Caterpillars and Butterflies

Continuing with the wonders of spring today, our theme was caterpillars and butterflies. I had a brand-new book to share: Ten Little Caterpillars, by Bill Martin and Lois Ehlert, with her usual big bold colorful illustrations.It was a great alternate to The Very Hungry Caterpillar, which all the kids already know. The second book was Butterfly, Butterfly by Petr Horacek. That one has a nice big pop-up butterfly at the end.

We sang:

Little Arabella Miller
Found a fuzzy caterpillar.
First it crawled up on her mother,
Then up on her baby brother.
They said, "Arabella Miller,
Put away that caterpillar."

And:

Butterfly, butterfly happy all day, butterfly, butterfly fly, fly away. 

(Hook your thumbs together and make your hands into a butterfly that flutters as you sing.)

5 little butterflies sitting on the door

1 flew away and then there were four.

4 little butterflies sitting in a tree

1 flew away and then there were three.

3 little butterflies flying in the blue

1 flew away and then there were two.

2 little butterflies sitting in the sun

1 flew away and then there was one.

1 little butterfly left all alone

he flew away and then there was none.

Butterfly, butterfly happy all day, butterfly, butterfly fly, fly away.

I didn't know that this is a Barney song. I like it anyway. 

For our craft we made caterpillar pencils.  

You will need:

Foam strips

Hole punches

Small foam bits---circles, squares, triangles--for spots

Pompoms for the heads

Small wiggly eyes

Pipe cleaners 3 or 4 inches long for antennae

Pencils

White glue turned out to be too weak and runny for attaching the heads, so we switched to Tacky glue.

Celebrating Dr. Seuss

Here we are in March, and I am still stuck in February. But it's not my fault! February is too short!

Last week's preschool storytime fell on February 29th--- a day for celebrating Leap Year Day (impossible to explain to preschoolers) and Dr. Seuss's upcoming birthday (an occasion of fun for everyone.) For me it was a chance to try out some new activities.

As much as I love the good doctor, many of his books are too long to read to younger preschoolers. So I selected one of his shorter pieces. I've always been very fond of Too Many Daves and What Was I Scared Of? in The Sneetches, but this time I went for Gertrude McFuzz, in Yertle the Turtle.  Gertrude is Dr. Seuss's very own Fancy Nancy wannabe. She just wants to have more than one short little tail feather. She wants a beautiful tail like Miss Lolla Lee Lou. So she finds a way to get what she wants, but of course she gets greedy, goes overboard, and ends up with a tail she can't lift off the ground.

Our other story was Green Eggs and Ham, nice because most of the kids already know and love this one. I used it because of the great flannelboard idea I got from Mel's Desk. Melissa Depper is a librarian after my own heart, and she has great ideas for flannelboard activities. I copied her idea and cut out enough colored eggs so that each child could have one. After I handed out the eggs, we chanted:

Sam-I-am, Sam-I-am,
I do so like RED eggs and ham!

When their color was announced, they got to bring up the egg and put it on the board. I love this because the kids always want to help with the flannelboard figures, and most of the time I don't let them, because there are not enough to go around. This time they all got to participate, and they loved it.

We had two crafts. I started with a "green eggs and ham" craft, and then decided to add a Gertrude McFuzz picture too. The eggs were simply uncolored eggs photocopied onto white cardstock and cut out. The kids colored them any color they liked and glued them on a colored paper plate.

Here's Gertrude:

I traced her from the book and photocopied her, leaving plenty of room to add some tail feathers.

First the kids colored Gertrude, then they glued on as many tail feathers as they liked.

 Doesn't Gertrude look happy and proud with her multi-colored feathers flying behind her?

It's a colorful world!

There's so much you can do with colors! It's easy to do a storytime about color---so many books, so much to talk about. 

We started out talking about what colors the children were wearing---red, blue, green, brown, gray, yellow, and of course, the ever-popular pink. Then instead of singing "If You're Happy and You Know It" we sang:

If you're wearing red today, clap your hands!
If you're wearing red today, clap your hands!
If you're wearing red today, clap your hands and shout hurray!
If you're wearing red today, clap your hands!

---and on through blue and all the rest.

Our books were Dog's Colorful Day, by Emma Dodd, Lemons Are Not Red, by Laura Vaccaro Seeger, and an old-time favorite of mine, The Adventures of Three Colors, by Annette Tison and Talus Taylor.

The Adventures of Three Colors was first published in 1971 and reissued in 1980. I wish someone would reprint it---it's a delightful introduction to color theory. In the story Herbie and his dog Angelo see a rainbow and are inspired to go home and do some painting. But Herbie finds that he only has three colors in his paintbox: pink, blue, and yellow. What can he do with only three colors?

It turns out that he can do everything. The clever element in the book is the use of clear plastic pages. For instance, on one there is a blue elephant and on the facing regular page there is a yellow dog. When the plastic page is laid over the regular page a green fish appears where the elephant and the dog intersect. Several of these kind of pages follow, culminating in an undersea picture with an octopus, crab, and seahorse. Amazing!

This book isn't seen in libraries much anymore. I used my own copy of the book, one that my children enjoyed for many years.

Here's a color chant or game that the kids enjoyed doing---

If you see red, put your hand on your head,
If you see blue, touch your shoe,
If you see green, wash your face clean,
If you see yellow, wave at the fellow,
If orange is found, put your hand on the ground,
If you see pink, then think, think think!

We added more lines to the ones I already knew. I asked the kids to suggest colors, and we made up the following:

If purple you see, put your hand on your knee,
If you see white, hold your hands up to the light,
If you see black, put your hands on your back,
If you see brown, put your hand on the ground.

What could you do with turquoise, azure, or chartreuse?

We did an extremely simple craft, one that I felt a little guilty about. We strung colorful Fruit Loops on pipe cleaners to make edible bracelets. Easy and fun, but all that sugar! Sugar is the first ingredient listed on the box, so you know that Fruit Loops are really just candy, even if they are sprayed with "15 vitamins and minerals." I hope none of the mothers minded my giving their children a sugary snack.

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.