Frogs/Pond

We try to do a generic pond/swamp story time, but there are so many books that feature frogs, that's pretty much what it turns into. Remember when everyone was crazy about frogs back in the day?  Partially due to those Peace Frogs shirts. Was it just a thing then?

Frog in a Bog by Karma Wilson. I won't get into this too much, since I talked about it in my favorite authors/illustrators post. This is a good counting book to use, though as I'll mention later on, I also do 5 Little Speckled Frogs as a fingerplay, so it's not necessary to have a counting book.

Froggie Went A-Courting by Marjorie Priceman. Yes, this is like the old song, but now it's set in NYC! I have to admit, I'm not as familiar with the old one, so I'm not sure if there's a bigoted aunt with machinations to break the couple up, only to have them backfire on her.  If there aren't, well this one has it.  Sometimes I have to kinda lead the children through inferring what happened, even though it does say "Though cat ate rat, there's no denial, Aunt Rat at last made someone smile", I think I sing it too fast for them to catch. Yes, another singing book.  Because if I didn't sing this book, I think it might be a little long for my kids to listen to.  This way though? They love it.

Green Wilma by Tedd Arnold. Wilma wakes up a frog one morning.  All sorts of crazy things happen at home and at school that day. She sees a fly during story time and starts chasing it through the school and out to Miller's pond. She catches it, lands in the water, and then wakes up to realize she was dreaming.  The book ends with the best line "Then she recalled the words they teach to every little frog, 'That when you dream, be careful that you don't fall off the log'".

Big Frog Can't Fit In by Mo Willems.  OMG! How could I forget this book in my last post?! Maybe subconsciously I was saving it just for this.  This is a really cute pop-up book about a frog that is too big to fit in the book. She is really sad, and then her friends get together and make the book bigger.  It's really short, but you know what? Sometimes you need something really short and attention-grabbing to help break things up.  This book is perfect for that.

The Wide-Mouthed Frog by Keith Faulkner. This book is my piece de resistance of this theme. I'd seen my predecessor do this just through storytelling - no book, so I'd gotten tips on how to do it right. It's fine to just read the book as is. There are great pop-ups and illustrations that help tell the story.  However, to really do it justice, you gotta also BE the wide-mouthed frog. So while you read what the frog says, you have to try to open up your mouth as wide as possible, and when the gator comes says it eats wide-mouthed frogs, you have to try to make your mouth as small as possible too. Apparently there is a song/musical version of this story that some of my daycares use, and they want to do that, but I tell stories my way.

Other good stories:

Jump Frog Jump by Robert Kalan. We use this for our baby story time and have the parents pick the babies up whenever we say "Jump, frog, jump!". You could have kids jump during that part.

Stick by Steve Breen. A little frog goes on an adventure while trying to eat a dragonfly.

I Don't Want to Be a Frog by Dev Petty. A little frog declares he doesn't want to be a frog. He goes on to list all these animals he wants to be, and his parents gives reasons why he can't be that. Then he realizes why it's a good idea to be a frog.

Five Little Speckled Frogs

I love this fingerplay, but man, it seems like EVERYONE has a slightly different version of it.  Here's the one that I do.

5 little speckled frogs, 

sitting on a hollow log, 

eating some most delicious bugs (yum, yum), 

1 jumped into the pool,

where it was nice and cool, 

now there are 4 little speckled frogs (glub, glub)

and then you countdown and so on.

The variation? Green and speckled frogs. Speckled log. Eating their most delicious lunch (munch, munch). I'm sure there are more, those are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head.  However you do it, it's right!  Sometimes I ask the daycares ahead of time what version they do, sometimes I just plow ahead with my own and the kids sing their own words anyway.

My Favorite Authors/Illustrators

I thought I'd take a minute to talk about my favorite authors and illustrators. Usually it isn't hard to pick out with someone when they mention the same books or series of books from someone over and over and over. My predecessor loved Patricia Polacco and Jan Brett.  How do I know?  Well not only did I work with her and I heard her say it, but she also ordered EVERY SINGLE BOOK both of them wrote.  We have a collection we rotate between daycares, and I swear, there are 30 Jan Brett books in there - and half are duplicated of each other.  Now don't get me wrong, I think both are fantastic.  Polacco's stories that draw from her own life and her family's are touching and extraordinary.  Jan Brett's illustrations are beautiful and extremely detailed.  However, neither is my preference.  So, here's a post devoted to my favorites (probably leaning more heavily on illustrations, since my degree is in Art, and that's just what I'm drawn to).

William Joyce

William Joyce has SUCH a distinctive style.  I just love it. Lots of his books have been adapted into shows or films and it really translates well to screen.  Anyone remember Rolie Polie Olie?  Yep, that was him.  Meet the Robinsons? Based on his book A Day with Wilbur Robinson. His latest book, The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore, won an Oscar for the short film adapted from it. (Made me cry.  Stupid film.)

Dan Santat

Again, here is someone with a style uniquely their own and instantly recognizable. His latest book (that he wrote and illustrated), The Adventures of Beekle, an Unimaginary Friend, won the Caldecott Medal this year. He also illustrated favorites of mine such as Crankenstein and OH NO! (Or How My Science Project Destroyed the World).

Oliver Jeffers

I absolutely adore Oliver Jeffers and his books. He is my Jan Brett.  I order all of his books.  The stories are simple, but cute and the illustrations are - well, the same. One of my favorite books of his is The Heart and the Bottle about a girl who gets her heart broken when (presumably) her father dies.  So she puts it in a bottle so she can't get hurt, but then she forgets how to love, until she meets a little girl who teaches her how to wonder and imagine and love. Stuck is another good book of his about a boy who gets something stuck in a tree, so he just keeps throwing things up there to try to get it unstuck, and it keeps getting more ridiculous.  Also, I'd recommend The Incredible Book-Eating Boy. Really, I'd tell you about all his books, but that would be the whole post, and it would be disgusting how much I'd gush over him.

Karma Wilson

I thought it was time to give a shout-out to someone who is solely an author (as far as I know) now.  She has so many books that I use during my story times. Frog in a Bog, about a frog that gets too greedy and almost gets eaten by an alligator. Hilda Must Be Dancing about a hippo with a passion for dancing, who just needs to find the right place to do it. Whopper Cake about a sweet (ha!) old man making the most gigantic cake for his wife's birthday.

Mark Teague

I am sad to say that I am not as familiar with Mark Teague as an author as I am an illustrator.  I really think the mark of a great illustrator is when they put their own stamp on things, and he really does. The one book of his I *have* read is The Secret Shortcut, about two boys who have trouble getting to school on time, and whose excuses are the most ridiculous things in the world.  They find this secret shortcut, which turns out to be as ridiculous as their excuses. He's the illustrator for the How Do Dinosaurs series and Poppleton. Who doesn't love dinosaurs or animals in clothes?

Mo Willems

Maybe the illustrations in the books don't impress you, but you can't deny that his books are just fun to read. (By the way, I like the illustrations. It can be really hard to get something to be simplistic, but still look good and be expressive.) It's no secret that I ADORE reading the Pigeon books aloud in story time.  I feel like the Pigeon is the embodiment of my id. Maybe I should get a Pigeon tattoo. Oh - and the Pigeon apparently has his own Twitter account. Cute. The Elephant and Piggie books are great too, AND (how cool is this) they've been made into a play.  WHAT?!  Yep. Elephant & Piggie's We Are In a Play. Super-awesome! That's got to show you the appeal of these characters. That is Not a Good Idea is a fantastically twisted book.  It definitely leads you into thinking one thing is going to happen and then takes a big left turn at the end.

Ok. I think you guys are probably done with me praising and going on about my favorites. I have more, but we'll leave it here for now.

DINOSAURS!!!

You can tell which themes I really love because I put those in all caps.  I don't know any little kids who think dinosaurs aren't cool. Well one, but he was just trying really hard to act cool and grown-up in front of his friends. Pshaw!

Edwina, the Dinosaur Who Didn't Know She Was Extinct by Mo Willems. I use this book to talk about what extinct mean.  Sometimes I think the kids just don't get it. Maybe they just don't like it as much as I do. Reginald von Hoobie-Doobie is hell bent on explaining to everyone that Edwina should be extinct. No one listens. Finally she does, and she is shocked, but doesn't care.  Reginald is finally happy just to have someone listen to him.

When Dinosaurs Came with Everything by Elise Broach. The title says it all. In this story, all of a sudden, one day dinosaurs came with everything. A haircut at the barber's, a check-up at the dentist, even a dozen doughnuts. The boy's mom is totally freaked out by it all, but eventually she finds a use for the dinosaurs and they become part of the family.  I love this book, but it is a little long, so I try to reserve it for my elementary aged kids.

Saturday Night at the Dinosaur Stomp by Carol Diggory Shields. All the dinosaurs are gathering for a huge party! The story details out all the dinos getting ready for and gathering at the party. The book definitely has a certain cadence to it, and the kids love to point out that it rhymes - it's like once they get it, they have to tell you EVERY TIME. 

Dinosaurs, Dinosaurs by Byron Barton. A nice, short book that just goes over some basics about dinosaurs along with the names of them.  It's almost like an opposite book of dinosaurs.

How Do Dinosaurs Say I Love You? by Jane Yolen. All the books in this series are really cute. They all have the same basic formula of asking, do dinosaurs do this and that? And of course the answer is no. The second half of the book is all the things dinosaurs do.

Other good books include:

Trouble at the Dinosaur Cafe by Brian Moses.

Vacation's Over! Return of the Dinosaurs by Joe Kukla. Ugh.  This is SO cute.  Dinosaurs never went extinct! They just went on vacation, and now they're back. 

Why the Banana Split by Rick Walton.  I want to use this one SO badly.  I just don't think it will go over well because the whole book is just a bunch of idioms illustrated.  Still - it *does* have something to do with dinosaurs.

Tea Rex by Molly Idle.

For this theme I don't really have a fingerplay that I do. We'll sing Dem Bones, but my coworkers reworked the words to the chorus and that's the version we do.

Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones, 

dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones, 

dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones, 

diggin' up dinosaur bones.

Then we pretty much sing it as normal.

Dogs

Why do we split cats and dogs up?  Why don't we just do pets as one big theme and do both? Well, as I said before, there are lots of books for both, so rather than have to choose between them all, we just split them up and do it this way.

Some Dogs Do by Jez Alborough. This is about a dog named Sid who accidentally flies on the way to school one day.  Sid is SO excited, he tells everyone, but no one believes him. They make him prove it, but it doesn't happen again, and Sid goes home absolutely crushed. Then Sid's dad tells him a secret that raises his spirits again.

Oh No, George! by Chris Haughton. I swear, reading this book feels like reading what's going on in my friend's dog's head. George's owner leaves him at home, and though he knows he shouldn't do stuff (like eat an entire chocolate cake), he does it anyway.George is sorry, and they go for a walk, so he proves it by being on his best behavior. My friend has a Great Dane, and no lie - we left the house once and he ate about 18 chocolate cupcakes that were cooling on the counter. They had to make him drink water with peroxide in it to get him to throw them up. Which he did. Whole - wrappers and all.

How Much is That Doggie in the Window? by Iza Trapani. You can sing the whole book to the classic tune of this song. A little boy wants a dog, but doesn't quite have enough money for it. He earns some, but it sweet to his family and buys them things when they need it or are feeling down.

He goes to visit the puppy one day, only to find out it's been sold.  When he goes home, he finds out his parents bought it for him.

Move Over, Rover by Karen Beaumont. This is a GREAT one to do as a read-aloud. This is a story that builds on itself, and every time it gets to this point in the story, we have the kids yell out "Move over, Rover!". A dog is lonely in his house. Suddenly a rainstorm hits and all these animals come looking for shelter. They're squeeeeezed in, when they all scatter because of a skunk.  In the end he's happy to be back in his doghouse all alone.

Bark, George by Jules Feiffer. A worried mother taker her pup to the vet because he won't bark. He meows, quacks, oinks, and moos. The vet pulls out a cat, duck, pig, and cow. The mom is so proud, she wants to show him off to everyone on the way home. So she asks him to bark, which he definitely doesn't do.

Other good books:

Show Dog by Meghan McCarthy

Dog Breath by Dav Pilkey

Woof: a Love Story by Sarah Weeks

I Don't Like Gloria by Kaye Umansky

Buster by Denise Fleming

With this theme we almost always do BINGO.  The song, not the game obviously. Since I usually deal with younger children and taking away letter and clapping is a hard concept, I try to start off each verse by telling them what letter we're taking away and how many times we'll clap this time. 

Cats

Since I've gotten through all the holidays we do story times for, now it will pretty much be a random assortment of themes from here on out.  I may go back and do some for past summer themes, but they'll probably be in one post.  Anywho - on to cats!  Cats is one of the themes we have LOTS of books to choose from, which is great and awful all at the same time.  Great to have the options, terrible when you have to weed some out.

Grandma's Cat by Helen Ketterman. The little girl in the story is desperately trying to play with grandma's cat.  After the cat claws her, grandma calms her down, and tells her how to make nice with him.  Eventually the cat comes to her, and they're friends by the end. Anyone whose grandmother has a grumpy old cat can relate to this book.

Mama Cat has three kittens by Denis Fleming. A very repetitive method of storytelling that helps with the twist at the end. Whenever Mama Cat does something, Fluffy and Skinny do it too, and Boris naps.  They do this about 5 times, and in the end, when Mama Cat curls up to nap - what does Boris do?  He stretches, yawns, cleans his paws and then pounces! Right on top of Mama, Fluffy, and Skinny...and then Boris naps.

Kitten's First Full Moon by Kevin Henkes. Kitten really wants a bowl of milk. Then she sees one up in the sky and does everything she can to get it. In the end the poor kitten is banged up, wet, and returns home to find a bowl of milk waiting for her. :) 

If You Give a Cat a Cupcake by Laura Numeroff. Really? Are you not aware of this series of books yet?  The cat asks for things that remind him of other things, that eventually lead him back to the first thing. Great book to use to ask a lot of questions.

The Fat Cat by Margaret Read McDonald. Now normally, I do this as a flannel board. It's a really easy story to tell with how repetitive it is. The kids pick up on it quickly and they like to tell out the parts of the story. Basically a cat is asked to watch this old woman's stew, and when she gets back, he's eaten the stew AND the pot, and then he eats her. So then he goes for a walk, and each person who sees him asks, "Why little cat, what have you been eating? You are so fat!". The cat eats half a dozen villagers before he meets the woodsman, who cuts him open and lets everyone out. They leave the bandaged-up cat out in the middle of nowhere.  

Other good books are:

Francis the Scaredy Cat by Ed Boxall

Five Creatures by Emily Jenkins

Skippyjon Jones by Judy Schachner. You could use this for dogs or cats, but as I have plenty of books for dogs, I chose to put it here.  Skippyjon is a Siamese cat who is convinced he's a chihuahua. He goes on all these adventures in his imagination, saving other dogs in Mexico from some sort of evil.  I've read it to a group once, but that was it.

To round out story time, I totally do Soft Kitty with the kids.  I do it call-and-response, so I sing part of a line and they repeat it.

In case you're not familiar with it, here's the lyrics: 

Soft kitty, warm kitty, 

little ball of fur.

Happy kitty, sleepy kitty, 

purr, purr, purr.

And I have the kids do motions with the song.  Maybe pretend likes they're petting the cat, hugging it, holding it. Then we do happy faces, pretend like we're sleeping, and then the purr.

If you're not familiar with the tune, I'll let Sheldon from Big Bang Theory sing it for you.*

*I know this song existed before BBT.  It's just amusing to watch the clip.