Storytime: Families

Books

The Family Book by Todd Parr

One Family by George Shannon

Families, Families, Families by Suzanne Lang

Love Me Tender by Elvis Presley and illustrated by Stephanie Graegin

Littles and How They Grow by Kelly DiPucchio

We Are Family by Patricia Hegarty

I did this storytime around Valentine's Day. I never do holiday specific storytimes, but I still sometimes like to have themes inspired by holidays. What better way to celebrate love than talking about all different kinds of families? I tried to choose books that showed a lot of non-traditional families and diverse groups of people. I did a mix of songs and rhymes about both families and love.

Click read more for family related extension activities!

Storytime: Trees

Books

Trees by Lemniscates

Tap the Magic Tree by Christie Matheson

Who Will Plant a Tree? by Jerry Pallotta

A Tree For Me by Nancy Van Laan

Tree by Britta Teckentrup

There Was a Tree by Rachel Isadora

I haven't posted in a while so I wanted to at least get one of my backlog of posts up before the end of the month! I did this storytime back in April in honor of Arbor Day and Earth Day. I didn't end up using a flannelboard for this one partially because I didn't have time to make a new one and partially because the other activities I had planned took up a large amount of time. I've started to move away from doing flannelboards for every single storytime theme to give myself some breaks from making them.

For tree themed rhymes and songs click read more!

Ukulele: My Roots Go Down Chord Chart

As usual, I haven't caught up with storytime posts. One of these days, I'm going to sit down and get a bunch of them posted all at once, but today is not that day. I did, however, want to share this great tree themed song in celebration of Earth Day over the weekend and Arbor Day this Friday!

Back when I was a child in the 1980s I had a cassette tape (remember those?) called "Two Hands Hold the Earth" by an artist named Sarah Pirtle. You can actually still order it on CD! I hadn't thought about it for a long time, but a lot of the songs really stuck with me. One of those songs was "My Roots Go Down" and I thought it would be a great tune to sing in celebration of the earth and trees so I set out to find ukulele chords for it. In my search, I found a video by musician Isaac Zones of him playing the song, but with some slightly different lyrics, each verse about a different part of a tree. Isaac listed his email in one of the comments on his video so I emailed him and he was kind enough to send me a complete chord chart!

After finding a few different versions of the song by various artists, I was inspired to write my own verses. In my version of the song each verse mentions a different type of tree and a movement you can have the children do along with the song. Using Isaac's chord chart as a guide, I made a chart of my own. This song uses two chords that we haven't used in any of the songs I've listed on the blog so far, but they are both very easy: A minor and C7.

 

Fingering charts from Coustii

The rest of the chords are C, F, and G, which we have gone over in some of my previous ukulele posts. If you need a review, click here! Click read more for my version of Sarah Pirtle's "My Roots Go Down"!

Ukulele: Starting a Circulating Collection

At the end of August 2017, I made a proposal to start a small circulating collection of ukuleles at my library. We finally got everything together and ready to go in February of 2018 and it has been a big hit so far! I'm hoping the collection maintains its popularity. I know many libraries have circulating ukulele collections, but I wasn't able to find a lot of information online about how they got their collections started. Fortunately, I was able to get some advice and assistance from a number of people from the Librarians with Ukes Facebook group which really helped me out! I wanted to pass on some of what I learned so I can hopefully help anyone else who is wanting to start a collection too.

My proposal focused on three main questions: why, what, and how? Those are the questions I would encourage yourself when you are thinking about starting a collection of your own.

Click read more for more information about the whys, whats, and hows for starting a circulating ukulele collection.

Happy Read Across America Day!

I often make clothes to go with my storytime themes or for different library programs and events. Today is normally my day off, but I agreed to go over to the local elementary school to read to a couple different classes for their celebrations today. I had to stay up until nearly 2:00 am to get this dress finished in time, but it was worth it!

I've been meaning to post more pictures of my fun themed outfits, but I usually forget to snap pictures while I'm at work. I got a coworker to take one of my Dr Seuss themed dress today though! I wanted to hold a Seuss book for the picture, but all of the ones in our English collection were checked out, so I grabbed a Spanish one. Sadly, my Spanish skills are not anywhere near the level they would need to be to read this book out loud or run a Spanish storytime.

The dress is made from a variety of Seuss-themed quilting cottons. It's even lined with a white fabric that has Seuss book titles on it. I used Simplicity 1873 for the bodice pattern, but the skirt is just gathered rectangles. The dress also feature sizable pockets in the side seams of the skirt, also made from the white book title fabric.

Hopefully in the future I'll post more of my thematically appropriate outfits to this blog. I've made quite a few so far, but just haven't gotten good pictures of them. Originally my goal was to post pictures of those along with my storytime write ups, hence the lookbook part of my blog name!

Storytime: School

Books

Bob and Flo by Rebecca Ashdown

Pete the Cat: Rocking in My School Shoes by Eric Litwin

Maisy Goes to Preschool by Lucy Cousins

Dad’s First Day by Mike Wohnoutka

Wow! School! by Robert Neubecker

Rosie Goes to Preschool by Karen Katz

Because of some weird scheduling I had one storytime theme that I was only doing with the all ages group and not the toddlers. This one happened right around the time that school started here. Yes, this has been sitting in my drafts folder since September! Most of the children who come to the all ages class are between three and five years old. I figured they will be graduating up to pre-k and kindergarten soon and many of them have older siblings just starting school so a school theme would be fun for them! Pete the Cat: Rocking in My School Shoes was definitely the favorite for this storytime. I didn't show a video or play the song but I definitely sang the words in the book with the official tune:

Kids and caregivers were snapping and clapping along with the rhythm. It was so much fun!

For school themed extension activities click read more.

Storytime: Numbers and Counting

Books

Eggs 1 2 3 by Janet Halfmann

The Water Hole by Graeme Base

1-2-3 Peas by Keith Baker

Ones and Twos by Marthe Jocelyn and Nell Jocelyn

7 Ate 9: the Untold Story by Tara Lazar

Goodnight Numbers by Danica McKellar

As usual, I've gotten way behind on my posts. One day, maybe I'll catch up. I wanted to at least get one storytime post up during February though! I did this storytime quite a while ago, but counting is a theme that can be used any time of year. There are a wealth of books, songs, and rhymes that involve counting, so it's a great theme for a storytime! I especially liked Eggs 1 2 3 because it is a nonfiction book with information about different animals and the types of eggs they lay. The kids can guess what the animal is before you turn the page. The platypus one definitely stumped them!

For a small selection of the numerous counting songs and rhymes that are out there, click read more.