Wind, Rain, and Clouds Storytime

Our library decided not to participate in the SRP collab “Dream Big Read” this summer, usually we do, but this year we got all excited about superheroes.  Partially because superheroes are cool and partially because a portion of the movie the Avengers was filmed in Cleveland, which is not too far from us.  So instead of feltboards to match the summer reading theme collab, I have our bulletin board teaser to show you that I and a coworker put together to get all the kids excited for summer-so far it’s working (YAY!)  I also just have to say that I’m so proud of how my Superman-type logos on the capes turned out.  Everyone liked the capes so much that we decided we all need one to wear in local the parade we do each summer, as well as occasionally throughout the summer just for fun 🙂

I do have some super felt boards to share  as well, but not related to superheroes as you probably already figured out by the title of this post! 🙂

So this week, we talked about rainy spring weather and gazing at puffy spring clouds, and blustery spring days.

For our movement activities in between books we shook some egg shakers to the song ‘Rain Rain go Away” and once the song was over we made a rain storm with the eggs by starting quietly and getting louder and louder for a full blown thunderstorm and then got quiet again as the rain faded away.
Later in storytime we listened to the song “I Can Sing a Rainbow” on the Wiggleworms “Love You” CD and danced around with colorful silk scarves.  Because rainbows sometimes follow rain storms.

The feltboard stories I shared today were, “Little Cloud” by Eric Carle and “It Looked Liked Spilt Milk” by Charles Shaw.

I made a special feltboard for this story to represent the scene in the book and also because I wanted to be able to tape some waxed paper to the back of the feltboard and not ruin our usual one.  In this story a little cloud changes in to many different shapes, as clouds tend to do.  At the end he and his cloud friends form one big cloud and rain on the village.  To make this rain possible I taped wax paper to the back of the felt board and drew rain on it.  Then when it’s time to rain in the story you can simply flip the wax paper over the front.  I also printed out the story and taped it to the back so you don’t ahve to try to hold the book and the feltboard to do the story.

Little Cloud as a sheep

The rain coming down

All the pieces

For this felt board I did something a little different.  One of the librarians at my library went to a workshop once where they suggested doing this different method with this story.  Instead of putting the felt pieces on the board, stick little pieces of velcro on  the pages and have the kids stick their matching felt piece in the book as you read the story.  In essences, the book becomes the feltboard and it’s kind of a matching/puzzle type experience as well.  It sounds so simple, and slightly weird, but the kids were captivated.  It’s so different to add your picture too the book, they had a great time and some of them worked so hard to make sure their piece lined up perfectly!
I used small squares of white velcro on the book (obviously this is a staff only copy)
with the matching felt piece in place

All the pieces for the book.

At the end of storytime we had our own cloud gazing activity.  I made a huge sky from some bulletin board paper and glued on shapes that I wanted to suggest different animals, foods, etc.  I had shapes in mind but tried to make them so that they could be more than one thing.  Like one that looks like a hand but could also be an elephant.

After storytime I had all the kids lie down and look up to see these clouds.  They loved it!  I honestly didn’t think they were going to leave 🙂  We talked about how now that it’s getting nicer out that they could do this with real clouds outside and see so many new shapes.

Overall this turned out to be one of the best storytimes themes, the kids were great and super enthusiastic about everything.  We all had a great time!

You can check out the rest of the flannel friday ideas at Sharon’s blog The Reading Chick were you will find a ton of great felt ideas for the summer reading collab.

Fall is for Apples… Apples… Apples!

Yay for fall!  I began my series of fall storytimes this week.  I started with apples, will do general fall stories in two weeks, and then do animals in fall a couple weeks later.  Fall is my favorite time of year and to get in the spirit at the library I also put up our fall bulletin board this week.

 

This feltboard is based on the book Ten Red Apples by Virginia Miller.  This is a great counting book for your younger storytime children.

When I have a small enough crowd I have the children bring up the apples, the basket and the pie and place them on or around the tree.  With a larger group, or if they are too young, you can place the items yourself.

I also used the following poem:

Juicy Red Apples

Juicy red apples

Hanging from the trees

yummy in my tummy

Bring me some please.

Sweet yellow apples

Hanging from the trees

Yummy in my tummy

Bring me some please.

Tart green apples

Hanging from the trees

Yummy in my tummy

Bring me some please.

                   –from Susan Dailey’s page

I made some simple apples in red, green, and yellow and hid them around the story time room before the kids arrived.  When we got to this section of storytime I put up my bare tree (which I will also be using for my fall storytimes-the tree is about 20 inches tall) and asked the kids to look around for apples.  I asked them to pick 3 each,  that way they could  get one of each color if they wanted to.  Once everyone had their apples and had sat back down, I began reading the poem and asked the children to come place their apples on the tree when they hear the color mentioned in the post.  By the end our tree was COVERED with apples and it looked great.  The kids had a great time searching for the apples and bringing them up.