Thursday, January 11, 2018

Storytime: Yoga

Books

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Good Morning Yoga by Mariam Gates
You are a Lion! by Taeeun Yoo
Little Yoga by Rebecca Whitford
I am Yoga by Susan Verde
The ABCs of Yoga for Kids by Teresa Anne Power
Yoga Bunny by Brian Russo

Another in my backlog of drafts. I am so glad to finally get this one posted!

Full disclosure: I am not at all a certified yoga instructor. I've taken some yoga classes and that's about it. Some library systems may take issue with doing a "yoga" storytime without certification. I posted about this storytime on Storytime Underground and when others brought up this concern, Andrea, who runs the Yogilibrarian, suggested calling it "mindful movement" instead, which I think is a brilliant idea if you have any concerns.

This storytime was so much fun! I honestly wasn't sure how yoga would go for storyime, but it was great! I had a stand to hold up the books while we were doing poses together. The kids responded really well to all the movement and poses. They especially loved You Are a Lion because we made animal sounds together along with doing the poses. I have since purchased this book for my permanent storytime collection so I'll always have it available to use! One of the older boys who came to my storytime this day was so into it that he was asking for yoga books to checkout after the storytime was over, which definitely makes it a success in my book!

Click read more for song and rhyme ideas for a yoga theme!

Storytime: Pirates

Books


Charlotte Jane Battles Bedtime by Myra Wolfe
Bubble Bath Pirates! by Jarrett J. Krosoczka
This Little Pirate by Philemon Sturges
Pirate Nap: A Book of Colors by Danna Smith
The Pirate Jamboree by mark Teague
Swap! by Steve Light

I'm finally getting my backlog of storytime posts up. I'm doing them in no particular order, just whichever one is easiest to format first. This storytime was back in September for Talk Like A Pirate Day. It was a lot of fun and the kids were pretty into it! One issue with pirate themed storytimes is a huge percentage of the books are about white boys. I tried to make sure I had at least some diversity in the titles, but it was difficult. I solved this issue somewhat with my flannelboard where I made sure to include female pirates and pirates of color!

Click read more for fun pirate themed activities!

Storytime: Soup

Books


Chicken Soup with Rice by Maurice Sendak
Soup Day by Melissa Iwai
Tiger in My Soup by Kashmira Sheth
Slop Goes the Soup by Pamela D. Edwards
Soup for One by Ethan Long
There’s a Giraffe in my Soup by Ross Burach

I may still be behind on getting my backlog of drafts up, but I'm going to start the year right with getting my first storytime of 2018 posted in a timely manner! January is National Soup Month so I thought that was a perfect theme to start off the year. With its rhyme for each month, Chicken Soup with Rice was a great book for both starting the year and to fit with the soup theme. My group loved the silliness of There's a Giraffe in My Soup. There were many giggles to be had at the ridiculous situations. I found a few soup related rhymes and activities which I have listed below, but I ended up only using the "Rainbow Stew" flannelboard. I didn't find either of the other songs and rhymes particularly compelling and decided to just use some of my standard shaker egg songs and ukulele song activity instead. Maybe they will inspire you more than they did me though!

Click read more for soup related activities!

Tuesday, January 2, 2018

Happy New Year!

My resolution this year is going to be to try and keep on top of storytime posts much better than I have this past year. I still have a backlog of 30 post drafts just waiting for some minor editing.  Hopefully I can get those out within the next couple of weeks and then update on a weekly basis after that!

One of the things that holds me back with getting posts up in a timely manner is getting pictures of crafts taken and added to the posts. As such, I may leave the craft section of the storytime posts off unless I've come up with a particularly unique and interesting craft to go with the theme. Usually though, I just search with Google Images and Pinterest for preschool crafts that will fit the theme, which I think any of you  can easily do to find crafts that will work with the supplies that you have!