Monster Storytime

Opening: Shake My Sillies Out – Raffi

Book: Don’t Squish the Sasquatch! – Kent Redeker

(A simple, bright book with a great fold out. The kids all got to help give the Sasquatch kisses too.)

Activity: Chocolate Chip Ghost

used the idea from rovingfiddlehead‘s blog

Little ghost is left alone and mother warns him not to eat anything until she gets back, but he does anyway! And all the foods turn him different colors. Finally momma ghost gets back and fixes things with milk and vanilla ice cream.

(Kids love being able to shout out the colors they know. This was a great participation activity!)

Book: Where the Wild Things Are – Maurice Sendak

(It’s great seeing the excitement kids have when you do a familiar book. This is fantastic of course!)

Activity: Wild Thing, Wild Thing (modified from Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear)

Wild thing, wild thing turn around,

  Wild thing, wild thing scratch the ground.

Wild thing, wild thing Roar out loud,

Wild thing, wild thing, touch a cloud.

Wild thing, wild thing, win a race.

Wild thing, wild thing, jump in place.

Wild thing, wild thing, stop and pause,

Wild thing, wild thing, touch your claws.

Wild thing, wild thing, sit right down.

Wild thing, wild thing, make no sound.

(A fun activity for the kids. One little girl pointed out that she couldn’t race because she had a cast on her foot.) =P

Book: Creepy Monster, Sleepy Monster – Jane Yolen

(I was drawn to this mostly because one of the monsters gets to burp. The illustrations are still fantastic, and there are some nice talking points!)

Activity: One Little Monster

One Little Monster

One little monster dancing on the floor

Had such fun it gave a Roar!

Then there came one monster more

Now there are more monsters than before!

(continue with increasing numbers)

(I attempted to make the rhythm match 5 Little Monkeys, but after the roar it always turned chanty. The kids still had fun with it!)

Book: Leonardo the Terrible Monster – Mo Willems

(A great story, as you’d expect from the author. And it was nice to end with the monster being the boys’ friend.)

Activity: Instruments

(Monsters like to be noisy! So we made noise on instruments while the song ‘Horns to Toes’ by Sandra Boynton played. )

Spider Storytime

(This program is heavily influenced by suggestions from Liesl Johnson. I just did some tweaking) ~.o

Opening: Shake My Sillies Out – Raffi
Book: I’m a Shark – Bob Shea

(Shark is pretty brave, but there is one thing that make him nervous. Great illustrations, though the pics of imagining the bear with the spider confused the kids who thought it was actually with a spider.)
Activity: Little Miss Muffett – Traditional

Little Miss Muffet sat on a tuffet

eating her curds and whey.

Along came a spider that sat down beside her,

and frightened Miss Muffet away!

(With a puppet girl and spider. The kids love seeing the girl scream and run away! We do it a couple of times, but end with the girl stomping on the spider, and it running away instead.)

Book: Yellow Bird, Black Spider – Dosh Archer

(Very simple, a great talking book! Kids know where birds usually live, how they make music, and what they eat. But this bird is a little different.)

Activity: There’s a Spider on the Floor – Traditional

There’s a Spider on the floor, on the floor.

There’s a spider on the floor, on the floor.

There’s a spider on the floor, it just crawled in through the door,

There’s a spider on the floor, on the floor.

…there’s a spider on my shoe, and I don’t know what to do!…

…there’s a spider on my knee, and it’s looking right at me!…

…there’s a spider on my tummy, and I really want my mommy…

…there’s a spider on my arm, it won’t do me any harm (I hope)…

…there’s a spider on my neck, and I’m a nervous wreck…

…there’s a spider on my head, and I’m feeling full of dread…

and then it jumps down!

…there’s a spider on the floor, I’m not worried any more…

(Each little kid got a little black poof ball for their spider, and we moved them the the places as we sang the song. Good times!)

Book: Aaaarrgghh! Spider – Lydia Monks

(Adorable book, the kids get really into it.)

Activity: Itsy Bitsy Spider/Emotions – Traditional

The itsy bitsy spider went up the water spout,

down came the rain and washed the spider out!

Out came the sun and dried up all the rain,

so the itsy bitsy spider went up the spout again!

(We did this the traditional way, then with a variety of emotions. …’Put on your sad faces!’ the kids really enjoyed it, and the parents too! We did angry, sad, scared, and happy. )

Book: Itsy Bitsy Spider – Keith Chapman

(With deviating text, this is a great storytime book. The spider interacts with lots of animals, and the kids can made the noises! Sparkly webs certainly don’t hurt either.)

Activity: Bubbles (with Sammy the Spider by Jewel playing)

Colors Storytime

I’ve done colors before as a theme, but I decided this time to focus on a specific color for each book, rather than smooshing them all in each time. The activities still had a variety!

Opening: Shake My Sillies Out – Raffi

We practiced some of the colors as I put the pillows from the Tooth Fairy flannel on the board. Then left them up during the first story. 

Book: The Red Wolf – Margaret Shannon

(This was a bit too long. I’ll try to make it more concise for the Thur group. I love the story and the illustrations! And I was surprised at how well the kids stayed focused. …this worked great for the Thur group with some pages clipped together and the rest condensed a bit!)

Visual: Tooth Fairy

(Now we made use of the pillows! One had a tooth hidden behind it, so the tooth fairy came out and sang her song until we found the tooth. Jolly good fun.)

Look and see, look and see,

Can you find the tooth for me?

Is it behind the ____ pillow?

 

(I like to get suggestions from the kids on which pillow to look under, and it makes them more excited too! If they get it too quickly, the tooth fairy goes to a different house with the tooth under a different pillow and we play again!)

Book: Little yellow leaf – Carin Berger

(I felt that this might not be interesting enough for the kids, and there is probably a better choice out there. Notwithstanding that, it worked well enough especially adding some talking points throughout.  I think it’s charming, and it tied it very nicely to the next activity!)

Song/Activity: Autumn Leaves

Way up high in an autumn tree

a little Green leaf happy as could be

The wind went Wwhoooooshh!!

and the leaf danced around,

then floated gently to the ground.

(continue with other colors)

(The kids had a great time with this, though passing out the pre-sorted leaves took a bit of time. We held them up high, danced them around, then drifted down to the ground with them.)

Book: Blue Chicken– Deborah Freedman

(Chicken spills the paint, and the other animals aren’t too happy about it! Lovely illustrations and narrative.)

Puppet: Baa baa black sheep – Traditional

(We sang Baa Baa Black Sheep, then this little guy popped up because no one ever sang about the white sheep! So we did, and then he put on different colors so that more were represented. The kids were much more excited about this in the Thur group. The idea of the sheep puppet with other colors was taken from Amy White of the Orem Public Library)

Book: Where is the green sheep? – Mem Fox

(The kids really liked this one, it was nice to bring back some simplicity.) =]

Activity: Leaves on Parachute

(All of the leaves from the song were put on a parachute, and we bounced it! The kids were so excited today, and even after quite a bit of play time, they left the room buzzing.)