Baby Storytime: ABCs

Posted on December 10, 2012 by Melissa

I also talk about age-appropriate ways to build Letter Knowledge in my Shapes and Colors Storytimes.

OPENING SONG: Hello Song*

OPENING FINGERPLAY: Open Them Shut Them*

BOOK: Chicka Chicka ABC by MARTIN, Jr
This is the board book version, that ends with the letters falling out of the tree.

GUESSING GAME: Coconut Shapes
For this activity I made a Chicka Chicka Tree for my flannelboard, and then made three squares, three triangles, and three circles. I said, “Look, here’s our coconut tree! We need to find some coconuts for it. Coconuts are round…Are THESE coconuts?” I put all 3 squares on the tree and let the little ones look at them, then answered my own question (actually, the moms and dad answered me too, so we were all saying, “Nooooooo….” together; very fun), “No! These are squares! They have straight sides and four corners. Let’s try again! Are THESE coconuts?” etc. We did wind up with 3 round coconuts on the tree at last. Whew!

LITERACY TIP: Talking
Parents, these little ones are too small to worry about learning letters yet, but one thing we can do to help them get ready is to talk about shapes. Being able to tell shapes apart is the same skill as being able to tell letters apart. So talk to your baby about shapes, and ask them questions about shapes even though they can’t quite answer you yet. You’ll be getting them ready to read!

FLANNEL SONG: Coconut Song
OK. This is the story about this song: This is a song I learned off a Free Hot Lunch CD. They were a bar band in the midwest in the 80s and most of their songs are goofy and fun and really not at all appropriate for baby storytime. However! One of the songs they sing is the Coconut Song, and it is actually a very sweet lullaby. I sang it to my daughters when they were babies, and I love it so much I finally had to sing it in storytime, too. The song has 3 verses and a chorus after each verse, but to shorten it up I just sang the verses. I think in the original song the monkey is a “he” but I changed it into a “she” when I was singing to my girls. Also, for these pictures, I forgot to show the coconuts on the ground instead of in the tree in the second picture!

How many nuts in the coconut tree?
How many nuts in the coconut tree?
Well the monkey climbs up so she can see
How many nuts in the coconut tree

So the monkey climbed up the coconut tree
The monkey climbed up the coconut tree
And she threw down the coconuts so she could see
How many nuts in the coconut tree

So the monkey counts in the coconut tree
The monkey counts in the coconut tree
And she falls asleep counting one two three
Up in the top of the coconut tree

FLANNEL SONG: A Hunting We Will Go*
Today we used fish/dish, mouse/house, hen/pen, and sheep/Jeep

BOOK: S is for Storytime by ME!
This is a homemade big book that I put together specifically so I could tell the parents that it’s OK not to read an entire ABC book to your young toddler…just choose a few letters and skip around.

SONG: ABC Song
We sang our ABCs two ways: To the traditional “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” tune, as well as to “Mary Had a Little Lamb.”

BOUNCE: Great A Little A
Bounce baby on your knees!

Great A, little a, bouncing B
Cat’s in the cupboard, and can’t see me!

ACTION RHYME: This is Big Big Big*

CLOSING SONG: Sneeze Game*

*Check out the My Baby Storytime page for the words and/or citations for these weekly activities!

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What I’m Reading: Fine Motor Skills

Posted on December 6, 2012 by Melissa

Each month this year I’ve been writing some early literacy support materials for our storytime staff, to provide background information about how the five practices of reading, writing, singing, talking, and playing support the development of early literacy skills. By far the practice that I knew the least about was writing. It has been a lot of fun to build up my knowledge about fine motor skills and age-appropriate pre-writing activities. One of the things I wanted to pass along to staff was the reminder that using fingerplays in storytime could be one way of building fine motor skills. So I did some quick Googling, confident I would find a concise article making that connection. But this was harder to track down than I thought!

I could find a lot of webpages or blog posts that simply said, “Fingerplays are great for fine motor skills” but didn’t go into why or how. I could find articles or developmental charts about fine motor skills, but often fingerplays weren’t mentioned. (Although, of course, sometimes they were.) I started to wonder whether fingerplays weren’t being mentioned by the OTs because they just weren’t as familiar with them as librarians were, or if there was some reason why fingerplays *weren’t* an effective activity for building fine motor skills.

Lots of reading later, I think that fingerplays DO help children practice their fine motor skills–but “fine motor skills” covers a lot of very specific tasks, and not all fingerplays help develop all of the different types of skills. For instance:

  • Fingerplays such as “Where Is Thumbkin” or “Here is the Beehive” can help with learning to move fingers independently
  • Rhymes like “This Little Train” or “See the Little Mousie” (where children trace or “walk” their fingers up their own arm) provide practice in using visual information from the eyes to direct hand movements
  • “Little Bunny Foo Foo” or “Two Little Blackbirds” have children practice curling their pinky and ring fingers into the fist while keeping pointer and middle fingers extended–this hand position provides stability and support to the thumb, pointer, and middle fingers when writing
  • “Itsy Bitsy Spider” offers practice holding pointer finger and thumb in an open (“OK”) circle, which children must sustain to hold a pencil or crayon successfully
  • In addition, just like drawing on vertical surfaces (easels or walls), when children hold hands and fingers up in front of their bodies for fingerplays, they tend to bend the wrists back in a way that lets them manipulate their fingers freely; wrists back (or “extended”) is the best pose for successful writing

Here are some of the websites I found most helpful in learning about fine motor skills:

Encyclopedia of Children’s Health: Hand-Eye Coordination
We talk about hand-eye coordination all the time–but what exactly does that mean?


Fine Motor Activities for Preschoolers
This PDF article was especially helpful in building my understanding of fine motor skill development.

Therapy Street for Kids: Eye Hand Coordination
Check out the left-hand menu bar for a nice breakdown of individual motor skills.

OT Mom Learning Activities: Fine Motor Development: The Essential Bases
Great article that steps backwards and describes the foundational skills children need before they can practice their fine-motor skills. Read through her other sections listed in the left-hand menu too!


Practical Strategies for Developing Fine Motor Skills
Another long article, with great drawings and descriptions of different hand skills.

Motor Skills Milestones
From LDonline.

Do you have any great sites about fine-motor skills to share?

Thanks to Kendra and Amy for some good conversations while I was wrestling with this material! Check out Amy’s storytime post that describes a fingerplay we developed together to highlight finger independence!

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Early Literacy Storytime: Going on a Bear Hunt

Posted on December 4, 2012 by Melissa

Reading is more than just sounding out words–it’s also understanding what those words mean. Comprehension skills are important not just in and of themselves, but because if a child doesn’t understand what they are reading, they will get frustrated and quickly lose motivation and interest. Preschoolers can build their comprehension skills with sequencing games and by re-telling familiar stories in order.

One way to do this in storytime is with a flannelboard for the classic “Going on a Bear Hunt.” Actually, you could go on any kind of hunt you want–maybe you want to look for monkeys in the jungle or squid in the ocean or dragons in the forest.

Create a separate image for each obstacle in your version of the story–a deep, wide river or swishy swashy seaweed. (There have been several Flannel Friday posts: Sarah’s version or Katie’s version or Cate’s version or Erin’s version…did I miss anyone?)

When you start the story, tell the children that you’re going on a Bear Hunt–that you’ll be going far away and you will need their help so everyone can find their way home again. Put each image on the board–in a single line across the board if you can–as you come to that part of the story, then when you reach the bear’s cave, have the children tell you each obstacle you need to pass on your way back. Younger children will you to help them by pointing to the images; older preschoolers may be able to tell you without any prompts, just by looking at the board.

If you really want to be tricky, maybe for a mixed-age group that has Kindergarten or 1st graders, tell the story without any flannelboard images on the way TO the bear’s cave, then see if the children can tell you the correct order to get home–and as they tell you, then place the image on the board.

When you’re done with the story, tell the grownups, “When you have your child tell you familiar stories, they are learning how to put the story’s events in order. Sequencing is a comprehension skill that will help them when they are reading on their own.”

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Flannel Friday: Thanks a Lot

Posted on November 30, 2012 by Melissa

This one was a lot of fun!

Raffi has a song called “Thanks a Lot.” It’s a contemplative, quiet song, and while I was asking Twitter for help thinking of “thank you” rather than “turkey” ideas for Thanksgiving week storytime, @LibraryLady61 suggested that I simply play this song and have the parents and children hold each other and rock and snuggle. So I did! You can check out how the rest of my Thanksgiving storytime turned out over here.

Even though I used this for Thanksgiving, the theme of gratitude could work with different holiday storytimes as well.

I thought I’d make a flannelboard set to use while we were listening to the music, and put up each item as it is named in the song. One of the things mentioned is wind, so I knew I would probably want to indicate lines of movement…I thought of using a simple running stitch for this, then went ahead and added running stitches to almost all the other pieces too! I have to admit I love how it came out.

I played the Raul Malo cover of this song off the “Country Goes Raffi” CD. The things that are named are: sun, clouds, wind, birds, moon, stars, “the wondering me/the way I feel”, animals, land, and “people everywhere.” Check out the lyrics here.

Here’s a picture without the pieces overlapping:

Why does an elephant get to represent all the animals? Because (as Charlie’s sister Lola would say) they are my favorite and my best. So why is the elephant standing next to a type of tree it never sees in real life? Because I wanted a tall and skinny tree to fit on my board!

One more question: What piece did I forget to add in to the pattern?

Here’s my original sketch for this set:

Besides a bizarre bird with some extraneous body parts, you can see the heart shape that I meant to go along with the line “Thanks for the way I feel.” Of course, I completely forgot to make it or add it to the pattern. Fortunately, hearts are pretty easy to draw if you want to include one! The set worked perfectly fine without it, to tell you the truth–the person on the left just stayed up for both the “Thanks for the wondering me” line as well as the “way I feel” line.

Here’s the patterns! Please note that the sun, wind, cloud, and star are HALF SIZE on the pattern. Put them on your copier and enlarge 200% to get them to turn out the same relative sizes as in the photos. Have fun!

Pattern 1
Pattern 2

Linda has the Round Up! Check out the Flannel Friday website for all sorts of info.

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On Finding Your Tribe (and the TSA Agent)

Posted on November 28, 2012 by Melissa

This past September, I had the opportunity to attend the 2012 ALSC Institute in Indianapolis. It was an amazing experience and I learned something new from every program I attended. But I also had some great “aha” moments outside of the scheduled workshops, and I am finally getting around to writing them up over the next few months!

I was very careful when packing for the ALSC Institute, separating out what I wanted to put in luggage to check and what I wanted to carry on to the plane. I kept our presentation notes and supplies in my carryon, just in case my checked luggage didn’t make it on time. And I remembered to put my shampoo and contact solution in the checked luggage, so I could sail through security.

Well, I got held up in security anyway; apparently the person at the X-ray screen couldn’t figure out what I had in my bag…can you?

I got taken out of the line so an agent could physically open it up and make sure everything was okay. She was a little surprised to see a bag of hand puppets! She told us, “Huh, I don’t know why they wanted to look at these…maybe they looked different on the screen. You’re okay though, you can go.”

Of course they looked different on the screen! How many times this year did that screener see a mashed-up bag of felt tentacles, antennae, and legs? Completely not what they were expecting, completely not normal, and very understandable that they would want to double check.

I started to kick myself for not thinking about packing my puppets in my other suitcase, but then realized, why would I have thought of it? In my life, a bag of strange-looking puppets is something to be expected, something completely normal. And besides, I was already looking forward to getting to the conference and having a funny anecdote to tell, because I knew everyone there would be living on the same bug-puppets-are-normal-carryon-items planet as me.

The whole weekend felt the same way–that I was on a planet with my own people, with my tribe. It was so much fun, and so energizing, and so affirming. Everyone had a story that I could directly connect with and learn from, everyone had interesting and helpful and relevant comments or suggestions to share. I can’t wait to go again.

But the great thing is I don’t have to wait for the next out-of-town special-interests conference to connect with my colleagues! Every day I have an opportunity to spend time with my tribe, and to keep learning and growing. Here are the top two ways I stay in touch:

Twitter

For the last several years, my number-one way to connect with children’s librarians outside of my own library is Twitter. Are you new to Twitter? Anna wrote an excellent post on getting started. Have you been using Twitter but aren’t connecting the way you’d hoped? Try following a lot of new people for awhile: I have over 200 youth services library tweeps on my Youthlibrarians list if you need a few ideas. Or you could jump in on a Twitter chat or two by following a chat hashtag. ALSC hosts a chat on the 2nd Thursdays of every month, 9PM EST. Join the conversation with #aslcchat and you might discover some amazing folks to follow.

(PS. Need more help with any Twitter stuff? Just let me know! Not interested in Twitter? Keep reading!)

Committees!!!

I gave this topic extra exclamation points because I know not everyone loves committee work as much as I do. And committees have a sometimes-deserved reputation for being places where time and creativity go to die. BUT! It’s also true that the committees I’ve served on over the last few years have been incredibly valuable experiences. I have collaborated with great colleagues across the state; I’ve been pushed outside of my comfort zone and learned new skills; and I’ve broadened my perspective on libraries and library services.

Where could you look for committee work? Within your own district is one place to start: is there an all-staff committee? Or a summer reading program committee? Or maybe you could help plan your state’s library conference. I helped select programs and workshops for our conference a couple of years–THAT was eye-opening, and I was able to meet a variety of librarians from all over the Denver metro area. A friend of mine volunteered to read grant proposals one year. Or maybe it’s time to get involved on the national level? ALA has approximately 8,426 committees and interest groups and is always looking for members to help out. I’m just getting started with ALSC committee work this year; all the work is via chat conferencing and emails so it’s very manageable.

What else?

But there’s lots of other ways to be engaged with the greater library world. If your program ideas are feeling stale, or you have a knotty storytime problem you can’t solve, or you’d like to learn more about youth services issues, try one of these other ideas to help find more of the great people in our tribe:

  • Attend your state’s library conference, even just for a day.
  • Investigate to see if your state library has a youth services workshop scheduled near you, or a youth services interest group that you could join.
  • Do you do storytime? Are you on Facebook? Check out the Flannel Friday group and add your two cents when someone asks for help.
  • Check with your state library to see if there is a youth services listserv for your state. Yes, listservs may seem a little paleolithic compared to your new favorite social network, but they can be a very efficient way of swapping information among a particular set of people. (Colorado has CYS-LIB.)
  • Running errands in the next town over? Stop in and introduce yourself to your counterpart in that library. Maybe you can find a time for lunch or drinks, or collaborate on planning a program that you can offer at both libraries. Community partnerships don’t always have to be with non-library organizations!

What are your favorite methods for getting out of your library and engaging with colleagues?

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Baby Storytime: Thanks and Giving

Posted on November 26, 2012 by Melissa

We did this storytime last Monday to start off Thanksgiving week. Thank you, babies! I am so grateful I get to spend time with you and watch you grow from wee little peanuts to walking, talking superstars. You keep me centered on why I do what I do!

OPENING SONG: Hello Song*

OPENING FINGERPLAY: Open Them Shut Them*

BOOK: I Can Help by COSTELLO
Each animal needs help; each animal pays it forward and helps another. Perfect.

ACTIVITY: Where Is Thumbkin?
I chose this one because I realized that it has the words, “Thank you!” With the babies, I just do thumbs, pointers, and pinkies.

Where is Thumbkin, where is Thumbkin?
Here I am, here I am,
How are you today, Friend?
Very well, I thank you.
Run and hide, run and hide.

ACTION SONG: The More We Get Together
I’ve sung this a million times and it still makes me happy.

The more we get together, together, together
The more we get together, the happier we’ll be.
‘Cause my friends are your friends and your friends are my friends
The more we get together, the happier we’ll be.

The more we sing together, together, together
The more we sing together, the happier we’ll be.
‘Cause my songs are your songs and your songs are my songs
The more we sing together, the happier we’ll be.

FLANNEL SONG: A Hunting We Will Go*
I used rhymes that included things I was grateful for: a house, swings, cake, and a red wagon to represent all the fun songs I like to sing in storytime!

BOOK: Saffy and Ollie by OPAL
We can be nice to others even when they aren’t always nice to us. Wow!

ACTIVITY: Please and Thank You
This activity was inspired by this video, which was shared with me by @Library_Quine on Twitter. Rather than sing this song, I handed out a small stuffed animal to each parent & child, saying to each one, “Would you like a stuffed animal?” Then saying, “You’re welcome!” when they accepted it. I told the parents to pass the toy back and forth with their toddlers, saying, “Please,” and “Thank you,” and “You’re welcome,” as appropriate. I had the parents of the infants ask the toy if they wanted a hug, and then had them ask the toy for a hug–or asking their babies if they wanted a kiss–again, saying “Please,” and “Thank you.”

SONG: Thanks a Lot, by Raffi
This activity was suggested by @LibraryLady61 on Twitter. (Thank you, tweeps! I am so grateful for your generosity and willingness to share and brainstorm!) She said she saw Raffi perform this song, and he suggested that parents and children sit quietly and listen, rocking and hugging. That’s what we did! I played the song, and had the parents hold the babies and the babies hold their stuffed toys from the last activity. While we sat together, I put felt shapes on the flannelboard to represent each verse. The pattern will be coming to a future Flannel Friday!

LITERACY TIP: Warm Fuzzies
Grownups, that was a quiet song! We are usually a lot more bouncy and active in baby storytime, aren’t we? When we are warm, and fed, and snuggled with someone we love, our brains release serotonin. This makes us feel good, but it also has the effect of helping us learn. When you snuggle with your child and sing and read together, their brains soak up the language they hear and the serotonin helps make that learning permanent. Snuggling, talking, and singing with your child helps get them ready to read.

ACTION RHYME: This is Big Big Big*

CLOSING SONG: Sneeze Game*

*Check out the My Baby Storytime page for the words and/or citations for these weekly activities!

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A Few Books on Gratitude

Posted on November 22, 2012 by Melissa

Happy Thanksgiving!

I am so grateful for all of you. I appreciate the time you spend here at Mel’s Desk & the thoughtful comments you share. Thank you!

Usually for Thanksgiving week storytimes I pull out my Food theme, but I was ready for a change. I wondered if I could put together a “Thanks and Giving” storytime instead, focusing on gratitude rather than yummy things to eat. It would be my thank you to my storytime families for giving me some of my best mornings!

So I started looking for books. I didn’t want turkeys, I didn’t want Pilgrims, and I was hoping not to focus on gifts and presents if possible. I just wanted some storytime books about saying “Thank you,” and maybe about sharing. These are the ones I found!

Bear Says Thanks, by Karma Wilson
Good Old Bear. Everyone brings a little something to eat to Bear’s party, but Bear doesn’t have anything to offer in return! Oh wait, yes, he does–he can tell stories. A nice reminder that we all share in different ways. My friend Susan, noticing Mouse’s mouse-sized pie, added, “And that it isn’t about HOW MUCH we bring!”

Saffy and Ollie, by Paola Opal
Such a short story, just right for young toddlers, but there’s a lot of feelings here to talk about! Saffy is having a good time playing with her rock, and does NOT let Ollie play with her. But then her rock gets stuck in a hole and she can’t get it out! Ollie helps her out even though she wasn’t nice to him. Wow!

I Can Help, by David Costello
I have been using this book in my baby storytime every chance I get for the last 2 years. Baby Duck gets lost…but “I can help!” says Monkey. “Thank you, Monkey!” Oh no! Monkey falls out of her tree! “I can help!” says Giraffe. “Thank you, Giraffe!” Each animal needs help, then turns around and helps another, saying “Thank you” every single time. The book comes around full circle to Duck, who gets her turn to help, too.

Day by Day, by Susan Gal
A new one this year, and a lovely exploration of a pig family who works together to set up a new house, plant a garden, and join a caring and sharing community. Gentle, repetitive text and illustrations that portray all the things they have to be grateful for: a bountiful harvest, a cozy home, new friends.

The Thankful Book, by Todd Parr
Todd Parr is so awesome, just looking at the covers of his books makes me happy. This is a list of things that he is grateful for, such as libraries (!) and his hair and music. What I appreciate is that he gives very specific reasons why he is thankful for each thing. “I am thankful for my feet because they help me run and play.”

Thank You, Thanksgiving, by David Milgrim
This is the only specifically “Thanksgiving” book on this list, but I was totally charmed by it. Thank you to @LibrarianMarian for the tip! A young girl is given the job of running to the store after Thanksgiving dinner, in order to buy some cream so they can make whipped cream for the pumpkin pie. The whole text is a litany of the things she says “Thank you” to along the way: “Thank you, warm boots; Thank you, general store.” A good reminder that we are always surrounded by things, big and little, to be thankful for.

I used Saffy & Ollie and I Can Help in my storytime (the plan will be posted soon!).

What books would you add to this list?

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Early Literacy Storytime: Pop Stick Puppets

Posted on November 20, 2012 by Melissa

A key step on the road to reading is recognizing that spoken words are made up of separate sounds (phonemes) and that those sounds are represented by letters on the page. Incorporating printed words into play time allows opportunities for adults to talk with their children about letters and sounds. One way to model this in storytime is to make a set of labeled pop stick puppets to hand out to the children. The puppets could represent anything: animals, shapes, colors, animal homes (nest, cave, anenome, etc), characters from a book you’re sharing that day. The puppets should have an image with a printed caption below it.

Very hastily assembled popstick puppets!

Make a set so that there are several each of dogs, cats, mice or several squares, triangles, circles. Hand out one pop stick puppet to each child. Invite the child to look at their pop stick puppet with their adult, and decide which animal, shape, or character they have. Have the adults point specifically to the printed caption below the image, and sound out the word for their children.

Then you can have the children do something with their puppet–they can make the animals move around, they can make their animal’s sound, they can play hide and seek–or you can do a little activity as you collect the puppets: If your puppets are animal homes, you could put a bird on the flannelboard and have everyone with a nest bring up their puppets, then a bear to bring up all the caves. Or you could make the animal sound (“meow”) and have the children bring up the matching puppets.

Or you could sing a variation of “Red, Red Is the Color I See” to bring the puppets up front.
Here’s a Slideshare with the tune, and a way you could adapt the words:

Dog, dog is the animal I see
If you have a dog then show it to me
Stand up, turn around
Bring me your dog and then sit down.

When you’re done, tell the parents, “When you talk about written words with your children, they start to learn that the sounds of the words they hear are represented by letters on the page. This is a first step on the road to reading! Talking with your child will help them get ready to read!”

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Early Literacy Storytime: Sort It Out

Posted on November 6, 2012 by Melissa

Earlier I mentioned a literacy tip you could add to a Shapes Storytime to highlight the relationship between learning shapes and learning letters.

Here’s another storytime activity that showcases shape differentiation! Talking about attributes of objects and toys while playing is one way to start drawing a child’s attention to the details that make shapes the same and different. This is the literacy message we added to our demo storytime at our ALSC Institute presentation this past Saturday!

Make a set of clip art or flannel shapes before storytime. The shapes could actually be shapes, such as squares, circles, triangles, hearts, stars, and so forth. Or the shapes could be different clip art images of animals, or bugs. You could use flowers that are different colors or leaves that are different shapes. You could have different kinds of cars and trucks and things that go. Make sure your set has several of each shape or object, and keep one of each image for yourself. Hand out the rest of the images to the kids.

Set up your flannelboard or whiteboard or magnetboard as a chart and show it to the kids.

Tell them you need their help to sort out all the pictures! Put one of your images at the top of one of the columns. Say, “Let’s put all our ladybugs into this column. Who has a ladybug?” Have the children come up and put their ladybug in the right spot. If they don’t put their image in the right place, don’t make a big deal about it! Just say something like, “Thank you! Here is a ladybug! Let’s put it in the ladybug spot.” Or, “This is a beetle! Let’s put this in a beetle column.”

For an older group, you can put all the images at the top of the chart at once, and have them come up one by one and decide which column to put their pieces.

When everyone has had a turn, show how all the images in one column match each other. Then say, “Parents, when you talk about same and different and matching with your child, they start to learn how to compare things themselves. They will use these same comparing skills to learn their letters! Talking with your kids helps them get ready to read.”

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Baby Storytime: Fall (Again)

Posted on October 29, 2012 by Melissa

Here’s another take on a Fall storytime! I posted a Fall Colors storytime a few years ago.

OPENING SONG: Hello Song*

OPENING FINGERPLAY: Open Them Shut Them*

BOOK: That Pup! by GEORGE
Simple story, large, bright pictures, and an adorable puppy. What else do you need?

LITERACY TIP: Reading
Books like That Pup! are wonderful for very young children because the pictures and words support each other so closely. It really helps children start to make the connection between written language and oral language.

FLANNEL SONG: Along Came a Puppy
One of my five million versions of Down Around the Corner. This one is written to go with the book we just read.

Down around the corner, just a skip and a hop
Were five little acorns with caps on top
Along came a puppy who wanted to play
And she found a little acorn and she took it away.

GUESSING GAME: Acorn Hunt
Now that the puppy has all the acorns, we need to hide them again for the squirrel! Where is the acorn? Is it behind the sunflower? These images were chosen to match That Pup! as well.

PUPPET SONG: Brown Squirrel
I learned this one in Girl Scouts! I think we sang it as “Grey Squirrel,” but my puppet is brown so there you go.

Brown squirrel, brown squirrel, shake your bushy tail
Brown squirrel, brown squirrel, shake your bushy tail
Wrinkle up your funny nose
Put a nut between your toes
Brown squirrel, brown squirrel, shake your bushy tail

FLANNEL SONG: A Hunting We Will Go*
Today we used bee/tree, dog/log, crow/snow and owl/towel.

BOOK: Rokko by OPAL
One in a series of perfect board books for ones and twos.

ACTION SONG: Mrs Oak Tree
I was going to cut out felt leaves for my babies to hold on to while we sang, and wave them around and act out the song, but then I started thinking that’s more a toddler activity and I shouldn’t push these little ones. (I really miss toddler and preschool storytimes!) Instead I had the parents stretch up their child’s arms to be the tall tree, then swish their hands back and forth, then roll their hands like Wheels on the Bus.

Mrs Oak Tree, Mrs Oak Tree
Tall and brown, tall and brown
Here comes a little breeze
There go your little leaves
Swirling down, to the ground.

ACTION RHYME: This is Big Big Big*

CLOSING SONG: Sneeze Game*

*Check out the My Baby Storytime page for the words and/or citations for these weekly activities!

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