the “Ready for Action” flannel board that I made (adapted from the CSLP Children’s Manual).  I created boy and girl superheroes to dress (a future Flannel Friday post, I promise!), but I only planned to use one with this group given their attention span.  However, since the group was overall fussy and having a hard time adapting to me, I decided to forgo this one for this week and move on.

Song/Rhyme/Activity

After the flannel story, I had planned on doing a second song to encourage some movement.  The original plan called for “Hero Pokey” from the CSLP Early Literacy Manual.  Since we skipped the flannel story (and also because my group was not into singing our other song, either), we skipped this one as well and went on to our next book.

2nd Book

Our second book was He Saves the Day by Marsha Hayles.  It’s a cute story about a little boy who saves the day in his imagination…until he finds that sometimes he needs a little help from mom to save the day.  I was hoping that the parents would help out more with the “He saves the day!” refrain, but this one ended up falling flat.

Goodbye Song

At this point, I decided it was best to move on to our next part of story time, which is our parachute activities and free play.  Before we move from our story time corner to the meeting room, we always sing The More We Get Together from our CD.  Then I invited all the kids and parents to come with me to play with the parachute and other toys.

Parachute Activities

Each week, we lay out the parachute and have the kids play with it before we move on to free play.  My boss, who normally does toddler story time, uses the same outline every week for playing with the parachute.  I wanted to keep the same elements that he did, but I also wanted to start introducing some new songs and rhymes for the concepts.  Since I didn’t want to overwhelm the kids with new information at once, I decided to start by just replacing one concept with a new song.  The result was this outline of parachute activities:

• ABC Song:  We walk the parachute around in a circle while we sing our ABCs.
• Counting:  We walk the parachute around in a circle (in the opposite direction) while we count to 10.
• Colors:  We lay the parachute back on the ground, and then I call out colors for the kids to touch.  We call out colors and give them a chance to run to that color until we have covered all four colors in the parachute.
• Up and Down:  We raise and lower the parachute while talking about UP and DOWN.  The kids also have the chance to run underneath the parachute while it “falls” on them.

While I was at the Texas Library Association conference this spring, I attended the Guerrilla Storytime workshop.  While I was there, someone demonstrated the Elevator Song, so this week I replaced our up and down activity with that instead.

Oh, the city is great and the city is grand

There’s a lot of tall buildings on a little piece of land

And we live way up on the 57th floor

And this is what we do when we go out the door

We take the elevator up and the elevator down

Take the elevator up and the elevator down

Take the elevator up and the elevator down

And we turn around

Source:  Kendra Jones at Read Sing Play:  https://klmpeace.wordpress.com/rhymes-for-baby-and-toddler-storytimes/#59

The parents helped out on this one to keep our up and down going.  I think it’s a fun song, so I’m hoping to keep it again in the future.

Free Play

After we play with the parachute, we have three tubs of toddler toys that we bring out and let everyone run around the room and have free play.  We close the doors to the meeting room so that no one escapes, and then we can also be noisier if we want.  This is also when I tried to spend time one-on-one with some of the toddlers and parents so that they would feel more comfortable with me, and reminded everyone to sign up for the summer reading program.

How It Went:

I have to admit, I was very intimidated to do this story time.  Since the kids were not used to me, and because I was nervous, it was not one of the best story times that I have had.  However, I think it has potential to improve with some work.  I’m hopeful that the group will start warming up to me in the next few weeks and we will have better sessions.  In general, I found the books were too long for my group’s attention span, but again, this may have been due in part to so much change in one week.  I’m looking forward to seeing how future sessions go!

Flannel Friday: Dress the Cowboy

Recently, I realized that I needed to do something different with my story times.  We had songs and action rhymes and, of course, books, but I still felt like something was missing.  So, I decided to try my hand at flannel stories.  My library has a very extensive collection of flannel boards (that I am currently in the process of organizing and inventorying to see what we have), but after seeing some of the great designs out there (and featured with Flannel Friday), I wanted to try my hand at making some of my own.

True confession:  I actually enlist the help of a great volunteer who does a lot of the creation for me.  I supply templates, ideas, and materials, and she actually does the creation.  

Currently, I plan for all three story times (baby, toddler, and preschool) at my library, but I only present for the babies and preschoolers.  This summer, though, I will be taking on the toddlers as well.  So far, I haven’t added any flannel stories to my baby story times, but I have included them for the toddlers and the preschool groups.  My current story time setup includes an easel that is a felt board on one side, which I’ve found is actually great for sharing the flannel stories with the group.  Putting the stories on the easel frees me up to move the pieces and interact with the kids without holding a board, and it also makes it easier for everyone in the group to see.  I’ve been doing flannel stories for a couple of weeks now, and they seem to be pretty popular with my groups.

March is Texas History Month, and my library director wanted us to offer a Texas-themed story time as part of the month-long focus on Texas in our library.  Planning a story time on Texas was actually much harder than I thought it would be.  I managed to come up with a theme and craft, but I still wanted something more interactive.  With the theme in mind, I set out to find a flannel story.

What You Need

I came across a great Dress the Cowboy rhyme from this Go Texan Day outline.  The poem is recommended as a flannel story, so I wanted to create a cowboy that we could actually dress.  Let me tell you, finding a cowboy template is harder than you would think!  I finally found this adorable outline from Made by Joel that I was able to work with.  I printed several copies of the cowboy so that we could make modifications to the body as needed.  I created a cowboy body template, and then created separate pieces for our clothing.

The Story

Our cowboy starts out with no clothes.  I told the kids that I needed some help to get him dressed correctly, and asked for volunteers to help me dress the cowboy.  In Wednesday’s group, I had more kids than I had pieces, but I was able to partner up siblings to help each other with no complaints.  Thursday’s group had less kids who wanted to participate, so everyone who wanted to got a piece to put on the cowboy.  One of our other librarians recommended that I do the rhyme twice if I had a larger group in the future, which I will definitely do if it happens again to give everyone the chance to participate.

Once we put our cowboy up on the board, I recited the rhyme and paused after each article of clothing to find the child who had it and give him or her the chance to bring it up to the board to dress the cowboy.  We clapped and cheered for everyone who brought up their pieces and put them on the cowboy.  Here’s an idea of how it looks in progress:

A cowboy dresses himself with care.  He starts with long, red underwear.

Out in the desert, you don’t want to get hurt, so the cowboy wears a strong wool shirt.

Deserts and prairies are the cowboy’s scenes.  To protect his legs, he wears sturdy blue jeans.

The cowboy bent, and ran, and knelt.  To keep his pants up, he wore a leather belt.

The coyote howls, the old owl hoots.  On his feet, he wears leather boots.

It isn’t yellow, so it’s not a banana.  Around his neck, he wears a soft bandanna.

At this point, I stopped and asked the kids if our cowboy was complete.  I wasn’t sure whether they would need prompting to remember his hat, but both groups responded immediately with a resounding, “NO!  He doesn’t have a hat!”  So, I asked if anyone had a hat for our cowboy and we finished the rhyme.

A cowboy is a cowboy, and that is that!  On top of his head, he wore a ten-gallon hat.  He’s all dressed now from head to feet, and now our cowboy can’t be beat!

Tips for Use

I ad-libbed the poem in a few places to make it work with our groups and so I didn’t have to constantly refer to my notes.  Overall, the kids really enjoyed helping dress the cowboy.  We left him up for the rest of story time (and he made a great transition into our last book), and after story time, several of the kids came back through for another look at the cowboy.  I also had parents both days taking video of the kids dressing the cowboy.  While I was a little surprised (and nervous), I think it means that our cowboy was a hit!

Hopefully this will be the first of many flannel successes that I get to share.  While I do plan on utilizing the great flannel stories that we have purchased for the library, I also want to keep creating new stories of my own.

Can’t Get Enough?

Many thanks to Kathryn at Fun with Friends at Storytime for being the Flannel Friday host this week.  Flannel Friday has been an amazing resource for me as a children’s librarian, and I hope it helps you, too!  For more information, visit the Flannel Friday website here.  Thanks to all the other children’s librarians who have been sharing their great ideas!