Snowy Stories

Last week was super exciting. My storytime sessions started back up and I added an outreach storytime! I took my show on the road (well down the block to a local church). Preschool storytime this week was about snowmen.

We sang our opening song Rise and Shine. We talked a bit about what storytime was going to be about. Then I read our first story:

The First Day of Winter by Denise Fleming. I liked this book because I could encourage crowd participation by not finishing phrases like, "two bright blue. . ." and the kids would shout out, "mittens!" The kids also could participate by finding the new things added and by counting them out (not every time).

We did Jumping and Counting by Jim Gill. Since we had counted backwards from ten, it was fun to count forward to ten and after all that jumping the kids want to sit down for a minute.

Snowballs by Lois Ehlert was the second book I chose. The kids had fun looking for the different materials that were used to make each of the snow creatures; one of the kids even guessd that the dog's name was going to be Spot.

We sang and danced to a little ditty called Dance Like Snowflakes that I have been singing for years and am not sure where it came from.


I read All You need for a Snowman by Alice Schertle. The kids were loud about the missing parts of the snowman. At one point, all you need is one large ball (nooo! the kids would shout out, you need more snowballs).

We danced to The Freeze by Greg & Steve. It is sad to me how many kids are already too embarrassed to put themselves out there and act silly. They all think I'm crazy. I try to make this high energy and get as many kids as I can involved. If you add little dance instructions you can get most of them moving, at one point a kid suggested jumping jacks! I was almost too tired to read the last story.

Our final story was Snowmen at Night by Caralyn Buehner. There are a lot of silly details in the pictures (my fave was the cucumber nose). The kids were good at noticing details in the pictures that added to the story.

We don't close with a song, but a craft that is related to the stories we read. This week's project was snowman names. I always try to have a name project the first week so I can hang their names up on the wall to give them a sense of returning to something that is their's every week. I actually came up with this one on my own, then went to Pinterest to see if anyone else had come up with it, and it has been done before (great minds think alike). I cut out the snowballs and wrote their letters from their names in pencil. Let them trace them (I didn't have to do this for the four year old preschool I visited).  I had laid out their names so they could practice finding them. Then the kids glued them on and could decorate them with the hats & carrots I had provided and then with the markers they could add anything their little hearts desired.