Creepy Crawlies

Bugs were my theme this week for one of my storytimes.  Really, I chose this theme because of this book,  Jan Thomas' Can You Make a Scary Face.  This book was the most fun book I've read at storytime.  Ever.  It is so interactive, a little irreverent (fun for the grown-ups!) cute and just fun.  I also used the book for a second time, in my garden storytime at my other library - because you know bugs are found in gardens too!

One of my libraries has a great rug for kids.  In the middle of the rug is our solar system.  It's labeled properly and everything!  The rug is situated directly in front of the reference desk, so we get to watch little people, all day long, playing on the planets.  It's amazing to me how little they are, and they know the names of the planets already.  Same for the letters of the alphabet that go all the way around the border of the rug.  I swear I've seen kids who can't be quite 2 jumping on all the letters and correctly identifying them.  I never get tired of watching it.

Anyway, one of the felt board ideas I had was to do something like Which Bug is in the Rug.  I got this idea from here.  I made my bugs much simpler, since my primary audience is two.  I just printed up some cute bug outlines and colored them in with red, blue, yellow, orange, purple and green colored pencils.  Then I found clip art of a rug that looks much like the one in our library, thinking the kids might get a kick out of this.  Well, maybe another audience, but for this storytime, I got a bigger kick out of the matching rug than any of the littles did!  But they did have fun guessing which bug was hiding under the rug.  They were pretty good at it!  Oh, to have a memory like theirs again!

So I figure I hit upon several important early literacy concepts, disguised cleverly as just plain fun.  Colors is an important one.  We used shaky eggs and followed the directions to the I Know a Chicken song again.  Yes, I love that one.  I also used some science concepts, including using the shaky eggs to dance to another Laurie Berkner great, Bumblebee.  We also count to three in this one, but we learn that bumblebee's go "buzz"!  And, we looked at and named the planets on our rug.

My garden storytime at the other library was a hit too.  I have a big group there, about 30 kids, and I wanted to let them put stuff on my felt board.  I know they've wanted to all year, but it took me a long time to find an activity with enough pieces.  I found this activity where I could read the book Counting in the Garden, and use this pdf to create 4 sets of ten felt pieces of different bugs and animals.  I passed them out, explained the concept, started reading . . . and was immediately rushed by 30 small people at once!  They listened though (most of them) and toddled back to mom or dad and waited til I said their number.  I had three little boys who just couldn't bring themselves to sit down.  They stood right in front of the felt board, but they didn't try to touch it, and weren't hurting anyone or disrupting the story flow, so I let them stay.  The kids get so excited, and so proud, to put their felt pieces on the board.  It was a completely rewarding experience for them and for me, and I plan to use it again someday!  And, counting and science concepts covered, right?

Taking Inspiration From My Audience

So last week I did a bird-themed storytime.  I got the idea to go with birds from the beautiful felt birds we've all seen on Mel's Desk.  I'd seen the pictures here before, but just now when I created the link, I realize I had the same idea - to use these pieces with Elizabeth Mitchell's Little Bird song.

My birds are not as pretty as the originals but they'll do!

I got the idea from the CD which I had just ordered.  Instead of singing it, I played the song.  While the song was playing I "flew" the birds back and forth, from hand to hand.  I thought this would be fun enough for my littles, but one of the moms did the coolest thing!  She took the name tag we had made (bird shapes!) and flew the bird along with me!  I quickly encouraged the rest of the audience to do the same, and what started as a rather static flannel board song, became an interactive activity!  When I do this song again, I think I will have bird cutouts ready, glued to popsicle sticks, with the appropriate bird (the song mentions several kinds of birds) attached.

This storytime went really well.  We read Feathers For Lunch by Lois Ehlert.  The kids really like Lois Ehlert's illustrations, even if sometimes, the stories are a little complicated for two-year olds.  

We also danced and shook our eggs to Laurie Berkner's I Know a Chicken which happens to be my favorite shaky egg song!  In case you haven't heard it before, Laurie guides the kids through movements with their shaky eggs, including making a circle, up and down motions and fast and slow motions.  I feel like the kids really like it when they can follow the directions in a song.  They definitely seem more involved and excited when we use songs that guide them through.

We had a great magician perform at our library.  Ming the Magnificent!  He was amazing - he really got the kids involved, was able to control quite a large crowd, and mystified us all with his magic tricks!  I'd recommend him to anyone!

Summer reading is around the corner, and I've got lots of plans already.  I hope to share some with you soon, plus some more storytime ideas too!

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!

Everybody's Doing It

I hate to be a bandwagon jumper, but I've been surfing around all the story time blogs, and I find them so helpful, I thought it only fair to share my ideas and experiences with everyone else - to be part of the team, if you will!  So - let me tell you a little about me.

I'm Tracy.  I've been working in libraries since the beginning of the decade, but only recently earned my MLIS, and I've only been at this youth librarian gig for about 3/4 of a year, but man, do I love it.  I've never done anything more rewarding, except raising my own children.  I'm lucky enough to do weekly story times with two year olds - we call them "wee wigglers" at my library.  They are too much fun.  At first I thought this age group would be challenging, and it is, but I've discovered that music makes them happy, as well as rhymes, big pictures and wiggling!  So I fill my storytimes with fun stories with bright illustrations, happy songs we can dance to and fun interactive rhymes and fingerplays.  I get ideas for all of these things from fellow librarians, many of whom I follow on  the internet.    Pinterest is my filing cabinet, and it is an invaluable tool.  If you are a youth librarian who doesn't belong to Pinterest yet, sign up!!

I'm in the process of finishing up my first year of storytimes.  I've got plenty of pictures and storytime plans to share here, and once I get them all organized I'll start posting regularly.  I'll also share all of the blogs that I find helpful.  I also hope to share other programming and early literacy related information.  Welcome to my journey!