Whats Up At the ZOO?!!

We had a ZOO storytime yesterday.  It was a lot of fun sharing and playing with the kids.

Books Read:  Gladys goes out to lunch by Derek Anderson
When Lulu went to the Zoo by Andy Ellis
My Heart is like a Zoo by Michael Hall

Songs/fingerplays:  Old Mac Donalds' Zoo
If I were an animal in the Zoo . . .
Elephant, Elephant
If you're a . . .(tune If you're happy)

Flannel Board/Game:  Matched animals to their habitat (place they lived)

Craft:  I found a cool idea online for making a zoo.
Take a piece of paper, fold in half.  On one side cut out a rectangle in the middle, then hole punch hole above and blow the cut out part.  Have the kids decorate then take pipe cleaner and place it across the holes, twisting it through the holes.  Then take a small baggie and place some animal crackers inside, staple the side together and slide your bag of animals in from the top.  This should place the animals behind the bars showing animals in your zoo.  The kids had fun with this, especially eating their zoo animals!

BUTTERFLIES!

BUTTERFLIES WAS THE TOPIC OF OUR STORYTIME THIS WEEK.

BOOKS READ:  CHARLIE THE CATERPILLAR BY DOM DEL LUISE

WAITING FOR WINGS BY LOIS EHLERT

TOESTOMPER AND THE BAD BUTTERFLIES BY SHARLEEN COLLICOTT

CRAFT:  BUTTERFLY MASKS

EXCELLENT JOB!

CYA NEXT WEEK!

Happy Easter!

Easter isn't for another week but with people possibly being out of town we kind of did an easter/bunny theme.

After our welcome song and activities I read the book: Little Bunny Foo Foo, doing the actions with the kids.  Then we played a game after we did the 5 colored eggs flannel where I hid the easter bunny under the eggs and the kids took turns guessing where the bunny was.  We did that one a few times.

Then I showed a short (20 min) video of the bellflower bunnies, and the kids had popcorn. 

Due to time, our craft for the day was a take home craft of some coloring sheets of a bunny and a duck.  I did not take any pictures today.  The kids were great and had a lot of fun with the activites.

We will be having storytime again next week, hope to see some of you there.

Happy Easter!

PIRATES!

I went to a meeting right after storytime last week and did not get my storytime posted.  I will try to get an update out when I can but today we were PIRATES!

I wish to thank all the people online that I have found ideas from because I found a lot, some I used some I didn't but they helped make it fun for the kids.

We did our welcome song "If your happy and you Know it", and then I stepped out of the room for a minute and Susan stepped in and did the ABC's with the kids.  I was setting up a treasure hunt activity in the Library for later.

I stopped the sign language ABC's on the letter P and had the kids tell me things that started with the letter P, which lead into Pirate and the pirates best friend, the parrot.

I read a pirate poem that I found online that had some pirate words and phrases that we went through and what they meant.

We read the book: A BAND OF DIRTY PIRATES by Damian Harvey.

Song:  The Ship on the Waves (tune: wheels on the bus)

Story:  HENRY & THE BUCCANEER BUNNIES by Carolyn Crimi

Action/Fingerplays:  (found online)  Pirate, Pirate and One-Eyed Jake

Story: (found online as www.susanmdailey.com/Pirate_Day.htm) PIRATE DAY by Susan M. Dailey.  This is a great story using the "aaarrrgh!" for pirate and lead right into a treasure hunt.

I made a map and placed pictures in the library for the kids to follow with a treasure at the end,  We had a waterfall (drinking fountain), trees, fort (front desk-we crawled by this one so we wouldn't get caught by the people in the fort), mountain (book shelves), jungle (teen area), bird, rocks, until we came to a cave (childrens area) where the kids looked for the X and the treasure.  I think they had fun.
Then we took the treasure back to our ship (storytime area) to be shared with everyone and then did a closing song.

Song:  If youre a pirate and you know it.

Craft:  We made pirate hats in our craft today.  I had a pattern from online that we cut out, colored and stapled strips of paper too, to make them fit around the head.

Thanks!  Chris

BIRDS!

WELCOME SONG
ABC SONG AND SIGNS

BOOKS READ:

GRUMPY BIRD BY JEREMY TANKARD

DUCKS DON'T WEAR SOCKS BY JOHN NEDWIDEK

IN THE NEST BY ANNA MILBOURNE

DUCK AT THE DOOR BY JACKIE URBANOVIC

ACTIVITIES:
3 SHORT-NECKED BUZZARDS
FLANNAL STORY WITH THE DUCKS DON'T WEAR SOCKS STORY

CRAFT:  BIRDS/NEST
THIS IDEA CAME FROM THE BUSYBEEKIDSCRAFTS WEBSITE.  WE USED SMALL PAPER PLATES, STRIPS OF BROWN PAPER, PLASTIC EGGS, GLUE AND ORANGE PAPER FOR THE BEAKS AND WHATEVER COLOR THE KIDS WANTED FOR THE WINGS.  YOU GLUE THE STRIPS AROUND THE PLATE TO MAKE THE NEST, TAKE THE HALVES OF THE EGG AND PLACE AN ORANGE PIECE FOR THE BEAK AND WHATEVER COLOR YOU WANT FOR THE WINGS, GLUE THEM ON AND PLACE IN NEST.  THE KIDS DID A GREAT JOB AS ALWAYS!