January Milk & Cookies Story Morning

Our first Saturday morning story time of the new year was a great way to start off 2014--lots of energy, plenty of dancing, and bucketsful of smiles. Luckily our program preceded the bad, bad weather by about twelve hours, meaning plenty of children and their families were able to make it to the library to participate. Here's what we did:

Opening Song: "Open, Shut Them"

Books to read!

Story: Dinosaur Kisses by David Ezra Stein
     What a wonderfully silly story. When Dinah the dinosaur hatches from her egg, she tries out all sorts of actions, including kisses. Yet a dinosaur has a hard time achieving a gentle kiss, and Dinah accidentally chomps, stomps, and whomps several unfortunate animal friends in her efforts to show them affection. Luckily, another dinosaur with Dinah's exact skill set is hatched, and the two hit it off. Literally.

Song: "We Are the Dinosaurs" by Laurie Berkner
     We enjoyed plenty of stomping around to this song, including holding our arms close to our sides to give ourselves tiny t-rex arms. All of the kiddos had a ball trying to "stop and eat our food," as the lyrics direct, with those tiny arms. The song ends with plenty of roaring, so of course it is a hit.

Song: "The Shaker Hop" by Carole Peterson
     I handed out egg shakers to everyone so we could all get boogying to the Shaker Hop. The song starts off like the Hokey Pokey, with shakers moving in and out, but also offers free dance breaks throughout the song. We spent our dance breaks shaking like we were animals in the ocean and like astronauts in space. Lots of imagination and vocabulary here!

Props to add to the fun!

Puppet/felt Story: "I Know an Old Woman Who Swallowed a Fly"
     A colleague who used to be an elementary teacher gifted to me her puppet set for this story, and I made some velcro cards with the story's animals on them to provide further visual interest. While I started telling this classic cumulative tale on my own, the children soon picked up on the format and cheerily joined in. And, to demonstrate that children think statements like "Perhaps she'll die!" are funny rather than macabre, they had plenty of fun shouting that recurring line.

Song: "Sleeping Bunnies" on the ukulele
     I will share full details of this ukulele tune, including my chord sheet so you can play it yourself, later this month. It was a complete hit, and I am indebted to Jbrary and Miss Mary Liberry for mentioning it a few weeks ago on Twitter.

Story: If You Were a Panda Bear by Wendell and Florence Minor
    This rhyming text explores several different types of bears, some of which are familiar to young readers and a few that are not. My kids enjoyed identifying the distinguishing features of the different bears in our reading of the story, and quite a few bear roars could be heard throughout the telling.

Song: "I'm a Little Teapot"
     The song cube landed with the teapot illustration pointed upward, so we sang this song. I was informed by a young girl that we needed to sing it a second time, "and do the other side." Okay then.

Song: "The Peanut Song"
     This short, silly rhyme was a great way to wrap up our story time on a zany note. Lyrics and hand motions here.

Milk & Cookies Time!

Free Play Time
     While our varied play stations included two types of blocks, magnetic writing boards, shape sorters, and our wooden garage/car set, the hit of the morning was the puzzle table. A group 5- and 6-year-olds worked together to solve a large 24-piece alphabet puzzle, at which point they decided (without ANY prompting from me!) that singing the alphabet song would just be the icing on the cake. Which they did, and it was. Then they asked me to get a harder puzzle, and they successfully assembled a significantly more difficult 64-piece picture puzzle with a bit of help from me. The visual literacy and problem solving skills that went into that play time were substantial.