Gobble, Gobble

For Thanksgiving, I like to focus on Turkeys and Thankfulness. I did three different Turkey storytimes the past two weeks. One was a preschool outreach visit, one a library preschool storytime and the third was at a school age storytime that I am trying to get going (sLOW numbers).

The book set list was different for each group (at least 3 of the 4). At the outreach storytime I read four books (these kids are GREAT listeners and have really long attention spans): Turkey Trouble by Wendi Silvano, I'm a Turkey by Jim Arnosky, 'Twas the Night Before Thanksgiving by Dav Pilkey (my fave) and Run, Turkey, Run! by Diane Mayr. At the preschool storytime I took out 'Twas the Night Before Thanksgiving, and at the school age storytime I took out Run, Turkey Run.

We sang songs at both preschool storytime sessions. I found a great song on Perpetual Preschool and made up a quick flannel board.
Turkey's wearing his red feather, red feather, red feather.
Turkey's wearing his red feather on Thanksgiving Day.
I just added a new feather for each verse, ending with Turkey's wearing his rainbow feathers. . .

How could I have forgotten about Mama Turkey Bird? I was in the middle of reading a book at the outreach program when this song I sang years ago with my two-year-olds at daycare popped into my head. I have NO IDEA where I got it from (sounds suspiciously like Dr. Jean's Mama Goonie Bird). . .

Mama turkey bird had many chicks, many chicks had mama turkey bird.
They couldn't walk, and they couldn't talk, but they could go like this. Right wing (make a wing and flap your left arm, the kids will flap their right arms).
Then at each verse add left wing, right foot (stomp foot), left foot, up & down (bend knees), turn around. End with sit down.

We also talked about how turkeys are birds like chickens and lay eggs, so we could use shaker eggs to Laurie Berkner Band's I Know a Chicken.

The craft was a simple: glue a turkey shape, feather, and googily eyes to a paper then use markers to add the other details kids wanted.

The school age kids made snack turkeys out of a few different ideas I saw on Pinterest. I wanted to combine the junk food turkeys with the candy turkeys and came up with: an Anjou pear body, pretzels coated in chocolate frosting and M&Ms for the feathers, cheese for beak and feet, and Cheerios for eyes. They turned out pretty good and the kids, although nervous about the reddish pears really enjoyed their entire turkeys!

One Day in Space

The sound of the day today was "SP" at the beginning of words so of course we had to do Space (all the spaghetti books were checked out).

The first book, The Astronaut Handbook by Meghan McCarthy went over pretty well and it set us up perfectly for Laurie Berkner Band's Rocket Ship Run, which is always a huge hit. Crouch down at the 5,4,3,2,1 and Blast Off! launch your entire body into space!

There's No Place Like Space was not as big of a hit (loved the rhyming though), too many non-fictionals in a row I guess. By the end I was dropping every other paragraph. I probably should have done Joey and Jet in Space here instead.

I don't often use long made up songs for the themes as the kids don't know the words, but the one I found on Preschool Education.Com worked splendidly! Of course we did the blast off motion again.

We're Flying to the Moon  Sung to: "The Farmer in the Dell"             

We're flying to the moon, we're flying to the moon.
Blast off, away we go, we're flying to the moon.

Other verses:
We're flying in a spacecraft. . . Blast off, away we go, we're flying to the moon.
We're walking out in space
We're landing on the moon
We're flying back to Earth
We're landing on the Earth

Joey and Jet in Space by James Yang was short and sweet, then we did a few verses of Twinkle, Twinkle. I passed out some left over SRP erasers and we held them in the air as we sang in a tiny voice, low voice, alien voice, quiet, and loud voice.

The Three Little Big Aliens and the Big Bad Robot by Margaret McNamara is rather long, but kids feel pretty proud when they notice the similarity to The Three Little Pigs, and they all think the third aliens name is just a hoot.

Our craft was pretty simple: paint with white paint on a dark paper and SPrinkle SParkling SPace dust to finish it off.

November Displays

 Our Thanksgiving books were getting checked out before November even started, so I didn't even put up a Thanksgiving display for the picture books. Parents are finding them much easier with our picture book reorganization!

The kids are helping me out with the calendar this month.

Add some eyes, a beak and a waddle to a brown paper peanut shape and you get a turkey! The feathers are being added as kids come to the library and write/draw what they are thankful for.

The sixth grade classes at the public school are reading historical fiction this month.

A clock on a vortex with some book covers in lieu of numbers on one poster, wings with historical fiction on them on another and I have this display. There are also some flying clocks, double sided of course!

peTS

I have been working with our local school district this year in a partnership type of relationship with some of the early childhood teachers. The early childhood speech and special education teachers come to our preschool storytime with their students and their parents. I start the day off by introducing what we will be reading about, then one of the speech and special education teacher talks about the sound of the day that we will be emphasizing with the children and how they can work on that sound with their children at home. This is a great partnership because kids that aren't eligible for this particular service the district provides (but could still use the help), still get to work on the emphasis of the sound of the day and their parents hear about the sounds and how to practice them at home. Also kids who might never come to the library or get social interaction in group settings are having these needs fulfilled by coming to our combo storytime. This particular storytime we talked about the "ts" at the end of words, so of course we had to do peTS.

The first book was A Pet for Petunia by Paul Schmid and Petunia "wanTS, wanTS, wanTS" a pet skunk.
I started off by showing the kids that PETunia has the word Pet in it. . .We had fun with this one, the kids were a little confused that the skunk Petunia was carrying around was a stuffed toy, but I tried to point that out early on so they would understand what happens when she meeTS a REAL skunk.

I had borrowed some bean bags from our library federation and used them with Greg & Steve's Bean Bag Boogie. There were enough for all of the kids and most of the adulTS, so we were able to have some goofy fun balancing the bean bags.

Pet Show by Ezra Jack KeaTS was our next story, the kids were a little wiggly during this one. Dancing seems to wind them up instead of calm them down! It has a great message and has multi-cultural images in it which are great for the kids in our area to see.

We sang Ears, Whiskers, Tail & Paws to the tune of Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes that I found from The Perry Public Library  The kids had a lot of fun with this one, we sang it twice.

I read "My Neighbor's Dog is Purple" from Jack Prelutsky's Something BIG Has Been Here. I used a flash card with the picture of a dog and the word dog for the kids to recite along with me in a Rebus type activity. They were surprised at the end when I showed the picture of a purple alligator crocodile instead of a dog!.

We sang BINGO with flannel props of letters and black doTS. We clapped and jumped for the black doTS as they replaced the letters.

We finished off with The Best Pet Ever by Victoria RoberTS. Then the kids drew pictures of a pet they would love, love, love to have. We had playgroup time to finish off the morning in which we sorted peTS and used different food to feed different animal depending on what each animal eaTS.

I've started handing out parent hand ouTS again as part of our Growing Wisconsin Readers and 1000 Books programs. I handed them out in the middle of storytime before we sang Ears, Whiskers, Tail & Paws so no one could really say no. In the past I've had a lot of trouble getting parenTS to take them, but not one was left behind this week! On the front I put ways to incorporate the ECRR2s Five Literacy Practices about the theme of the week at home into activities at home and a few of the songs. On the back is some brief information about the sound we talked about and ways to work on it at home.