At the Jail

For a couple of years now, I have been going over to our county jail every other month or so, to talk to the parents there about the importance of reading to their kids. Our library district has a branch in the correctional facility & serves the inmates with books, information requests, and a law library collection, which includes digital and print reference materials. The supervisor of the jail library is dedicated to providing the inmates with as much of a “public library” experience as she can. She tries to schedule some of the same programs there as we offer at our public library branches—storytellers and writers’ workshops are always popular. When I started scheduling “Every Child Ready to Read” workshops for parents at our branches, she invited me to consider bringing that program to the jail as well.

I was definitely nervous at first; it’s a completely different environment than I was used to, and it can be intimidating. But I am so grateful now that I have this opportunity. I go over in the evening after dinner, and usually present to 2 different groups, one after another. Each area has a multi-purpose room that is used for things like classes or Bible study. The inmates are signed out of their day rooms and come to the multi-purpose room for the talk. One of the jail library staffers is always scheduled to be there with me and they are the ones who provide the signup sheets to the deputies and handle any other logistics. Some visits I speak with the women, some visits I speak with the men–more often overall I speak to the men; there are just more of them.

So what do I say? When I first started, I brought my regular “Every Child Ready to Read” presentation. This talk is all about building the 6 early literacy skills in babies, toddlers, and preschoolers. But I found, after the first few times, that the parents who chose to attend had kids of all ages–sometimes all the way up through high school and college! I felt bad about them committing their time to me and not walking away with something relevant to their kids’ situations. I went back to the drawing board and talked it over with colleagues and came up with a new talk, one that would apply to all ages of kids and teens.

My talk is called “Build a Reading House!” I tell the parents up front that kids who are read to become better readers; kids who are better readers do better in school; kids who do better in school have more choices in life. I tell them I will give them 3 ways they can make a difference in their kids’ lives.

*Fill your house with things to read and things to write with: children who grow up surrounded by books, magazines, paper, and pens are more likely to become better readers. We talk about all the different materials kids can read–not just books but magazines, video game guides, catalogs, comic books. I remind them that they can use their library to fill their house with books for free! I tell them that readers are writers and writers are readers, so having paper and notebooks for their kids to use is very powerful.

*Read to your kids, read with your kids, read *near* your kids: parents who read are great models for their children. (I make a real point of telling the dads that their kids don’t see nearly as many men reading as they do women. I tell them that children whose daddies read to them do better in school than kids whose daddies don’t.) When we take time to make reading part of our day, kids learn that we think reading is important. This can motivate them to read more. (And I go back to the first part and say, reading more is important because the more kids read, the better they get at it, the better they get at reading, the better they do in school…) Read to your little ones. Read the same book as your big kids–read what they have to read for school. Remind your kids that you read every day to cook a meal, follow directions, understand road signs, and learn new things.

*Talk to your kids about books, stories, and ideas: When we talk with our children about a book, we help them to better understand what they read. This helps them make connections between their books and their life, and builds their thinking skills. When they understand what they’re reading, they are more motivated to keep reading. (I say AGAIN: Keeping reading is good because the more kids read…) Talk to your babies, even when they are too little to say anything back. Sing songs and say nursery rhymes. Ask children questions that don’t have one-word answers, to help them practice their thinking and their words. Ask big kids open-ended questions about the books they are reading for school. I remind them that talking to their kids about books doesn’t have to wait until they are out–they can start during their next visitation, before they even go home.

That’s it! I have made several handouts that emphasize these points and give them tips and tricks to help them remember. I have a bunch of props–the more visual this talk is, the better. So I have the STOP sign from my daughters’ dress-up box, a DVD case, a restaurant menu, a sheet of newspaper comics. I bring an Eyewitness book to show how cool non-fiction can be and a Barbie book to show there are books about everything their kids love. I bring an issue of Sports Illustrated for Kids. I bring a chapter book and remind them that there’s information about the book on the front flap, that they can read to get an idea of what their kid’s book is about, so they can ask questions about it. I bring pictures my girls drew in preschool that their teachers wrote comments on. Anything I can think of that might illustrate a point, I try to bring with.

My groups are usually a mix of those who are paying attention and really interested, and those who are just happy to get out of the day room for an hour. This is okay. I usually have several parents who are eager to share stories and ask questions, and that is awesome. Tonight a guy raised his hand at the end and said he had two kids, who were 1 and 2 years old. “What’s the best method to use with them?” he asked. I said, “The best method for reading? Just sit down with them and open a book and look at it and read it together. That’s what you can do. It DOES makes a difference.”

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Baby Storytime: Dr Seuss

It’s Dr. Seuss’s birthday this week! He’s 106! He is a great way to kick off our “Phonological Awareness” month here at storytime, because listening to rhymes and songs builds the skills kids will need to sound words out when they read.

OPENING SONG: Hello Song*

OPENING FINGERPLAY: Open Them Shut Them*

FINGERPLAY: One Little Cat
This is from the Seuss page on Hummingbird Educational Resources!

One little cat on a sunny day
Put on his hat and went out to play
Two little cats when the sky turned dark
Put on their hats and went to the park
Three little cats when the sky turned blue
Put on their hats and went to the zoo
Four little cats by the kitchen door
Put on their hats and went to the store
Five little cats on a sunny day
Put on their hats and they all ran away.

Here’s the finger puppet hats I made to go with. The second photo shows how they went together.

BOOK: Green Eggs and Ham by DR SEUSS
I just read the beginning and the end of this book to these little guys. I go as far as “Would you eat them with a fox?” and then skip to where they are all in the ocean and Sam says, “You do not like them–so you say…” Whenever I skip parts of books I make sure to let the parents know it’s okay to do that when they are reading to babies.

SONG: Ham and Eggs
I learned this from Wee Sing In the Car by Pam Neall and Susan Nip.

Ham and eggs, ham and eggs
I like mine fried good and brown
I like mine fried upside down
Ham and eggs, ham and eggs
Flip ’em flop ’em flip ’em flop ’em
Ham and eggs!

FLANNEL SONG: A Hunting We Will Go*
Seussian rhyme pairs today: cat/hat, mouse/house, fox/box, fish/dish.

FLANNELBOARD: One Fish Two Fish
A colleague made this flannel from photocopies of Dr Seuss’ One Fish Two Fish. I put them up one at a time, talking about them (“Hey, this is a new fish! It’s a baby fish!”), then when they are all up on the board, we go back and do it again–the parents always join in and recite it with me.

One fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish
Black fish, blue fish, old fish, new fish
This one has a little star
This one has a little car
Say! What a lot of fish there are!

SONG: Dr Seuss Is On the Loose
ALso from the Seuss page on Hummingbird Educational Resources!. I sing it to B-I-N-G-O instead of Old Macdonald and changed the last line.

Dr Seuss is on the loose
And this is how we know it
Cats, hats, eggs and ham
Cats, hats, eggs and ham
Cats, hats, eggs and ham
And this is how we know it!

LITERACY TIP: Phonological Awareness
Reading Dr Seuss books is a great way to introduce lots of rhyming words to your child! Rhyming words are great for kids because they help them learn how to hear if beginning sounds and ending sounds of words are the same or different. They will need to be able to hear the smaller sounds of words when they start sounding words out as they read!

BOOK: Dr Seuss’ ABC by DR SEUSS
I read the A, B, and C pages today.

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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Beyond “5 Little Whatsits”

You know what I’m talking about! Scarecrows, jellybeans, pandas, roses…How many sets of five do you think you have counted in your storytime career? “Five little owls by the old barn door/One flew away, and then there were four.”

These are great standbys, and they fit every storytime, but sometimes I just kind of hit the wall. I can’t always get excited about “Four little thingummies playing happily” or “One little whosis having so much fun.” So I’m trying to branch out a little.

But the “Five Little” rhymes are so good at filling up little nooks and crannies of a storytime plan! What am I doing to help fill the gaps?

One thing I’m doing is ditching the rhyming piece. Don’t get me wrong, I still have plenty of rhymes in my storytimes, because they are lots of fun and great for building preschoolers’ phonological awareness skills.

But I’m not worried about making every single thing I do on the flannel board be a rhyme. Talking with kids about pictures and ideas, and asking them open-ended questions, and giving them time to answer, are also excellent ways to build children’s language skills. This type of dialog also lets you model to the caregivers how they can talk with their kids, too.

Here’s an example: I went into Microsoft Word clip art and found 5 photo images of familiar tools.

Instead of using them to recite “5 Little Tools,” I just put them all on the board. Sometimes I’ll say, “Wow, look, our workbench is a little messy! We better clean up our tools. Let’s start by cleaning up the tool that you use to hit nails. Which tool is that?” I give the kids time to answer, or tell me about the time THEY used a hammer, or to tell us that Uncle Andy has a hammer…you know how it goes! Then I say, “Right! You use a hammer to hit nails! This is the hammer.”

Or instead of establishing a clean-up scenario, I might just say, “Our last book was about building a house. Here’s some tools you might use to build a house! Which tool is the level? Do you know?”

Another way to start is to pick up a tool and say, “This tool is a saw. What do you know about saws? Right! Saws are very sharp and cut wood.”

Either way, there’s no rhyme to memorize, and the kids get a chance to really engage with you about something related to your storytime theme. Easy-peasy. Other things you could “clean up” might be toys, or clothes, or tableware. What else?

Another type of non-rhyme flannelboard I’ve put together is the astronaut and his spacesuit!

I might say, “If you were in outer space, you’d have to wear some special clothes! What do you think you’d have to wear?” Then one by one, we’d talk about the helmet, boots, and gloves, and finally I would put out the astronaut, all suited up. (I’ve done this with the babies, even, by emphasizing body parts: “This is a helmet! You wear a helmet on your head. Where is your head?”)

What other sets of clothes and equipment could you do? I have a cowboy set! What about a king or queen, with a robe, crown, and scepter? This is great for vocabulary building!

A final non-rhyme flannel board I’ve used is the Guessing Game. I have a few of these now!

In one type, I laminate clip art images, or color copies from a book’s illustrations, or make lift the flap houses. I put them all on the board, with a small image tucked behind one of the pieces. For the houses, I put a picture under one of the door flaps.

Then I say, “Blue Bird, are you in the red tree? Which tree has red leaves?” Or, “Puppy Dog, are you in the green house?” We just keep looking until we find them!

For another type of guessing game, I used clip art to make several sets of one big animal and one small animal in matching pairs. I’ll put the big animals all on the flannel board, then show the kids one of the small animals. “Little bear, can you find your Mommy? Is this the mommy bear? No! This is the big blue whale! Here is the mommy bear! She is brown just like her baby.”

I’ll never stop using the “Five Little Whatsits” rhymes completely, but by not using them as often, I’m keeping them fresher for my storytime kids–and for me.

(Ed. 11/11: I am no longer sharing my clip art files due to copyright concerns, so I’ve taken down the link to the files. However, if you search in Microsoft Word clip art you may find the original imeages I started with.)

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Baby Storytime: Colors

I have traditionally shied away from doing too many “preschool concept” storytimes for the babies, because I haven’t wanted to make parents feel like they are something their 9-month-olds should know already. But baby storytime in my district covers birth through 2 year olds, and you can definitely start talking to 2s about things like colors and shapes. Besides, this month’s skill is Letter Knowledge, and while we definitely don’t want to get the letter flashcards out with the babies, we can tell the grownups that any time they talk about same and different, they are laying the very first foundations for the skills needed to tell letters apart later on.

OPENING SONG: Hello Song*

OPENING FINGERPLAY: Open Them Shut Them*

BOOK: Little White Fish by VAN GENECHTEN

FLANNEL SONG: A Hunting We Will Go*
whale/pail; fish/dish; crab/cab; snail/scale

FINGERPLAY: Where Is Thumbkin?

BOOK: Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? by MARTIN JR

GUESSING GAME: Brown Bear, Are You in the Red House?
Are You in the Blue House?

SONG: Baa Baa Black Sheep
I use pop stick puppets with this song, and sing it with different color sheep.
Baa Baa Colors

LITERACY TIP: Letter Knowledge
For the first year or two, our babies are just not going to be keyed in to letters yet. That’s okay! You can help them build the skills they’ll need later on. Any time you talk about things that are the same and different, you help get them ready to tell things apart–including letters.

SONG WITH SCARVES: Jenny Jenkins
Traditional. I played this song in the background while I handed out our scarves. We just danced and goofed around while the music was playing.

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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Baby Storytime: Shapes

I’m trying a Shapes storytime for the first time with the babies today! I try not to focus too much on “preschool skills” in baby storytime, but our literacy skill of the month is Letter Knowledge. I like to remind the grown-ups that starting to talk about different shapes, colors, sizes, opposites, and other ideas can help build the skills kids will need to tell letters apart later on.

OPENING SONG: Hello Song*

OPENING FINGERPLAY: Open Them Shut Them*

BOOK: It Looked Like Spilt Milk by CHARLES SHAW

I chose this title because we have a big book copy of it, but Little Cloud by Eric Carle would work as well.

GUESSING GAME: Where Is Little Cloud?
“Little Cloud, are you behind the green rectangle? Are you behind the blue triangle?”

FINGERPLAY: Big Round Sun
Some days we are smarter than we think…I made all those shapes and then only afterwards realized that I made the circle yellow and that it could be the sun for this rhyme!

Big round sun in the summer sky
Hold arms in circle over head
Waved to a cloud that was passing by
Wave!
The little cloud laughed as it started to rain
Wiggle fingers downward for rain
And out came the big round sun again.
Hold up arms in circle above head again

SONG: Twinkle Twinkle, Little Star

BOOK: Round is a Mooncake by ROSEANNE THONG

I chose just a few pages to read from this book.

LITERACY TIP: Letter Knowledge Learning shapes helps gets kids ready to learn letters! Triangles and circles help them get ready for As and Os. Learning about any differences, or opposites, will help them, too.

ACTIVITY: Roll, Roll, Sugar Babies
Thanks to Reading Chick for teaching me this one!

Roll roll sugar babies
Roll roll sugar babies
Roll babies hands over each other like Wheels on the Bus
Push
Gently push baby’s arms…lean forward or back if they are sitting on your lap, or pull on their arms if they are lying on their backs. Remember to make sure the motion is “pushing” from their point of view!
Pull
Gently pull baby’s arms
Clap clap clap
Clap!

You can also do other opposites together, like “Up” and “Down” and “Right” and “Left”.

FLANNEL SONG: A Hunting We Will Go*

We talked about the round dish and the square windows and the straight lines of the hen’s pen.

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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Another Day in the Life

Last time around for Bobbi Newman’s Day in the Life project, I kept track hour by hour of a single day. That so didn’t work out this week, so instead I’m going to list the projects I’m currently in the middle of. I’m a Youth Services Librarian, but overall I spend more time on developing programs & services than I do on the floor.

Baby Storytime

I give 2 baby storytimes on Monday mornings. Each session runs about 20 minutes, with 20-30 minutes afterwards of play time together. We just purchased some new Burgeon Group pieces for this branch and they are a big hit with our families already!

Burgeon Group Piece

This post-storytime playtime is a wonderful opportunity for the parents to connect, for the babies to play, and for me to be available to the caregivers if they have questions about books, child development, library services…anything. Plus I get to play, too! I have been plugging our new “Book a Librarian” service to them and am hoping they can help spread the word through their networks! After storytime, I blog my storytime plan and Tweet my early literacy tip of the day.

LSTA Grant Project for CLEL

I serve on the steering committee for Colorado Libraries for Early Literacy, a group of librarians and staffers from all over the state working to promote early literacy programs and services in public libraries. We received an LSTA grant that will help us expand our website to include a collection of videos, and I am on the committee that has been working to write a Request for Proposal and hire a web development team that can do this piece for us. On Monday I met with a couple other CLEL members and representatives from Rocky Mountain PBS, who are our partners in this grant!

Book a Librarian

Our library district recently launched a Book a Librarian service, which allows patrons to schedule a 30 minute appointment with a librarian, for help with a particular in-depth information need. We are just getting started with this, but response has been strong and the feedback has been positive. We have been getting a lot of requests for help with business reference, genealogy research, and tech support, but I think it’s a natural fit for parents and educators as well & hope we receive more and more interest from those groups.

Tuesday I had an appointment with a mom who had been homeschooling for less than a year. She knew she wasn’t “maximizing” her use of the library and wanted some help with search skills. It was very fun to sit down with her and show her how to run advanced searches in the catalog, how to use our Prospector partnership, and how to access the kids’ databases.

Last week I met with a grandma and grandpa who wanted some tips on how they could support language development in their 2 year old grandson, and they were thrilled with the early literacy information and book ideas I was able to share with them. I am excited by this new service and am looking forward to more awesome appointments!

Nursery Rhyme Time

This week I took my Nursery Rhyme Time program to a preschool Parent Evening for the first time! The preschool needs to have several parent education opportunities a year. On Wednesday after school, I brought everything over to the elementary school and we ran the program from 4.30pm – 6pm. The activities are designed for grownups and children to play together, and to promote early literacy skills and kindergarten readiness, and to model to parents on how they can build language skills in their kids while they are playing together. Here’s a little guy trying to knock down a Humpty Dumpty from his wall with a beanbag. Prompts for the parents include to ask the child what size (big, medium, or small) was the Humpty Dumpty they want to knock down, what color beanbag they are using, how would it feel to fall off a wall, what can you use to put Humpty together again?

HumptyDumpty

We had a really nice turnout and I had some very positive feedback from the teachers and the parents, and the kids! This is my first try taking this program out of the library, so this was an encouraging success!

Literacy Based Storytime Training

The rest of the week will be spent prepping for a staff training class I have coming up. In conjunction with our Literacy Librarian, I teach new storytime providers how to plan and present literacy-based storytimes. My session with these new staffers introduces them to our district’s storytime standards, tips for how to plan and construct storytimes, tips for matching books and activities to appropriate ages of kids, and how to present early literacy tips and information to caregivers during storytime in a seamless way. *whew*

And…

So that’s my week! I love my job because I have a chance to work on a wide variety of projects and I am able to focus on early childhood programs and services. In and around my bigger projects, I am on Twitter, reading PUBYAC, taking reference calls from our call center, answering emails…and this week I’ve been trying to figure out what ten best chapter books to send to Fuse #8 for her poll.

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My Top Ten Chapter Books

For Fuse #8’s poll:

I decided to go with my personal favorites from childhood, and not try to knock my brains out trying to rank Charlotte’s Web over or under The Giver or over or under Sarah Plain and Tall.

Here’s the final list!

1. Baby Island, by Carol Ryrie Brink
babyisland

This is by the author of Caddie Woodlawn. I have never read Caddie Woodlawn. This book was all I needed; how could it not be? Two girls on a cruise ship are bundled into a life boat in a moment of crisis with four babies and toddlers. OMG! In another moment of crisis, the life boat is launched with NO GROWN UPS IN IT! The girls and babies manage to float safely to a deserted island! OMG! They sing Scottish songs to keep their spirits up! They keep the babies alive, fed, and in clean diapers! But OMG! The island isn’t deserted after all! They see footprints in the sand! WHAT WILL HAPPEN NEXT?

As a child, friends, family, teachers, and classmates saw me as timid, bookish, and quiet. That’s because I was. But I was also reading this story every 8 or 9 months, getting imprinted in the process at a critical developmental window with two take-charge, can-do, kick-ass, totally unfazable personalities. I do not underestimate the effects of this book on my eventual, late-blossoming self-confidence.

2. Understood Betsy, by Dorothy Canfield Fisher
Ubetsy

Another one of my girl-power titles when I was a kid. If the Baby Island girls’ confidence was the destination, Betsy’s slow growth showed me you could get there step by step.

3. Wrinkle in Time, by Madeleine L’Engle
Wrinkle

I picked this up 3 or 4 times as a kid before I got into it, and now I have read it so many times and have such clear memories of so many different scenes. Ultimately, this book is on this list because, out of all the myriad influences that blended together to create my personal ethical/moral code, one thing from this book I swallowed whole: When Meg cries out against IT, “Like and equal are not the same thing at all!”

4. Wind in the Door, by Madeleine L’Engle
Wind

If Wrinkle in Time became part of my ethical understanding, Wind in the Door became part of my experience of faith: joy at the cellular and universal levels.

5. Phantom Tollbooth, by Norton Juster
Tollbooth

Thank you Mrs Bounds for reading this to us in fourth grade! The wordplay is great, and when I realized I knew enough to get the jokes about the cart that “goes without saying,” or “jumping to conclusions,” well, didn’t *I* feel smart and in the know. But what really resonated with me then, and still does, is the revelation that Milo could only rescue the princesses because he didn’t know it was an impossible task.

6. Egypt Game, by Zilpha Keatley Snyder
egypt

When I was a kid, I loved mysteries. As with anything else you read a lot of, some were forgettable, some were okay, some were great. Only one creeped me out so much I couldn’t finish it. (Still haven’t.) And only Egypt Game was so perfectly calibrated, at that particular moment in time, to my personal sense of the possible and the impossible, that I still have a sense memory of the mounting tension and then the sheer mental relief at the end.

7. Silver Woven in My Hair, by Shirley Rousseau Murphy
Silver

The sweetest Cinderella story. Ever. I remember how delicious it felt to be reading about Thursey reading Cinderella stories, and knowing that SHE was in the middle of a Cinderella story too but that she didn’t know it yet…When I read Where the Mountain Meets the Moon this year, I felt the same way, and wished I could have given Mountain to my 9 year old self. She would have swooned.

8. All-of-a-Kind Family, by Sydney Taylor
allofakind

The thick scratchy tights. The dusting-for-buttons game. Penny candy. Going to the library. Talking and daydreaming after lights out. I am not on the whole a good rememberer-of-details (see Bridge to Terabitha and Trolley Car Family, below) but I do remember so many scenes from this whole series. Because I have to choose just one, I’m choosing the first one for this list.

9. Bridge to Terabithia, by Katherine Paterson
bridge

Not because of the story itself, but because this was the first time I read a book with a literary allusion that I GOT. Paterson mentions that the main characters loved fantasy stories, including one about “assistant pig-keepers” and that phrase went through me like a shock: I KNEW that book, I had already read the Prydain Chronicles and I felt such an immediate connection to the characters in Bridge as a result. I have forgotten almost everything about Bridge except for the broadest of strokes, but I will never forget that moment of recognition.

10. Trolley Car Family, by Eleanor Clymer
trolley

I have absolutely no recall of any detail whatsoever about this story. I’m not kidding, absolutely nothing. But in the middle of the book there is an illustration of the floor plan of the trolley car they lived in, and I spent a long, long time pouring over it—probably as much time as I spent tracing the maps in Katie and the Big Snow—and then drawing floor plans of ways to reorganize the furniture in my room.

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Baby Storytime: Dinosaurs!

A dinosaur theme fits perfectly with the “vocabulary” early literacy skill we are highlighting this month.

OPENING SONG: Hello Song*

OPENING FINGERPLAY: Open Them Shut Them*

BOOK: Dinosaur Vs Bedtime by SHEA

ACTION SONG: All Around the Swamp
Sing to: The Wheels on the Bus

Pteranodon’s wings went flap, flap, flap
Flap, flap, flap,
Flap, flap, flap,
Pteranodon’s wings went flap, flap, flap
All around the swamp.

Triceratop’s horns went poke, poke, poke…
Apatosaurus’ mouth went munch, munch, munch…

LITERACY TIP: Vocabulary
Everybody knows at least one preschooler who can rattle off the names of dozens of dinosaurs. There’s a reason for that! Preschoolers’ brains are wired to learn as much vocabulary as possible. So don’t underestimate them: give them all the words you can! Use the most specific terms possible and they will soak them up like a sponge.

FLANNEL SONG: A Hunting We Will Go*
I know dinosaurs came in all shapes and sizes, but we went with big things today: house/mouse, whale/pail, boat/goat, tree/bee.

BOOK: Dinosaur Roar! by STICKLAND

FLANNEL SONG: One Dinosaur Went Out to Play
Sing to: Five Little Ducks Went Out to Play
I got these incredibly cute dinosaur shapes from an old issue of Copycat Press.

One dinosaur went out to play
On a giant fern one day
She had such enormous fun
That she called for another dinosaur to come:

Raise hands to cup mouth, and call loudly: Oh, Diiiiiiiiiinosaur!

Slap hands on thighs to make “running” sounds.

Two dinosaurs went out to play…
Three dinosaurs…
Four dinosaurs…

Five dinosaurs went out to play
On a giant fern one day
They had such enormous fun
That they played until the day was done!

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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Baby Storytime: Cowpokes

January in Colorado means the Stock Show’s in town! It’s a good time to read about ranches and cowpokes and learn all sorts of new words.

OPENING SONG: Hello Song*

OPENING FINGERPLAY: Open Them Shut Them*

BOOK: At Home on the Ranch by GORDON
This is an easy reader book! I often check this section for beginning level readers since they can be very short. Sometimes I can find one that will work in baby storytime.

LITERACY TIP: Vocabulary
Your baby may not have much experience with cowboys and ranches and horses, but talk to them about new ideas and experiences anyway. The more we talk to our babies, the bigger their vocabularies grow. Sometimes we get bored talking about the same old daily routine with our kids. New topics can keep us motivated to keep talking!

FLANNEL SONG: If You Want to Be a Cowboy
Sing to: If You’re Happy and You Know It
P1010890

If you want to be a cowboy, wear your jeans
If you want to be a cowboy, wear your jeans
If you’re a cowboy and you know it
Then your jeans will really show it,
If you want to be a cowboy, wear your jeans

Down Around the Corner
Sing to: Five Little Ducks Went Out to Play
P1010891

Down around the corner at the general store
Were five cowboy hats and not one more
Along came someone with a nickel to pay
And they bought a cowboy hat and they took it away

Down around the corner at the general store
Were four cowboy hats…

FLANNEL SONG: A Hunting We Will Go*
Today we used sheep/jeep, hen/pen, pig/wig, and mare/chair

BOOK: Cowboy Small by LENSKI
I just chose a few pages of this to read!

SONG WITH PUPPETS: Down on Grandpa’s Farm

Oh, we’re on our way, we’re on our way
On our way to Grandpa’s farm
Oh, we’re on our way, we’re on our way
On our way to Grandpa’s farm.

Down on Grandpa’s farm there is a big brown horse
Down on Grandpa’s farm there is a big brown horse

That horse, she makes a noise like this, neigh, neigh
That horse, she makes a noise like this, neigh, neigh

BOUNCE: Trot Trot to Boston

Trot trot to Boston
Trot trot to Lynn
Trot trot to Grammy’s house
Bounce baby gentle on your lap
But don’t fall IN!
Gently drop baby between your legs!

ACTION RHYME: Shoe A Little Horse

Shoe a little horse
Tap on the sole of baby’s foot
Shoe a little mare
Tap on the sole of baby’s other foot
But let the little colt go bare, bare bare!
Tap baby’s two feet gently together

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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Baby Faces

BabyFaces

Babies love to look at baby faces, so I made these pieces to use with some counting rhymes. I don’t have a template for you, but they are pretty easy to make, I promise!

Draw about a 5″ circle on construction paper with a compass or trace a roll of masking tape or something. Now visualize Charlie Brown and draw two semicircles sticking out at 3 oclock and 9 oclock for the ears. The eyes go on even with the top of the ears. I used a hole punch for the open eyes! Add eyebrows, mouths, and hair and you are ready to go. I laminated them and put a velcro dot on the back. You can see a slightly larger image here.

Here’s a few things you can do with these babies!

Five Little Babies
by Melissa Depper

Five little babies sitting in their cribs
The first one said, “I need another bib!”
The second one said, “I wish I had my ball.”
The third one said, “I wish that I could crawl!”
The fourth one said, “Oh, when can we play?”
The fifth one said, “It’s been a busy day.”
Then Shhhhh went the mommies and out went the lights,
And five little babies said goodnight.

Ten Little Babies
Sing to: Ten Little Indians

One little two little three little babies
Four little five little six little babies
Seven little eight little nine little babies
Ten baby girls and boys!

Five Little Babies
Adapted from Yakaberry.com

Five little babies were playing one day
One saw a ball, and he crawled away
Four little babies were playing one day
One saw a rattle, and she crawled away
Three little babies were playing one day
One saw a blanket, and he crawled away
Two little babies were playing one day
One saw a teddy, and she crawled away
One little baby was playing one day
He saw his friends, and he crawled away.

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