My first year of storytimes is almost over!  :(  I will miss the "dancing two-year-olds".  They are quite possibly the cutest people I've ever known and not seeing their happy smiles every week will take a toll!  However, I learned so much from them!

For instance,  I have learned that open-ended art projects are the best.  A product-centered craft is lovely, and makes lots of parents happy, but nothing makes a two-year-old more happy than a paint dauber, a few colors of paint and a blank paper.  Or an animal shaped paper.  Or a shape shaped paper!  As long as they can put paint on it!  And this gives them the opportunity to work on their fine motor skills, without even knowing that's what they are doing!  By including shapes, or animals as part of the project, I'm bringing in science concepts, which we know are all the rage these days.  By the way, I've found that most of the parents these days are more than happy to let their little ones play in the paint, and don't worry too much about getting messy.  Though it does help to have a bunch of baby wipes on hand!

And another thing - the more interaction, the better.  These are two year-olds, and their attention spans aren't quite that of a preschooler yet, who can listen to and become captivated by a more involved story.  These guys like books where the characters make sounds, or the book asks you to do something, like shake it, or press something.  These things make their eyes light up!  One book I absolutely loved for this was Tap the Magic Tree.  There was pressing, and shaking, and wiggling of fingers . . . this book had it all!

And the music - it has to be interactive also.  Don't get me wrong, my littles love playing the instruments, and are particularly fond of the shaky eggs, but without a song that sort of tells them what to do with that instrument, they look a little lost.  Throw in a little direction a la Laurie Berkner's I Know a Chicken, and the littles perk right up and play along.  I think this is their favorite part of storytime.

I also learned that for me, planning around a theme is hard.  I'm choosy about my books, and I want the ones I read for this audience to have lots of opportunity for me to involve the kids and when you plan around a theme, you sometimes end up picking books that don't fit these criteria because you can't find anything else! I read on one of the many storytime blogs I frequent that it might be easier to just read a ton of picture books, find my favorites and plan a theme around those books, which is what I think I will do from now on.  This means I get to read all the picture books from now until next fall, and it counts as work!

So now, I'm off to read picture books, plan for summer reading and oh wait!  I forgot that I am one of those, let's call them "modern" librarians - the kind with two or more part-time jobs and I recently got assigned family storytime at my other job.  Family storytimes are a different animal than the twos so this will be another learning experience for me, and I plan to share it with you!  So see you soon with some more storytime ideas!