Flannel Friday: Happy Birthday, Moon

I can’t believe that it’s been so long since I posted!  Even more, I can’t believe that it’s Flannel Friday’s fifth birthday!  I’ve been so inspired by all the posts that I’ve read, and I can’t wait to see what the next five years bring.  Happy birthday!  As it turns out, I have the perfect birthday flannel.  At my library, we’ve done both space and birthday themes this session, and this flannel works perfectly for either.  So, here’s my contribution:  a flannel version of Frank Asch’s Happy Birthday, Moon.

What You’ll Need

The pieces are all from designed from various clipart pictures I found.  There is, of course, Bear and Moon, and a top hat (I did make sure it had a purple band like the one in the book – that detail seemed important).  There is a bare tree, a river, a canoe, a series of small trees together for a forest, and a mountain range.  I also created a miniature piggy bank and a pile of coins for Bear to buy the hat.  The pieces aren’t to scale (Bear is bigger than the mountains, I think), but I needed them smaller to fit on our board and honestly, they were easier to make that way.  The kids didn’t seem to mind, either.

The Story

I use this one by retelling what happens in the picture book.  The best part is that you can be as detailed or not as you want, depending on the audience.

Tips for Use

Since we co-present our story times, we had one person serve as the narrator and Bear, and the second person served as the Moon.  It turned out really cute!

Can’t Get Enough?

Hopefully it won’t be as long before I share again.  In any case, I’ll be keeping up with the round-ups and getting more great ideas.  This week, our host is 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.  Happy Friday, everyone!

Flannel Friday: Ice Cream Colors

I’m running a little bit behind today, but I am determined to get this post up in time for Flannel Friday.  Last year for Halloween, I did a Halloween-themed story time.  Unfortunately, it didn’t go over well at all with the parents.  So this year, I decided to switch things up a bit.  In honor of Halloween candy, we did a Candy and Desserts story time this week instead.  After looking at our book selection, I decided on an ice cream cone flannel story to add variety to the types of desserts we talked about.

What You Need

Here are all the ice cream cones that I created.  I took the simplest clipart template that I could find and cut out the cones and tops and then glued them together.

The Story

Here’s the rhyme that I used with it:

We have ice cream, the best in town!

Let us begin with chocolate BROWN.

This ice cream is lime and GREEN.

It is the creamiest we’ve ever seen.

YELLOW ice cream is lemony and tart.

We like it from the very start.

ORANGE sherbet is next, oh so sweet.

Everyone thinks that it’s a great treat!

Scoops of BLUEberry make this a lucky day.

We just want to cheer, hip, hip, hooray!

RED ice cream is a cherry delight.

This ice cream cone is a heavenly sight.

Vanilla CREAM (or WHITE) is a popular flavor.

It tastes very good to an ice-cream craver.

PURPLE ice cream really gives us a kick.

Good and yummy till the very last lick.

Now let us scoop some bubble-gum PINK.

It is sweet and yummy, the best we think.

Ice cream, ice cream, what a cool sensation.

We love ice cream in any combination!

I slightly adapted this rhyme from Fun with Friends at Storytime to work with the colors that I had.  Kathryn’s rhyme originally had mint ice cream, but I didn’t think that my green was very minty looking, so I went with lime instead.

Tips for Use

With both my toddler and preschool groups, I handed out the ice cream cones and we waited our turn to put up the right color.  I loved that this turned out to be a great time for parent interaction, since the parents this week were great about encouraging their children to wait their turn to put up their ice cream rather than swarming the board.  With my preschool group, we also talked about what flavors we might be missing and what colors they should be in between putting up more ice cream cones.

Can’t Get Enough?

This week, our host is the wonderful Storytime Katie, one of my favorite blogs for inspiration and ideas.  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.  Happy Friday, everyone!

Flannel Friday: Dotty the Dinosaur

It’s Flannel Friday time again!  I missed last week (I was on vacation), but I’m excited to share again this week.  This week in story time, we did dinosaurs.  I actually created two different flannel stories, but I only have time to share one here today.  Today I’m sharing my version of “Dotty the Dinosaur.”  I originally got this idea here.

What You’ll Need

Here’s the rainbow horde of dinosaurs that I created:

The patterns for everything in this set are just modified clipart images that I thought were cute and tied in with the theme.  I had an idea of the colors that I wanted for the dinosaurs, and then I chose food for each to eat based on what I thought would be easy to create for the colors.  Here’s the finished food:

The Story

To summarize this story, Dotty is a green dinosaur who has always eaten green foods.  One day, she decides to try something else, and, wouldn’t you know it, it changes her color.  Each time she eats something new, it changes her color:

By the end of the story, Dotty can’t decide what color she wants to be, so she just eats everything and becomes a polka-dot dinosaur instead.

But, for anyone who wants it, here’s the rhyme that goes with it:

Dotty the Dinosaur loved to eat

Things like lettuce and string beans.

That is why her dinosaur skin

Was colored a lovely GREEN.

One day she saw some cherries

And ate them all that day.

Later, Dotty the Dinosaur

Turned bright RED they say.

Dotty just loved colors,

So the next day she ate two

Bushes filled with blueberries

And turned the color BLUE.

The next day she saw some grapes

And ate them on the spot.

Then Dotty turned quite PURPLE

From her bottom to her top.

Next she ate a banana;

It made her feel quite mellow.

And wouldn’t you know it, next thing

Dotty turned bright YELLOW.

Then she ate some juicy orange,

Just a little slice.

And when Dotty turned ORANGE she thought,

“Isn’t this quite nice?”

Then she found some cotton candy,

Quite tasty, don’t you think?

And once Dotty ate it up

She turned the color PINK.

Dotty couldn’t decide now

Which color she liked best.

So Dotty just ate everything.

Was her skin an awful mess?

No, Dotty now had dots

Of color everywhere.

Dotty now was different,

But Dotty didn’t care.

Dotty loved her new skin,

She liked it quite a lot.

Now she was the only dinosaur

With a coat of polka dots!

Credit:  Adapted from Jean Warren

Tips for Use

I originally planned on using the rhyme to go with this one, but when I told the story with my preschool group, I just made it up as I went along.  I put up the different foods that Dotty was eating, and my helpers brought up the color dinosaur that she turned.  I used this for an outreach story time this morning and adapted the same approach, with the children shouting out what Dotty was eating and what color she turned.

Can’t Get Enough?

This week, our host is Melissa at Mel’s Desk.  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 everyone is sharing this week!

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!

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!