Storytime Love

For a little while, I feel like I've been struggling to get the older of the preschool aged children who come to Storytimes (or Grow a Reader with your Library Classses) at CRRL to actually participate. I usually do action rhymes that encourage child participation, but don't require it. Today at Preschool Time, the Grow a Reader class aimed to 3-5 year olds at CRRL, I tried something new (to me).

I recently requested that the staff get a copy of the book Cooking Up a Storytime: Mix-and-Match Menus for Easy Programming by Susan Anderson-Newham  so that we could look at new ideas for some of our programs and I am so very glad I did! I won't share the rhymes I used today, but I will tell you about them, and I highly recommend that if you work with kids, even as a teacher, you get this book! It has awesome ways to integrate science and math into storytimes also!

Anyway so I read four books, two of which I KNEW I loved to read, the others were new to storytime titles for me.


I Like Myself by Karen Beaumont
I absolutely love this book, and in some ways I think it's because it reminds me of Dr. Seuss. In this story, the young girl says how much she loves herself, no matter how many odd looks she gets, and says how what is important is on the inside. She goes on to say that she would like herself with purple polka-dotted lips, spikes, and porcupine hair, ending with saying I like myself because I'm me. 




I Ain't Gonna Paint No More by Karen Beaumont and David Catrow
This is another one that the entire Youth Services staff likes so much we have it in our special storytime collection so that we always have a copy checked in. It is a re-imagining of the classic silly song "It ain't gonna rain no more" and the kids LOVE it. Usually I just read/sing it, but today each time I got to the part that rhymed with the body part I paused and asked the kids what body part rhymed with that word. They did wonderful on this! The only one was what rhymed with "black"- the parents only had to help occasionally.

Again! by Emily Gravett
This was a new storytime addition for me, and I wasn't sure how it would go over, but I read through it and loved it so I figured I would give it a shot. Again! is all about a young dragon who is being read a bedtime story about a dragon who never, ever goes to bed. When his Mom finishes he yells "again" until eventually she falls asleep... and you'll just have to check out this book if you want to know what happens (but it's cute).


Open Very Carefully: A Book with Bite  by Nick Bromley and Nicola O'Bryne
This was my last book and was also new to storytime for me. I found it when looking for another book and knew I just HAD to use it- partially because it reminded me of the book There's a Monster at the end of this book. In it the ugly duckling is trying to tell it's story when he notices that there is someone in the book who doesn't belong and the rest of the story focuses on the Ugly Duckling's visitor and trying to get him out of the book. This is another one that was a lot of fun and the kids really seemed to enjoy.


Usually when I read stories in storytime I'm sitting down but today I tried it standing up and I felt like the kids had an easier time getting involved in the stories, so for Preschool Time and Alphabet Soup I might start doing that every time.

While I was pretty darn excited with how the books were received I was more excited about the songs and activities I did. Usually my storytimes consist of action rhymes that encourage movement but don't encourage participation and when I try to get the kids to participate they just don't. I decided for my storytime today that just wasn't going to work. All but one of my songs required the kids to give me words in order to continue the song. The songs I did focused on actions- so I asked the kids to provide me with some actions that they were able to do- and they did (with a little encouragement from their parents and caregivers). The next song/rhyme was about feelings and what feelings we have and what they look like. So we said the rhyme and I asked for some feelings and asked the kids to act them out. Some of the kids loved this, some were less interested, but I got better interaction than normal. The final song/rhyme that we did was about a dog and how the dog needed things to be happy. I gave the kids one example (a bone) and asked them to supply the other 5 items. It was really fun seeing what the kids came up with that would make a dog happy- all of them were very common, food, water, a nap, but my favorite was a mud bath. All dogs, LOVE mud baths. :-)

For the final activity, I usually put on music, give streamer wands or blow bubbles and encourage the kids to dance. However, I have noticed that most of the kids just don't want to dance so I used and idea from Cooking Up a Storytime: Mix-and-Match Menus for Easy Programming by Susan Anderson-Newham . I got some easy animal riddles from the book, requested puppets that matched the answers from another branch, and encouraged the kids to figure out the answers. I thought that they would struggle with this and I was SO VERY WRONG. Most of the kids were able to figure out the animals before we even finished reading the riddle. I think having the puppets representing the animals helped. Next time I think I will include some other animals that might match the riddle to throw a bit more of a challenge in there.

After storytime was done the kids were obviously very excited and had high energy. One of the answers to the riddles was Crocodile so some kids were chasing each other around snapping their hands together saying they were an alligator. This was a very fun program for me to do and I think it was very successful and I can't wait to begin working on changing up all my other ones (except Mother Goose- ages 0-2- that one the babies almost always laugh so I think it's fine).