Playtime!

This year's themes for the summer were On Your Mark, Get Set, Read! or Exercise Your Mind. Normally, we do six weeks of heavy programming during the summer (followed by about a month of lighter no-planning programming). So to cover the different areas of being keeping your body healthy and fit, our themes for story time were Bath Time, Healthy Eating, Bed Time, Brain Power, Playtime, and Sports! We already do themes around bath time, bed time, and food, so we really only had to come up with things for the others.

Playtime actually came up as a theme by accident. We may have done a keyword search of "play" and enough books came up between that and sports that I felt we could easily do both weeks. And we did!

 

Let's Do Nothing! by Tony Fucile. Two kids who are convinced they've done EVERYTHING already set out to do nothing. One of them, Frankie, has quite the imagination and has a really hard time just doing nothing.

 

 

Mustache Baby Meets His Match by Bridget Heos. In this sequel to Mustache Baby, he meets Javier, a neighbor baby who has a beard. MB tries to show up Javier, but gets bested in a lot of ways. Soon this brings out the worst in both babies and it's a wrestling match for the ages. It's quickly broken up and they learn which is the best competition to win. I think this book goes over the heads of our younger children, but elementary age kids really enjoy it.

 

 

 

 

Watch Me Throw the Ball! by Mo Willems.

Elephant & Piggie is a series of books that is PERFECT for beginning readers. They're also really fun to read aloud in story time. In this book Piggie brings over a ball she found that Elephant threw. She wants to join in, but Elephant is very serious about how to do it. She gets to throw (does terribly) but is still celebrating over it because she had fun (and Elephant learns to have fun with it too).

So in all honesty, I started this blog post a year ago. I don't have as much time during the school year to blog, and now I don't remember what we did for this program. As far as songs and fingerplays go, you could really do anything. Since the theme is play, really anything will work.
 

Mothers Day

Well since I did a Fathers Day theme, I figured I *had* to do a Mothers Day one too. Neither are themes that we actually do during the calendar year, since we normally take a break when Mother's Day falls, and Father's Day is during summer reading. Usually, we do a theme called "family" that kinda encompasses everyone. However, there are a number of mother books that I enjoy.

Little Rabbit and the Meanest Mother on Earth by Kate Klise. Little Rabbit is *supposed* to be cleaning his room when the circus comes to town. He begs his mother to go, but of course his room isn't clean, so it's a no-go. So what does he do? Tries to join the circus. He can if he sells 100 tickets. His act? The Meanest Mother on Earth. Little Rabbit gets quite inventive in his effort to sell tickets. Needless to say, the audience is quite disappointed when she shows up. Mama manages to turn the tables though, and the audience gets a show and Little Rabbit learns a lesson.

My Monster Mama Loves Me So by Laura Leuck. This is one of those my-mom-is-the-best-for-all-these-reasons book, but with a monster twist.

My Mommy is Magic by Carl Norac. This book lists all the reasons the girl's mother is magic, like when she wears her cloud dress, the sky is clear or when she sings the butterflies gather. It goes through all the reasons and then the girl says "My mommy is magic and one day I'm going to grow up and be magic just like her." A-dorable!

 



 

Ol' Mama Squirrel by David Ezra Stein. This is about a mama squirrel that will do anything she can to protect her babies (and she's really good at it). One day, an ENORMOUS scary problem comes along that she can't handle by herself, but mama squirrel is resourceful and gets the job done!

Mama Don't Allow
So this is actually the name of a book (By Thacher Hurd), but we do it as a song. Maaaaaybe not the best one to do when you're trying to honor mothers, but *shrug*.

Mama don't allow no hand clappin' 'round here (clap, clap, clap)
Mama don't allow no hand clappin' 'round here (clap, clap, clap)
Well I don't care what Mama don't allow, gonna clap my hands any old how,

Mama don't allow no hand clappin' 'round here (clap, clap, clap)

 

Mama don't allow no foot stompin' 'round here (stomp, stomp, stomp) 

Mama don't allow no foot stompin' 'round here (stomp, stomp, stomp)

 Well I don't care what Mama don't allow, gonna stomp my feet any old how,

Mama don't allow no foot stompin' 'round here (stomp, stomp, stomp)

 

Mama don't allow no hog callin' 'round here ("Soo-wee")

Mama don't allow no hog callin' 'round here ("Soo-wee")

 Well I don't care what Mama don't allow, gonna call my hogs any old how,

Mama don't allow no hog callin' 'round here ("Soo-wee")

 

Mama don't allow no carryin' on around here (clap clap, stomp stomp, "Soo-wee")

Mama don't allow no carryin' on around here (clap clap, stomp stomp, "Soo-wee")

Well I don't care what Mama don't allow, gonna carry on any old how,

Mama don't allow no carryin' on around here (clap clap, stomp stomp, "Soo-wee")

 

There's also a couple of nursery rhymes you could do:

 

Old Mother Hubbard
Went to the cupboard
To get her poor dog a bone;
But when she came there
The cupboard was bare,
And so the poor dog had none.

 

There was an old woman who lived in a shoe.
She had so many children, she didn't know what to do;
She gave them some broth without any bread;
Then whipped them all soundly and put them to bed.

 

 

Representation Matters: Stories featuring black characters.

So I was reading to a group of kids the other day and it was the last week of our summer theme. I asked the kids if they knew who Michael Phelps is. One of the kids asked "Is he black?". Important to note - all of the children I was reading to were black - and I suddenly realized, "Wow. I totally could have picked a book about a black athlete to read to them". We just picked Michael Phelps because he's going to be in the Olympics again this year, and the book is cute in illustrating what all he had to do to train to get there. This past week though, I decided to consciously pick out books that had black people as the main focus, just for them. They weren't the only group that I read to, but that didn't matter. (In fact, they cancelled my story time with them before I got to read them - but I'll just save them for next week.)

 

Say Hey!: a Song of Willie Mays by Peter Mandel. This has a great repeating refrain of "Say hey, Willie, say hey" that I had the kids say after every couplet of lines, helping keep them engaged in the story. It's a good, brief telling of his life, though it does gloss over the segregation stuff a little- but hey, it's a kids book. I did briefly talk about segregation and Civil Rights after and one little girl said something like "Yeah, and that's why we have Black History Month..." I didn't say anything to that or point out the theme in all my books that day. I have no idea if any of them noticed. I probably missed a teaching moment. :/ 

 

Aunt Flossie's Hats (and Crab Cakes Later) by Elizabeth Fitzgerald Howard. This is a really cute story about two little girls who love to visit their great-aunt, go through her hatboxes and listen to all the storied that accompany each hat. You get to hear three - including one that they get to help tell at the end. :)

 

Jump Rope Magic by Afi Scruggs. This book is definitely written with a certain rhythm and cadence to it. It's great when you can get into it and go with the flow. You can really get tripped up if you don't get into the beat though. The girls I read this to LOVED it because they recognized some of the jump rope rhymes used in it.

 

We Had a Picnic This Sunday Past by Jacqueline Woodson. This book is told by the little girl who goes to a family picnic with her grandma, and they comment on everyone and everything they bring. And the whole time they keep talking about this one aunt and her terrible apple pies, but they can't tell her that because it would hurt her feelings. FINALLY the aunt shows up with a box - does she have TWO pies?!

 

Nappy Hair by Carolivia Herron. This story is set up as being told at a reunion or some family gathering, so you have the main story teller, and then you have two other voices that chime in and interrupt. The story teller is talking about how this child has the nappiest hair in the world. He goes on and on and on about it - and the voices that interrupt get exasperated with him and can't believe that he won't stop talking about it. In the end, he says that God gave that child that hair, and when he looked at what he created he was proud and said "Well done." For all the teasing that starts out in the story, it's really heartwarming in the end.




Like I said, I haven't had a chance to read these stories to my intended audience. I'll update soon once I do and can gauge their reaction to the stories. I had others picked out too - I only had so much time to read before I had to run to my story time, but some of the other titles were Bippity Bop Barbershop by Natasha Anastasia Tarpley (but couldn't use because half a page was missing :/), Baby Tamer by Mark Teague (the main character just happens to be black - nothing about it is ever mentioned), black is brown is tan by Arnold Adoff (about a biracial family), and Cherish Me by Joyce Carol Thomas. 

 

Father's Day

It's been awhile since I posted anything on here, but honestly? I thought I had run out of the themes I normally do! And shame on me! Why not be creative and try to cover other themes and ideas that I *don't* do?

 

I was inspired today because Father's Day is coming up and because this book came across my desk this morning:

 

 

Because I'm Your Dad by Ahmet Zappa. It is J'ADORABLE! (Thank you Jonathan Adler for adding that word to my vocabulary.) Nevermind that it was created by two people I absolutely love. Does anyone remember the show Ahmet Zappa hosted on MTV back in the 90s? webRIOT? He was such an oddball, and I fell in love with him then. And of course this post talks about Dan Santat and my other favorite authors and illustrators, so if you want to see me gush about him, you can read it there. BUT - even if it didn't have anything to do with those two, it would still be a cute book. The text (especially the end) gets me all verklempt.

 

 

One that follows the same theme (of all the things a father would to for a child), but is a bit more fantastical is:

 

 

Because I am Your Daddy by Sherry North. The first one covers all the everyday things a dad does for his child. This one is all the things a father would do for a child if he had a certain profession. Then it gets into the ridiculous of "If we were Martians... If I was a wizard...". Ultimately, the ending is similar - it's all about a father's love.

 

This next one we added last year when the summer theme was "Every Hero Has a Story":

 

 

Hero Dad by Melinda Hardin. This is told from the point of view of a child comparing his dad (who is in the military) to a superhero. It was *perfect* for the theme, and it's a great book to read about fathers.

 

 

The Fathers Are Coming Home by Margaret Wise Brown. This shows different fathers in the animal kingdom coming home to their children. The final one is a human father, a sailor, coming home to his kid.

 

My Dad Thinks He's Funny by Katrina Germein. This is basically a book full of dad jokes. It's really corny, but reading it to groups of kids is fun because you'll hear "Hey, my dad says that!". If you're a dad reading it with your child, you'll probably see a lot of yourself in the book.

 

 

These are obviously all newer books. I'm sure there are a number of older ones that are just as good. Please comment and let me know your favorite father/daddy book that I may have forgotten!



Picture Book Month!

Hey guys!  November is Picture Book Month.  If you follow this blog, you already know that is the majority of what I talk about and use in story times.  However, there are also a good number of books that are JUST pictures - no words, and I thought I'd feature them today. 

 Picture-only books a little hard to work into story time, but they're a great tool to get kids involved in the story telling process.  There's a lot more that goes on with reading a wordless book than just looking at pretty pictures.  They have to infer and comprehend the plot - and even use their imagination to help fill in gaps. (And - a little bonus - the illustrator is the start of the show.) So here's a few that are great:

Flora and the Flamingo by Molly Idle.  An adorable book where a girl named Flora (who is in a swimsuit and flippers) meets a flamingo and they go through this copycat game/dance.  Very simple, not much plot, but an entertaining book nonetheless. (The author has another called Flora and the Penguin).

Pancakes for Breakfast by Tomie DePaola. There are *some* words in this - an ingredient list in the woman's book and labels on things.  However, if there weren't those things, I think you could still follow the story just fine.  It's a lot like Eric Carle's Pancakes, Pancakes - but without words. A woman wakes up and wants pancakes, but doesn't have any of the ingredients.  So she fetches eggs from the chicken, milks the cow for milk and then churns some for butter.  She goes out to get maple syrup, and when she comes back her animals have eaten the eggs and milk. Eventually yes, she does get pancakes.

Flotsam by David Wiesner.  I LOVE this book.  It is so pretty.  Basically, a boy finds a camera washed up on the beach.  He gets the pictures developed and there are all sorts of crazy pictures from under the ocean - of octopuses in their living room and mermaids and mechanical fish. While the boy is trying to take a selfie with the camera (it makes sense in plot), the camera gets washed away, only to wash up on the shore for another child later. The amount of detail that is in each page of illustration is amazing. The man is a Caldecott winner for good reason. 

Chalk by Bill Thomson.  Three children find a bag of magic chalk on the playground one rainy day. They find out that whatever they draw comes to life.  One draws a sun, the other butterflies, and the third - a T. REX!!!! The children are chased by the T. Rex, and while hiding inside the playground equipment, the little boy draws rain clouds, and the rain washes away the other drawings, making the T. Rex disappear.  They leave the bag of chalk back where they found it. 

There are LOTS more wordless picture books (esp. by Wiesner). Hopefully this inspires you to check some out. :)

Cooking with Kids: Snack Plates

Sometimes I have what I think are brilliant ideas to simplify my programs. Then sometimes I don't plan ahead and I don't have what I need to do said program. Sometimes that happens with the same program.  This was that program.

When I went through and did my list of books that had food in them, there were several that had LOTS of foods, and I thought, "What better way to incorporate kids helping than to do snack plates?"

I had it all planned out, and then a week or so before the program, I realized that one of the books had been on reading lists for school during the summer. Curses! I put myself on hold for it, but it didn't come in until AFTER I did my program.  Figures.  I had to scramble the day before and try to find a replacement book/recipe that I could use to fit the theme of snacks.  Here are the books and recipes I wound up using:

Heckedy Peg by Audrey Wood. This is about a mother who has to go to the market, and has to leave her 7 children at home. She very specifically tells them - "Don't do the thing". A stranger comes up to the door, and what do they do? The thing. Stranger is a witch who turns them into food and takes them home to eat them. Mom finds the witch and eventually the witch will give her children back if she can figure out which one is which. She does so by what they asked for from the market. There's a LOT of food mentioned in the book - most of which a lot of children probably wouldn't eat, but cheese and crackers are mentioned, and so we decided to do a ploughman's lunch. You can get really fancy with it, but we didn't - we buttered some crusty bread and had an array of cheeses the children could choose. My grandmother used to have a cheese slicer I used all the time as I kid, but I don't have one now.  I could have had a kid come up and sliced it with a butter knife, but we were trying to be mindful of time. 

The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle. Again, lots of food mentioned, especially at the end of the book, but we decided to focus on the fruit. (I'm not going to go through the plot - this book is so famous, you *must* know it). We made little fruit kabobs, but we needed something for the kids to do, so we decided to make a dip for the fruit. Super easy because all you have to do is mix, so I think I asked a three-year-old to come up and help me. And they did such a good job! I think a lot of kids skipped tasting it though because they had no idea what it was - which is weird because they normally LOVE sweets.

The Beastly Feast by Bruce Goldstone. Sooo this was not the book I had originally planned on doing that day. It's cute though, with bears bringing pears,  parrots bringing carrots, mosquitoes bringing burritos, and so on. I figured that carrots would be the best bet, since a lot of kids eat that for a snack anyway. But we couldn't just give them carrots. I mean we could, but this is a cooking class. So I decided to make homemade ranch dressing. Again - this is something that's not *too* hard - a lot of mixing and measuring. There's some herb cutting, but that can be done with scissors. And there's the garlic mashing, but I have a mortar and pestle and so that helps make short work of that. It was delicious, but way different than the bottled stuff. The kids seemed to enjoy it.   

In case you're wondering, the book I originally intended to do was Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs by Judi Barrett. It talks about drifts of cream cheese and jelly sandwiches, and I thought that would be a perfect recipe that EVERYONE could make. That's ok though. There were other books I didn't get to do in this series, and there are other foods mentioned, so I may be able to work it in some other time.  

Spaaaaaace

I think we introduced this one during the Dream Big summer theme. We liked it so much, we decided to try to incorporate it more into our yearly rotation.

 

Krong! By Garry Parsons. When the kid in the story is approached by an alien in the story and the kid doesn't understand him, he runs inside to tell his parents and they offer the most helpful advice of maybe he's Spanish, French, Japanese. He tries all those languages and then you find out the alien is the boy's uncle.  Why don't the parents say "Why are you talking to a stranger?! Come inside this minute!"? I guess that would defeat the message of like, cultural acceptance or whatever.  But seriously? There's just some strange guy your son is talking to and you're totally ok with it?  Regardless, it's a cute book.

 

 

Man on the Moon (a Day in the Life of Bob) by Simon Bartram. This is a day in the life of the man in the moon.  He flies up every day, tidies it up, puts on shows for the tourists, and has never ever seen an alien. I usually keep this reserved for my elementary kids.

 

 

Baloney (Henry P.) by Jon Scieszka. Kids really get a kick out of the outlandish excuse for being late, told from the point of view of the little alien - complete with alien slang. It's quite a fun story to read aloud.

 

 

Mousetronaut by Mark Kelly. Somewhat similar to Hedgie in Space, it's about a little mouse that gets to go on a space mission and ends up saving the crew and the mission. The best part? This is actually written by an astronaut! :D  How cool is that? 

 

 

The Way Back Home by Oliver Jeffers. Y'all should know my love for Oliver Jeffers by now. The story is about an alien and a person who both unexpectedly land and get stuck on the moon. They find each other, and figure out a way to get their vehicles fixed.

 



 

Hush, Little Alien by Daniel Kirk. Obviously a take on Hush, Little Baby. Yes, the whole thing can be sung, and I often do it. I stop and ask questions though, so they don't miss the cute play on words or illustrations.

 

 

It Came From Outer Space by Tony Bradman. When I did a search for this image, I found out this was also the name of an old sci-fi film.  I have no idea if they are similar. In this one, a visitor from space comes to an elementary school. They talk about how weird and ugly it was, and how they couldn't understand what it was trying to say. They take a picture with it and get to see the inside of the spacecraft, and then it's time for the visitor to go. In a Twilight Zone-like twist, you see the picture and see that the class are all aliens, and the visitor is a human.  

 

 

Zoom! Zoom! Zoom! I'm Off to the Moon! by Dan Yaccarino. With simple rhyming text and graphic illustrations, this books goes through one little boy's trip to the moon. It's a short, quick read, so I like to do this one with my two year olds.

 

 

Other good books for this theme are:

 

Astro Bunnies by Christine Loomis.

 

 

Moo Cow Kaboom by Thacher Hurd

 

 

As far as songs or fingerplays, I do Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star and in the past I've gone this:

 

 

9 Little Planets (sung to the tune of 10 little Indians)

 

 

One little two little three little planets

Four little five little six little planets

Seven little eight little nine little planets

Orbiting round the sun.

 

I know.  Pluto is technically a dwarf planet, but didn't they add it back recently?  It's so hard to keep up with this crap.