Polar Bear, Polar Bear, Where Are You?

Today at storytime it was all about polar bears and other Arctic animals. Even though it is unseasonably warm and sunny outside, in the library (and at Head Start) we visited the Land of Snow and Ice.

We read ---

Say Hello to Snowy Animals , by Ian Whybrow
(Grr-grr, hoot-hoot,swish-swash,and so on), 

Little Mo by Martin Waddell  
(lots of slipping, sliding, and gliding on the ice)


and  

The Polar Bear and the Snow Cloud,
by Jane Cabrera




Here is a song we sang. Sing it to the tune of My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean. The kids can join in on the "warm, warm" chorus.)


The polar bear lives in the Arctic,
He never gets cold in a storm.
He swims in the cold icy water,
His heavy coat keeps him so warm.

Warm, warm, warm, warm,
His heavy coat keeps him so warm, so warm.
Warm, warm, warm, warm,
His heavy coat keeps him so warm!

(If you type "warm" that many times, it starts to look really weird.)

For our craft we made Polar Bear pictures. 

Materials:

Construction paper
White bear cutouts
wax paper
cotton balls
glue sticks

The fun part about making this picture is crumpling and tearing the wax paper to make ice. Tear off a piece of wax paper, then let your child crumple it up and smooth it out. They can tear it any way they like to make ice mountains, or ice floes, or ice islands.

Glue the wax paper on the construction paper, then add the bears. Draw features on the bears. Pull apart one or two cotton balls and glue the pieces on to make clouds and snow.

Blueberry Bears

Storytime was a repeat of last year's bear storytime, so I don't have a lot new to write about. We read Blueberries for Sal, the classic by Robert McCloskey.  I love that book. Some of the kids enjoyed it, but it was too long for the younger ones.

Luckily, I got them back with Dinosaur vs. the Library, by Bob Shea. This new book was a hoot to share. Dinosaur roars at everything, everywhere he goes, and pretty soon he has all his friends (the cow, the chicks, the owl), and all the kids, roaring along with him. Dinosaur wins!

But then he goes to the library. Can he use his "library roar"?  Can he not roar at all during storytime? He can!  Library wins (and so does Dinosaur.)

We went on a "Bear Hunt," which was another good story activity for holding the attention of the younger set.

Our craft was a paper bag bear puppet with blueberries.

A paper bag puppet is nothing new, but I thought it was fun to give him some blueberries.

The library has lots of unsharpened pencils, and they make good small stamps. Use the eraser end to do your stamping. I had a couple different shades of washable blue ink stamp pads.

Most of the bears ended up with blueberries everywhere! Messy bears!

Let the Fall Leaves Fall!!

Here's a favorite little poem, by Clyde Watson:

Let the Fall Leaves Fall

Let the fall leaves fall
And the cold snow snow
And the rain rain rain ’till April:
Our coats are warm
And the pantry’s full
And there's cake upon the table.

So in honor of the fall leaves falling, we had a autumn=-themed storytime yesterday, at the library, and at Head Start, where I go once a month for four sessions.

We read Mouse's First Fall, by Lauren Thompson, Old Bear, by Kevin Henkes, and a brand-new book, Little Owl's Night, by Divya Srinivasan.

This book has a new twist on an old theme, the bedtime story. At the end of the book, after Little Owl has visited all his night-time friends, he goes home to Mama and falls asleep as she tells him how the night ends, as the sky turns "from black to blue, from blue to red, and from red to gold."

At the start of storytime we sang an owl song, to the tune of Skip to My Lou:

Owl in the treetop Whoo, whoo, whoo--
Owl in the treetop Whoo, whoo, whoo--
Owl in the treetop Whoo, whoo, whoo--
Who, who, who are you?

As I pointed to each child, he or she told us their names. It's a fun song to sing, and a good way to learn everyone's name.

For our craft we made acorn owls. These were a bit fiddly and tricky, but so cute.  

Materials needed:
Acorns (find an oak tree and pick them up)
small wiggly eyes
Yellow paper cut into tiny triangles, for beaks
Orange or brown felt, cut into small wings

Glue on the the features with glue stick or tacky glue. 

We made reversible playmats for our owls, out of blue card stock and black construction paper glued back to back, with branches cut from paper bags, green paper leaves, and glittery stars. Lots of gluing, but easy to put together.

Have a Happy Fall!

Apple-icious Storytime

It was all about apples today. Apples and the wind, since it is a windy day. We always sing (to the tune of Clementine):

What's the weather, what's the weather, what's the weather everyone?
Is it windy, is it cloudy, is there rain or is there sun?

Today the answer was definitely "windy." One of our books was One Windy Wednesday. Even though the theme was apples, I don't have a good apple book, so we also read Llama Llama Red Pajama. I told the story of The Little Round Red House. Even though this story does not have a book, or anything to go on the flannelboard, it held the children's attention very well. It's about a little boy whose mother sends him out to find "a little round, red house, with no windows and no doors, and a star in the middle."

You can read a version of this anonymous story here, although this is not exactly the way I tell it. But the ending is always the same. The answer is an apple, and the star can be seen when you cut an apple crossways, along its equator.

Here are some rhymes to go along with today's themes:

Wind (tune: Row Your Boat)

Wind, wind, blow the clouds
Fast across the sky.
Blow the branches back and forth,
In the trees so high.   (Stand and move your arms as you sing.)

Picking Up Apples (tune: Pawpaw Patch)

Where oh where is my friend Johnny?  (use the name of a child in the group)
Where oh where is my friend Johnny?
Where oh where is my friend Johnny?
Way down yonder by the apple tree.

Picking up apples, put 'em in your basket,  (bend and pick up imaginary "apple" and place in "basket.")
Picking up apples, put 'em in your basket,
Picking up apples, put 'em in your basket,
 Way down yonder by the apple tree.

Our craft went along with the rhyme Five Red Apples.

Five red apples hanging on the tree,

The juiciest apples that you ever did see.

The wind came whistling through the town,

And one red apple came tumbling down.  

Four red apples . . .   etc.

 Materials:
5 apples cut out of a sheet of foam
5 magnets (I used round magnets with adhesive on one side that I bought at Walmart)
1 sheet of white card stock or paper.
1 tree trunk cut from a brown paper bag
1 tree top cut out of construction paper


The kids cut out their own tree tops and glued the trunk and leaves to the sheet of paper. Then they affixed the apples to the magnets. Tape the picture to your refrigerator or other metal appliance, and you are ready to sing and play.

More October Awesomeness

We did spiders last week at storytime, and mild-mannered Halloween stories this week. I think my favorite out of all the books we read is Ghosts in the House, by Kazuno Kohara.

A little girl, who is also a witch, moves into a haunted house. But ghosts don't bother her, because she knows what to do with ghosts. She catches them, puts them in the washing machine, airs them out to dry, and gives them new lives as curtains, table cloths, and bed sheets. The bright and easy-to-see illustrations in orange and black with an overlay of white make this a perfect book for sharing.

For our craft this week we played with pumpkin playdough. This is my standard playdough recipe, with added cinnamon and orange food coloring. Here's the recipe:

Homemade Playdough

2 cups water
2 Tablespoons cooking oil
2 teaspoons cream of tartar
1 cup salt
2 cups flour
few drops of food coloring

Mix all the ingredients together in a large saucepan. Add the food coloring to the water if you are making one color of playdough. If you want to make more than one color, mix in the food coloring after it is cooked, when you knead it. Heat ingredients on medium setting, stirring constantly. It will set up quickly. Playdough is done when it holds together and pulls away from the side of the pan. Turn it out on a plate or cutting board to cool. Knead when cool enough to handle, and have fun!

Last week we made spider webs.  This is an easy craft, but it gives the children a chance to wrap yarn, which is fun to do.

Materials:
Paper plate
White yarn
foam or plastic spider
glitter glue (optional)

We used black paper plates, but you could use a plain white plate and let your child paint it black. (More activity!) Cut a 20 or so notches around the edge of the plate. Wind the yarn around and around the plate from notch to notch until it looks spider-webby enough. Glue a little spider in the middle, or let him hang from a dangling string of the yarn.

If you want to, you can add glitter along the yarn or on the spider for added Halloween sparkle.

Pumpkin Fun

Pumpkins are everywhere! I just read that the world's largest pumpkin---announced last Sunday---is an 1820.5 pound monster grown by Chris Stevens of Minnesota. Every year almost, someone manages to grow a more enormous pumpkin. I can't imagine how they do that.

The pumpkins at storytime were a more moderate size. In fact, the one I brought from my garden probably only weighs a pound and a half. It's a lovely deep shade of orange though---looks just like a pumpkin is supposed to look.

Which reminds me---is it funny that Americans use "punkin" as a term of endearment? My Russian daughter-in-law thinks so. The first time she heard me call the baby that, she was very surprised. "Pumpkin! Why are you calling her a pumpkin?" I think she thought it was weird. But in France don't they use "mon petit chou" (my little cabbage) as a baby name? Pumpkin, cabbage---does anyone call their little one "brussels sprout" or "zucchini"?  Why not?

It was all  about pumpkins at storytime today. We read It's Pumpkin Time by Zoe Hall and Pumpkin Soup by Helen Cooper. On the board we had felt figures for the songs Did You Ever See a Pumpkin and Five Little Pumpkins.  


Here's how Did You Ever See a Pumpkin goes:

Did you ever see a pumpkin, a pumpkin, a pumpkin,
Did you ever see a pumpkin with no face at all?
With no eyes, and no nose, and no mouth and no teeth.
Did you ever see a pumpkin with no face at all?

So I made a jack-o-lantern,  jack-o-lantern, jack-o-lantern,
 So I made a jack-o-lantern and I gave him a face.
With two eyes, and one nose, and a big mouth with big teeth,
So I made a jack-o-lantern and I gave him a face.

To go along with this song I have a large felt pumpkin. It is made with a double layer of felt with a thin layer of batting in between. Then I stitched it vertically to create ribs.But it isn't necessary to get that fancy--any big felt or paper pumpkin shape will do. Cut-out eyes, nose and mouth are added as we sing.

Our craft was a laminated paper pumpkin that they can draw on using dry erase markers. I cut out the pumpkins and laminated most of them ahead of time, although if you were only making one, or a few, you could have your little assistant do some cutting and help you laminate.  

Give your child a dry erase marker and they can make jack-o-lantern faces over and over. Just wipe and draw again. I really like the idea of a reusable pumpkin face. Just be sure to not use a permanent marker, unless you want it to be permanent.

Monsters, Monsters, Everywhere!

It's time to get into the Halloween-y themes, starting off with . . .  monsters!  There are several good picture books that involve monsters . . . ones that are not too scary.

One of the best picture books ever written is Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are. I love reading this book aloud; it has a wonderful rhythmic text and fantastic pictures that have not aged in 40 years. (Unlike the reader.)

A new favorite is Mo Willem's Leonardo the Terrible Monster. Leonardo is indeed terrible . . . at being a monster and scaring anybody. He gives it his best shot, and finds that there is a better way to get attention.

Everybody likes Ed Emberley's Go Away, Big Green Monster.  Troubled by monsters with long blue-green noses and scraggly purple hair? Let the author show you how to get rid of that monster one feature at a time, till it is all gone. A very satisfying interactive read-aloud.                                                                                                                                                      
If you still need help getting rid of those pesky monsters, try this song (sung to the tune of Did You Ever See a Lassie?):

If you ever see a monster, a monster, a monster,

If you ever see a monster, Then here’s what you do:

Make this face and that face and this face and that face,

If you ever see a monster---be sure to shout Boo!

The kids had fun singing this song and making crazy faces. 

Next week:  Pumpkins!