I led storytimes at MacKay last Friday and at the Main Library today.  These are the books I chose:

Noodle and Lou was new to most of the children.  Families knew Peter Reynolds’ previous book The Dot, but were not as familiar with Ish.  Almost everyone knew Chicka, Chicka, Boom, Boom – which is great!  Check it out if you are not familiar with it.  It is one of the very best alphabet books.  It has capital and lower case letters on each page.

The Nest Where I Like to Rest is a story the children (and grown ups) helped me tell by using sign language.  We learned the signs for nest, eggs, rat, cat, goose, boy and rest.  Everyone did a terrific job!  I felt rushed at the Main Library while reading Good News Bad News.  I wanted to get through it one time, so we can revisit it and pick up on details we missed the first time.  Repetition is a great thing.

~Maureen

Even though Halloween was last week, we had to read one more scary story, and this one had a surprise ending– ask your child what it was!

Our other story this week also had a few surprises in store, and it all had to do with some unusual pizza deliverers.  What will happen when the doorbell rings?

I subbed at the Wednesday storytime this morning, so I repeated many books that I read on Monday.  (Please see that post for details.)

We began with Llama Llama Red Pajama.
Baby Llama is upset when he goes to bed.  He needs his mom to come back to his room.  He becomes more and more upset and works himself into a tizzy.  It reminded us of the monkeys that jump in the bed instead of going to sleep – so we pretended we were monkeys and sang 3 Little Monkeys.

I added Green by Laura Vaccaro Seeger.  It has very simple text.  Almost all the pages have lots of green – in different hues and intensity.  There are also a couple of pages that have no green.

~Maureen

I concentrated on a color theme with the preschoolers today.

This original Pete the Cat book is about the color of the cat’s shoes – which are white at the beginning of the story.  He accidentally steps in colorful stuff throughout the book and his shoes turn different colors. “Did Pete cry?  Goodness, no!”
My voice was raspy this morning, so I put on the audio version of the book, which is easily accessible on the publishers website, and we sang along with Pete’s simple song.

Ella Sarah has very definite opinions on what she wants to wear each day.  (I had both an Ella and a Sarah in my group this morning, but I didn’t ask the moms if this were true at their homes.)  Ella Sarah prevails and wears the outfit she picked, which was perfect for that day’s activity. It was very colorful.

Small Bunny’s Blue Blanket has simple text, simple illustrations and a simple color palette – almost all blue.  The blanket is washed in the middle of the book, but all is fine by the end of the story.

Our final book was yuck!  It didn’t follow our color scheme, but it is really fun to read in a group.

I didn’t mention the first book I read, All the Colors of the Earth.  I chose it as part of the color theme, it celebrates diversity, and because it has a harvest time palette.  Sometimes my literal nature can spoil a story for me, however.  As I was reading the words, I found myself disagreeing with the premise that “Children come in all the colors of the earth and sky and sea.”  If you really want to see blue and green and purple people, I recommend Todd Parr’s books.  🙂   That reminds me, I should read one of his books soon.

    

Children 2.5-5 yrs old are great helpers in storytime, so they did a terrific job putting all the different colored feathers on our turkey today.

~Maureen