Groundhog’s Day and other letter G things
Early Storytime
attendance: 22
Letter of the Day: G
Miss Mouse: was hiding behind letter Gs…other g things were hiding too
What is hiding in the sock? guitar
Miss Mouse: She wanted to know what words starting with g describe today: gloomy and gray.
Book 1: Where is the Green Sheep by Mem Fox
Fingerplay: Clap, Clap your Lap
Puppet song: The Three Billy Goats Gruff by Greg and Steve
Song 1: Knuckles Knees by Jim Gill. They’re getting better and better at this each week.
Prop story: Substitute Groundhog by Pat Miller
Song2: Goldfish Song by Laurie Berkner
Let’s talk about the Letter G: Gloomy and glad are the words I came up with. Also, we had grapes, and green and go.
Craft: G is for Goat
Bears and the Letter B
Early Storytime
attendance: 13
Letter of the Day: B
Miss Mouse: was hiding behind Bears. Today she was hiding behind a Koala, which isn’t really a bear, but …
What is hiding in the sack? a banana
fingerplay: Clap. Clap Your Lap. “You forgot the words.” Which is true…so I got the words out and we did it together.
Book 1: Bear Snores On by Karma Wilson. Between Bear and badger there were lots of b words to watch out for.
Song: Knuckles Knees by Jim Gill. We’re getting better at it.
Book 2: Bear in Underwear by Todd Doodler
Book 3:Maybe a Bear Ate It! by Robie Harris
fingerplay: roll roll sugar babies
Prop: Imogene’s Antlers by David Small
song 2: My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean by Jim Gill using our letter Bs … great fun! Even the adults played along.
Juicy word of the day: Brilliant. Also Imogene’s Antlers used the word Bravo, so I used that one too.
Craft: Bears like honey. who makes honey? Bees… we stretched a bit and made Bees
I really enjoyed this story time… everything came together rather nicely. It was a small group, but there were enough supplies that the adults could participate. Overall, a bodacious and brilliant time!
Veggie Story Time 1.7.2013
Early Literacy Storytime
attendance: 21
Letter of the Day: V
Miss Mouse: was hiding behind Vegetables: She was behind the carrots
What is hiding in the sack? a volcano
fingerplay: Clap, Clap Your Lap.
Book 1: The Night of the Veggie Monster by George McClelland
Song: Knuckles Knees by Jim Gill. Great rhyming and a really good stretch
Flannel/Prop: Lunch by Denise Fleming
Prop Story: The Great Big Enormous Turnip. We have a very large plush turnip. I used parents as the animals. It’s great fun.
A Really Enormous Turnip. The pen is there to show you how large it is! Also, it’s been here since before me, and I do not have a source for it.
Book 2: Soup for One by Ethan Long
nnel: Ten Hungry Rabbits by Anita Lobel
The Word of the Day: Vivid
The Alpha Boogie
Craft: letter V with a carrot and celery..
Our “V”eggie Craft…
Can I just add, what is up with all the Pea hate in children’s books? Too many canned peas as children, I guess. We must stop the pea hate!
Titles I didn’t use but intended to:
- Book: Little Pea by Rosenthal (made in to story cards)
- Book: Eat Your Peas by Kes Gray (prop story)
Stinky Storytime
Early Storytime
attendance: 25
Letter of the Day: S
Miss Mouse was cleaning her floor, such a mess. We divided up the pieces to thing to keep and things to throw away.
What is hiding in the sock? Sun.
fingerplay: Hickory Dickory Dock.
Book 1: Rhyming Dust Bunnies by Jan Thomas
speaking of rhyming, I have a rhyming fingerplay
Fingerplay: Clap, Clap your Lap. I made flannel cards for this, to show the words. They were too heavy and kept falling. Grrr. Will fix for next week.
Tip: I actually worked in a literacy tip: Singing elongates vowel sounds: When you sing you’re really singing the vowels. It helps children hear them.
Book 2: I Ain’t Gonna Paint No More by Karen Beaumont
Prop story/song: Stinky Cake by Carole Peterson. Yuck
Song: Shake My Sillies Out by Raffi. I like the live version.
Book: Yuck by Mick Manning
Flannel: Tail of Little Skunk by Marsha Arnold
Lucy Maud’s Favorite Word: Scarlet. “My glasses are scarlet red.” Other S words we liked: snake, sun, and slide.
The Alpha Boogie
Craft: We made a Skunk tail out of the letter S.
Titles I didn’t use but intended to:
- Book: Slop Goes the Soup by Pamela Duncan Edwards. it has lots of juicy onomatopoeia.
Cows and the Letter C: Our First Early Literacy Storytime
Early Literacy Storytime
attendance: 23 (12 kids + 11 adults)
Letter of the Day: C
Miss Mouse: was hiding behind Cows
What is hiding in the sock? A car (we have objects we’re hiding in a sock. Before story time starts, we have kids feel the object without telling us what they think it is. This is the time we talk about the different things in the sock. Everyone pretty much knew it was the car.)
fingerplay: Clap, clap your lap.
Book 1: The Cow That Laid an Egg by Andy There’s a lot of goodness in this book. First, it’s silly, which is paramount. There are delicious phrases in it too: pleased as punch and other goodness. Also, great for predicting and asking questions.
Fingerplay: Roll Roll Sugar Babies… also, we moo moo moo-moo-moo’d our way through it!
Book: A Birthday for Cow by Jan Thomas
Song : Drivin in My Car by Ralph Covert.
Book: Wow, It’s a Cow! by Trudy Harris
Lucy Maud’s Favorite Word: Caterpillar. (We placed the word on the flannel board) Then she asked the kids what their favorite C word was. The consensus: cupcake
The Alpha Boogie: You put your C up, you put your C down, you put your C in the middle and you shake it all around ….
Craft: We made a simple paper cow
My evaluation:
I’d give us a C+(pun intended). I think it was a good first effort. There are a few things I’d like to coordinate better. But as a first attempt, it was pretty good.
Meet Lucy Maud, The Word Cheerleader
Last winter I purchased my own Whatnot. A Whatnot is a Muppet Workshop creation from FAOSchwartz. Traci, our new librarian, went to NYC for the day before starting at our library and came back with a Whatnot Muppet. As soon as I saw it, I knew I wanted one! I wouldn’t stop creating them until I found the exact Whatnot for me. It was really fun.
I hemmed and hawed and hemmed some more, then I just bought it. When I opened the box, I was so excited — my own Whatnot. But then I looked. Oh no, I hated it. They did something wrong and she wasn’t what I pictured. A few phone calls to customer service, a bit of drama … and I ended up with Lucy Maud in a cheerleading costume. Ugh.
I’m Lucy Maud! Who are you?
At first I didn’t know what to do with Lucy Maud. She literally sat in her cardboard box until August. I rued the day I purchased her.
Our library doesn’t have an official early literacy storytime. We focus on the joy of the literature and bringing books, songs, and silliness to the kids in our community. But with a new director comes new things. I volunteered to help create an early literacy storytime, using many of the techniques and ideas I’ve learned from Flannel Friday.
One day it came to me: we’re working on building vocabulary to the preschoolers in our community. New words and new experiences help children become better readers (as I understand it). So, in our experimental new early literacy story time, Lucy Maud will come out at the end of story time and discuss the letter of the day. Then, she will think very hard and declare her favorite word that starts with that letter. I think she’ll use it in a sentence. Then, if there is time, Lucy Maud can ask other boys and girls their favorite words that start with the Letter of the Day.
This is a new experience for me. I normally don’t have a puppet talk to me (Miss Mouse only whispers in my ear). I have to develop a voice for Lucy Maud. But, I’m pretty comfortable with her and the concept of being a Word Cheerleader.
Now? Now I think she’s kind of cute. And I’m glad I bought her.
Any other ideas? I’d love to hear them!
10 Hungry Rabbits by Anita Lobel
While planning our Spring story time, I wanted something different. So, I invaded the to-be-cataloged books in Tech Services. I saw this book. Perfect. Have you seen it? It’s small. Certainly too small for story times. Perfect for one-on-one reading, but this has story time written all over it. It feels like the bare bones of a Stone Soup story; you’ll see.
Mama Rabbit has 10 hungry rabbits and the cupboard is bare...
You’ll notice the numbers on the rabbits are the same color as the vegetable that rabbit brings back… To start, I’m going to put the rabbits up and we’ll count to ten.
So she sends them out to find food:
One purple cabbage, 2 white onions, 3 yellow peppers...
I think I’ll point to Rabbit 1 and say, The purple rabbit brought one purple cabbage, etc.
I used a hemp rope for the onion...
;
4 red tomatoes, five pink potatoes, six orange carrots
;
Seven brown mushrooms, eight blueberries, nine green peas in a pod, and ten peppercorns
;
And… when they all came home and gathered their food … an abundance of food:
An abundance of food!
To see what Mama Rabbit does with it, read the book.
Cate has the round-up this week.
To learn about Flannel Friday, go see Miss Anne. She’s got it all organized.
And, Melissa has a handy search tool to find all things story time.
How Many Feet in the Bed? by Diane Johnston Hamm
In honor of my plantar fasciitis, I present to you the cutest of flannelized stories–if you think that bare feet in bed are cute. I do, especially flannel ones. My co-worker (and department head) made this flannel story. I love how simple it is, but so wonderful. (The captions are mostly a summary of the text in deference to the author… go look up How Many Feet in the Bed?, you’ll love it.)
It starts with a simple backdrop and an innocent question:
When my father wakes up, I ask him, "How many feet are in the bed?"
I thought there were two...
look now there are 4
Then Tom shows up...
Gross, he's got stinky feet!
Oh look, it's baby Jane! Let's count feet...
Hey mom, join us!
How many feet are in this bed?
The book ends counting down as feet leave for various reasons. Then just Teddy is in bed… and I wonder, why wasn’t he part of the count? Hmmm.
Flannel Friday stuff:
Round up archives and host schedule is at So Tomorrow. Next week the round up is at Mel’s Desk.
Visually scan all the Flannel Friday posts at Pinterest.
Talk about storytime and flannelboards at the Flannel Friday Facebook Page.
Follow Flannel Friday on Twitter with the #flannelfriday hashtag. (You don’t have to be on Twitter to check this out.)
Last but not least, if you’re a contributor, grab the blog button also available at Mel’s Desk!
Counting Duckies
It’s bathtime storytime this week and when I saw 10 Rubber Duckies I knew I wanted to make a flannel out of it, but ten is so many and I just didn’t have an inspiriation. When another rubber duckie book came in from ILL, I discovered that Winburn’s duckie photographs were incorporated into a board book called Counting Duckies.
I really wanted to do something with the duckies in the tub concept… so I foraged through the paper closet initially looking for the vinyl that was used for Ugly Fish. I couldn’t find the vinyl, but found a much better material. StumpsProm.com has this wonderful gossamer they sell for party planning. We use it for summer reading club decorating. This would be perfect material!
Since I was using a very flimsy fabric, I brought the gossamer home to use on my sewing machine. It turns out I do a much better job on flannel boards with a sewing machine. Glue and I aren’t that friendly, I guess.
I started out by making a pocket for the duckies to sit in: I sewed a top seam then created the pocket.
I made two rows and reinforced the ends. Next, I cut out an oval of white felt. I didn’t have a template, just some newspaper to test my oval-cutting skills. It took one or two tries til I found the just-right oval. I sewed the the gossamer onto the felt.
Adding the trim and faucet was next. I sort of eyeballed the faucet. For the faucet knobs, I made a template and cut out two. These I glued.
faucet, knobs and trim...
Done. When I got to work I think it took more time looking for duckie images than it took me to sew the bathtub together. Sigh. Time consuming activities like this make me not want to tackle new flannel stories. Finally, I realized we had an Accucut die of a rubber duckie. Add an orange beak and viola, a rubber duckie. To finish it, I added numbers, laminated the ducks, and added googlie eyes. Some velcro-like material on the back and my ducks were sitting on a tub!
All my ducks in a row
How many duckies swimming in the tub?
Update 1: My husband thought it looked like a swimming pool. Harsh. But someone else said, “it looks like a swimming pool.” Which got me thinking: does it look like a swimming pool? Maybe. Maybe.
So, I took out the white felt and made some circles….
Soap Bubbles ... much more like a bathtub
Now my ducks are in a row in a bathtub filled with bubbles!
Update 2: I did this is story time on Monday and I will say the tub was a bit on the heavy side. I think we’ll probably end up using book tape to hold it up. That, and definitely tweak the poem (it’s a little lame).
Miss Mary Library has the Flannel Friday round up for September 23rd.
10 Little Hot Dogs by John Himmelman
Not that kind of hot dog! These little hot dogs are actually dachshunds and they’re adorable. My flannel work is not nearly as cute as the book… Again, since this is a book, I will not duplicate the text word for word but walk you through the flannel board. If you are unfamiliar with this book, as I was earlier this week, go find it. It’s as cute as can be and I think makes for a great flannel version.
The text is predictable.
1 One little hot dog sitting in a chair …
“I want a friend with me!”
The text counts up to ten and then counts back to one.
One little hot dog sitting on a chair... waiting for a friend
Two more friends show up... more to come...
after a lot of playing 10 little hot dogs all fast asleep. Shhh.
Each little hot dog wakes up til there is just one left. I changed the ending on the text for my flannel version: One little hot dog wide awake. “Hey, where did all my friends go?”
To make my little dachshund friends, I found some clip art on word… I liked this doggie the best and then cropped and enlarged it.
