Penguins and Process Art

Penguin storytime! I love penguins, who doesn't?

The kids really seemed to enjoy the farting penguin. . .

I rarely do cute product oriented art with preschoolers, but I know that parents value cute art projects to stick on their refrigerators, so I came up with this project that I think everyone can enjoy! 

I cut out the black part of the penguin and taped it to black paper and let the kids paint their papers with feathers and white paint. When the paper was peeled off, the kids were left with a penguin. They had a lot of fun with this one, because they got to cover the entire paper if they wanted. Of course some had a hard time with that (think color in the lines), but the end result was a cute project the parents could enjoy as well. This is also a great art lesson about negative space, so parents can feel good about that as well if you even bring it up.

Painting with Feathers

End "cute" project.

We played March of the Penguins between books; as I waddled with the kids, we sang this penguin call and response chant (I found it helpful that parents stay at storytime and were familiar with a call and response chant). We sang it through twice.

Penguin Chant

I'm a penguin black and white

I can't fly but that's all right.

I've got feathers that's not fur.

I lay eggs like other birds.

"Now we are going to do some counting" (in time with marching)

CHORUS

Penguins, 1, 2 (make dramatic finger counting gestures)

Penguins, 3, 4

Penguins, 5, 6, 7, 8

Penguins, they're great!

I swim real fast to get my meals.

I watch out for leopard seals.

I'm from the south as you may know

Now it's time for me to go.

CHORUS

 

An a-MOO-zing Storytime

What a fun time was had by all. The books and music worked wonderfully together at two different storytimes!

The Cow who Clucked by Denise Fleming followed by the Laurie Berkner Band's I Know a Chicken with egg shakers.

Moo! by David LaRochelle followed by "the Cows on the Farm" to the tune of Wheels on the Bus with flannel animals.

Dooby Dooby Moo By Doreen Cronin followed by Stuart Stott's song There's a Dog in School. The dog sings the alphabet too: ruff, ruff, ruff, ruff. Followed by a cow and horse. Since the animals were singing in Cronin's book, this is the perfect song to do with the kids afterwards.

Duck on a Bike by David Shannon has a cow in it! and it is on a bike!

Followed by cow shapes and colored bingo dot painters for all.

I did this storytime twice, and it went over well twice. My favorite moment was the two little boys at different storytimes who got the humor of Moo! and were literally laughing out loud!

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.

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.

Who Better than a Librarian

Image via Henriksent on Flickr Creative Commons

I've been thinking about using apps in storytime a lot. I've been on the fence for awhile. I've been reading the arguments on the list serves, and blog articles online. I was not sure why I was reluctant to join this new library storytime movement, but it made me uncomfortable.

Last week I went to a Growing Wisconsin Readers workshop and the presenter, Gayle Tylka (Early Childhood Response to Intervention Statewide Coordinator and Early Literacy Instructor at Viterbo University), gave me an aha moment. I can't quote directly because the aha did not happen until after she was done with her presentation, but to paraphrase. . .  you as librarians are modeling for young children and families. Your goal is to build a desire in children to want to learn to read.

I am choosing to not use apps and screen time in my storytime sessions. Here is why:

1. American Association of Pediatrics: "Television and other entertainment media should be avoided for infants and children under age 2. A child's brain develops rapidly during these first years, and young children learn best by interacting with people, not screens." 

I strongly agree with this statement. There is a time and place for everything and if we are modelling best practices, then we as librarians should not be including screen time in our toddler storytime sessions at all, period. I live with a medical professional, and I hear his complaints about how people don't listen to doctors and disregard their advice when it conflicts with what they WANT to hear, rather than what they actually hear. Jessica Simpson (cough, cough).

Here is a disturbing statistic for you (also from the AAP): Today's children are spending an average of seven hours a day on entertainment media, including televisions, computers, phones and other electronic devices. It does go on to say: Children and teens should engage with entertainment media for no more than one or two hours per day, and that should be high-quality content. This part of the statement seems to be where most people who do use apps in storytime get their arguments for their choice. I agree, that as librarians we should be recommending the best web sites and apps, but most people using the apps are tech savvy enough to figure out how to use them for themselves. A list would probably suffice.

AAP Press Release Statement from 2011:
"Parents who watch TV or videos with their child may add to the child’s understanding, but children learn more from live presentations than from televised ones. 

The report recommends that parents and caregivers: 

Set media limits for their children before age 2, bearing in mind that the AAP discourages media use for this age group. Have a strategy for managing electronic media if they choose to engage their children with it; 

• Instead of screens, opt for supervised independent play for infants and young children during times that a parent cannot sit down and actively engage in play with the child. For example, have the child play with nesting cups on the floor nearby while a parent prepares dinner; 
• Avoid placing a television set in the child’s bedroom; and 
• Recognize that their own media use can have a negative effect on children."

The last bullet, really hits the nail on the head. If parents see librarians using apps with children, they are definitely going to think it is okay to be using apps with their children when they are not at the library. 

2. YOU CAN HAVE FUN WITHOUT AN ELECTRONIC DEVICE IN YOUR HAND! 

No really, you can. 

This is my own personal argument, which probably has all of you millennials rolling your eyes at me! I am disturbed by the number of kids and adults at restaurants on devices, in waiting rooms at the doctor's office, or at the grocery store in a cart, I can go on and on. At some point someone has to step up and say, Whoa! You can have fun without an electronic device! Who better, I ask, than a librarian? 

I know that librarians out there rock storytime with their songs, stories, flannel props, puppets and more. I've seen many of them in action.

What librarians do in their storytimes is individual to each librarian, so I am not saying those who use them are WRONG, because hey, if they feel using apps enhances their storytime and helps them get excited about sharing early literacy with families, that's great. I, on the other hand, will be enjoying my screen free storytimes.

Pizza Pizzazz

The first book I read was Curious George and the Pizza Party by Cynthia Platt, it was a little long and wordy for the kids, but they made it through. Then we sang and danced to Charlotte Diamond's I am a Pizza. The Italian verse sure threw us for a loop, but the repetition made it an easy song to do with the kids. 

The second book was Hi, Pizza Man by Virginia Walter. The kids really got into saying hi to the next character behind the door, and it was a definite pick me up after Curious George. I found this song at Perpetual Preschool and took pictures of the characters from Hi, Pizza Man to print out and show to the kids as we sang each verse.

Do you know the pizza man, the pizza man, the pizza man?
Do you know the pizza man, who brings it fresh and hot?

I had the kids sub pizza man with pizza woman, cat, dog, duck, cow, snake and dinosaur from the book depending on which picture I held up.

We team read Jack Prelutsky's A Pizza the Size of the Sun from the same titled book. I held up a pizza shape and the kids and adults shouted out "Pizza!" I finished off with The Little Red Hen Makes a Pizza retold by Philemon Sturges, the Hen shared a little more nicely in this version. The "Not I's" really helped the kids interact with the story.

Our craft today was painting a paper plate with "pizza sauce" (red paint as I don't like to waste a lot of food with art projects) and adding the toppings. I used the paper shredder to make mozzarella out of 1.5 inch paper strips.

Go Dogs, Go!

The question of the day was, "Do you have a dog?" More kids had dogs than did not have a dog.

We sang our welcome song, and I asked the kids if they knew what we were going to be reading about. I always have the books standing up on a table for the kids to see as they walk in the door. "Dogs!"

First up for storytime was Oh No, George! Chris Haughton. Poor George tries to be good, the kids were so so with this one. Thank goodness I'm super over dramatic to hold their attention. There was a lot of opportunity with this one to ask the kids what choice they think George will make.

Then we danced to Jim Gill's Tempo Marches On to get some of our wiggles out, this is a younger group of threes and there are a lot of boys (just sayin').

I read My Dog He is an Ugly Dog from Jack Prelutsky's New Kid on the Block. I printed off a dog picture and every time I read the word dog, I held up the picture of the dog and the kids got to say it for me. I hesitated at the word "stupid" but luckily no kids told me I said a "bad word"!

Bark, George Jules Feiffer The kids liked the silliness of this story with the different animal noises. I read another good crowd participation story, Rrralph Lois Ehlert which got giggles from the parents, and the kids liked to say the different dog sounds. We did a little Jumping and Counting-by Jim Gill (I must have been in the mood for some Jim Gill that day).

We finished with Dog's Colorful Day by Emma Dodd. The project at the end was using bingo dotters on Dog to give him more spots!

Alphabet Madness

I used this line up for my preschool storytime and a Head Start Parent Training Session.

The Letters Are Lost Lisa Campbell Ernst, which is kind of a boring book, but I used it for a lot of audience participation and I could point out some of the beginning sounds to the kids. We sang and jumped to There's a Dog in School by Bill Wellington, it is always a hit with the kids. I like to use it because there were a lot of different animals in The Letters are Lost, and hey animals singing the alphabet is super weird and fun. As we sing, or bark, or neigh the alphabet, I have the kids jump with each letter to get them moving a little.

Then we read Chicka Chicka Boom Boom! by Bill Martin Jr. I put flannel letters up on the flannel board while we very slowly sang the alphabet. Then we sang it in a big daddy voice, a teeny tiny baby voice, and the grand finale was singing in a fish voice (rub forefinger up and down over your lips as you sing). Kids love it! At the Head Start visit one of the teachers had the parents participate in this verse, it was awesome!

I heard about adding poetry to storytimes in a poetry presentation by Jenna Gilles, a co-worker in our library system. Since then I've done a couple and am trying to add them more frequently. At the Head Start visit I added the poem My Snake from Something BIG Has Been Here by Jack Prelutsky. I had a string snake and gave each of the kids a string snake and talked about letter play to the parents. We made a few of the letters in the poem with the string snake. We only read one verse of the poem because the kiddos were super tiny 3's and weren't interested, I used it as a teachable moment for the parents about moving on when their kids aren't interested in listening.

So, we moved on to Z is for Moose by Kelly Bingham. I LOOOOOOVE, love, love this book. The emotion, the trauma, and the drama make it such a fun read aloud. The more over the top I am, the more the kids love the book.

We finished off storytime by making our names with block letters and markers, most boring "art" project ever, but it got each of the kids names on the wall. Having their names on the wall gives them a sense of ownership and belonging that I like to foster at storytime.

Beary Toddleriffic

Sooo. Toddler storytime. Not like baby storytime and not like preschool storytime.

Here's the routine:
Welcome song using each child's name. To the tune of Fly's in the Buttermilk.

Name will you stand up and let us see your smile? 
We're so glad you're here today won't you stay awhile. 

I did not make this up, but can't remember where I found it. It is a great way to gauge how the kiddos are feeling that day. Grumpy, shy or clingy? then I will probably leave them alone. Stand right up and grin then they are ready to go.

Can You Growl Like a Bear? John Butler. Read it and the kids did what the animals did.

Brown Bear, Brown Bear  Eric Carle. Today I had the book and the flannel pieces for them to put up on the flannel board. I read the book, each child gets to put up a flannel. As we are waiting for each animal to be placed on the board, we made the animal noises together.

The Bear Went Over the Mountain with bear puppet substituting the children's names after the first go round. The bear crawls all over them if they want him to and I sing.. .

The bear went over Eric, the bear went over Eric, the bear went over Eric to see what he could see.

We did Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear Turn Around

Dear Zoo: A Lift the Flap Book Rod Campbell was the finisher. Sometimes I let the kiddos lift the flaps, but we had 10! kiddos so I lifted the flaps and let them shout out what animal was behind the flap.

Then we have a brief playtime. Spongy blocks, bubble machine, board books, bear puppet and wash clothes (because one of the kiddos saw them and wanted to use them like we had in a previous program).

We sing the Barney Clean Up Song because everybody knows it. We clean up all the toys.

Then we close with This is the Way We Say Goodbye. . .

This is the way our hands say good bye, clap, clap, clap, clap, clap, clap.
This is the way our hands say good bye, clap, clap, clap, clap, clap. 

We do knees tap, feet stomp, arms flap, nose beeps. . . what ever I can think of.
We finish with:

This is the way we wave good bye, wave good bye, wave good bye.
This is the way we wave goodbye, goodbye until next time! 

Then I get high fives as they head out the door!

Mud Party!

Story

Mud Puddle- Robert Munsch. I haven't done a Munsch at storytime, and was worried about the lengthy text. It was rhythmic and repeating which kept the kids involved and they really seemed to enjoy it.

Activity

This is the Way we Wash our. . .

I bought some cheapo wash clothes at Walmart (I used them for baby storytimes too) and had my daughters help tie dye them. We sang this is the way we wash our arms, wash our arms, wash our arms. . .etc. Then I had the kids shout out the parts they wanted to wash. .  oddly enough there was no butt washing.

Story

Harry the Dirty Dog – Gene Zion. Oh that Harry, the kids were a little worried that all would be lost. 

Story

Pigs in the Mud in the Middle of the Rud  Lynn Plourde. This wasn't the greatest and the kids weren't understanding that rud meant road. . . 

Song

We did my version of Old MacDonald that goes The Pigs on the Farm (Tune of Wheels on the Bus) with flannel pieces. More singing animals noises and less E-I-E-I-O-ing. This would make a great book.

Story

Ten Dirty Pigs Carol Roth. When read one way the pigs are dirty and get clean. Half way through you close the book flip it backwards and read it and the pigs are clean and they get dirty. This book could go on forever. I asked the kids if they wanted to read about the dirty pigs again and it was a negative.

Activity

Making Mud: I had four disposable roasting pans. I filled them with dirt, let the kids add water with styrofoam cups until they had the mud how they wanted it and they dug into the mud! I added some spoons for stirring and some bugs for color. The parents LOVED this it was a great sensory experience (and it wasn't at their house). I had warned them ahead of time that it was going to be messy. . . and I delivered! 

Monsters! ROAR!!! ROAR!!!

The question of the day was: Do you have a monster under your bed? Was this risky, yes! but the kids thought it was hilarious, "that's a silly question" and they loved asking each child who came in the door. Needless to say, they ALL did not have monsters under their beds :( I have to admit I was a little disappointed.

First book: The Gruffalo by Julia Donaldson & Axel Scheffler. Fun rhyming book, a lot of the kids were able to grasp the craftiness of the mouse. About midway I started adding long pauses prompting them to say "the gruffalo".  Then we danced to I'm the Biggest Monster by The Laurie Berkner Band. Kids love it when they get to roar.

The next book/story was Go Away, Big Green Monster! by Ed Emberley with flannel pieces. For some reason the kids thought this was hilarious as well (maybe they are giddy from being traumatized by the foot of snow we had five days ago, did I mention it is eighty degrees today?) I put emphasis on the Ed Emberley author hoping some of them would make a connection with two Emberley stories in a row, but they didn't so I got to tell them about it. I sang the book If You're a Monster and You Know It by Rebecca Emberley & Ed Emberley and we did all the movements and ROAR a lot. I had listened to the free recording, but didn't feel it was worth bringing the laptop to storytime
.
I read Big Brave Brian by MP Robertson, which was not a hit with this crowd. We finished way early so I pulled out Jumpy Jack & Googily by Meg Rosoff & Sophie Blackall. This is one of my favorites because of the sheer irony of Googily showing Jumpy Jack that there are no monsters under his bed, when in fact he is a monster. I've done this before without many kids catching on, so I started by asking them what types of creatures Jumpy Jack and Googily were. They were able to pick up on the irony after that (mostly the four and up crowd).

Finished up with bingo dabbers, markers and googily, yeah that's right googily eyes to make our own monsters! ROARRRR!

There was even a green one with yellow eyes and purple hair (not pictured here).

Fish! Fish! Fish!

The question of the day was: Have you ever been fishing? Only one said no they had not, which is not surprising because we live in Northern Wisconsin where you can't turn around without running into a river or lake. I skipped the counting part because it was obvious which side had more (and I wanted to get started). One little guy could NOT sing the opening song because we had not counted the names. . . lesson learned. Just count them!

I started out with Ten Little Fish by Audrey Wood and used flannel fish to stretch the story out a little. Some of the kids noticed the rhyming patterns. They liked the ending with the ten baby fish. We danced to and sang Slippery Fish. Then I read Trout, Trout, Trout! (A Fish Chant) by April Pulley Sayre. It is a chant that lists many of the freshwater fish in North America. This was a fun one to read because it had great rhythm and the fish were actual fish (although they didn't have very fishy behavior). I was able to point out a few of the fish the kids had talked about catching when they were answering the question of the day at various points i the book. Then the kids helped me out with Have You Ever Been a Fishin'. This is a fun one to do because it gets faster and faster. Singing it without the CD let me have more opportunity to play with tempo.

I went to a storytime workshop last week and was inspired to try a poem at storytime. I modeled it after Jenna's performance of a Prelutsky Spaghetti poem she had told us about, but used a fish instead. We read My Fish Can Ride a Bicycle from Jack Prelutsky's Something Big has Been Here. Every time the word fish was in the poem, I held up a picture of a fish and the kids got to shout out, "FISH!" It was AWESOME!  The parents seemed to enjoy it almost as much as the kids.

The last book I read was This is Not My Hat by Jon Klassen. I explained about how it had won an award, which they could have cared less about. They did however LOVE it. I let the pictures do most of the talking and the kids were shouting out, "He's mad" and "That crab pointed to him".

For the craft, I chose to do something "risky" that I liked doing at the day cares. I put cups of soap with paint mixed into it on the tables and had them blow bubbles with a straw. When they had a lot of bubbles they had to squash a fish shape onto their bubbles. I really talked up the blowing into the straws part and made them practice blowing into their straws several times before I let them near the paint.

I guess I could call it a success, only two of the fourteen drank any soap :)

Drive in Storytime

I've seen a few "drive in" ideas floating around on Pinterest using cardboard boxes. We having been getting quite the stack of boxes in our community room, and with Earth Day on Monday I thought it would be fun to do a drive in storytime with the toddlers. It went pretty well (most box stories are short), so I thought since it the toddlers seemed to have fun in the boxes (most toddlers sitting at storytime ever!), I would do a drive-in box storytime with the preschoolers as well. 

When the kids walked into storytime, alot of them were confused by the boxes I had set out all over the floor. "Hop in!" was all I had to say and the boxes started filling up. The question of the day today was, "Have you ever made something with a box?" I started with the easy reader "What Is That", Said the Cat by Grace Maccarone. It is very rhymey (yeah, probably not a word). I allowed for a pause in the middle of the phrases to see if the kids would come up with the rhyming animals "I will try, said the . . . fly!". The book ends with "later alligator" so I used the Five Little Monkeys Teasing Mr. Alligator flannel and song. Some knew it, some didn't.

Then I read a rare two books in a row! Sitting In My Box by Dee Lillegard which is a little bit like Brett's The Mitten. There was opportunity for the kids to knock on their boxes as each animal approaches then asks to get into the box. Then I read Not a Box by Antoinette Portis. The rabbit gets a little frustrated that I, the reader, kept talking about his box when it clearly was not a box. Kids were giggling. The book ends with the rabbit shooting off into space with his rockeship, so we danced to Rocketship Run by the Laurie Berkner Band. The countdown and blast off were easy for the kids to catch on to, then we just used our arms to fly around during the "boring" parts of the song. I finished up with The Birthday Box by Leslie Patricelli.

Our craft used a recycled cereal box chopped up to look like a little cardboard box and the kids got to make their box into something using markers. This was not one of their favorite art projects, there was no messy glue, paint or glitter, just some boring old markers. I made sure to walk around and ask everyone what they had made their boxes into and wrote it on their sheets... words have meaning!!

Sadly, no one asked to take their boxes home- I would have let them!