Flannelboard: Houses

If I come up with more rhymes and songs to go with this set, the post will be updated to reflect that. If you have ideas for other ways to use the set, please share!

Flannelboard

Mouse in the House is a storytime staple. When I decided to do a city themed storytime and found the "Five Little Houses" rhyme, I knew I had to make a mouse to add to the set too. Both the houses and the mouse, like most of my flannels, are my own design. I've used this flannelboard for many storytime themes including: city, Dr. Seuss, mice, and opposites. I'm sure that I'll be bringing it out for future storytimes too.

Flannelboard: Hearts

If I come up with more rhymes and songs to go with this set, the post will be updated to reflect that. If you have ideas for other ways to use the set, please share!

Flannelboard

This was actually one of the easiest flannelboards I've made so far, which was good because I didn't have much time to make it! The hearts were supposed to look like they were making kissy faces when you turn them over, but it mostly just looks like they are wearing lipstick. Oh well, it's still cute! I used this for my hugs, kisses, and love and families storytimes

Flannelboard: Dinosaurs

If I come up with more rhymes and songs to go with this set, the post will be updated to reflect that. If you have ideas for other ways to use the set, please share!

Flannelboard

My goal here was to make the dinosaurs cute, but also realistic enough to be able to easily identify which dinosaur it was supposed to be. Hopefully I succeeded! Included are a red Tyrannosaurus Rex, a yellow-orange Pteranodon*, a green Apatosaurus, a blue Triceratops, and a purple Stegosaurus. I think my favorite has got to be the Stegosaurus. It definitely took the longest to make! I used this flannelboard for my first and second dinosaur themed storytimes.

*Fun Fact: A pteranodon is not actually a dinosaur!

Click read more for songs and rhymes to go with this board.

Storytime: City

Books

Wow! City! by Robert Neubecker

Subway by Anastasia Suen

*City Animals by Simms Taback

*City Shapes by Diana Murray

City Street Beat by Nancy Viau

Good Morning City by Pat Kiernan

Books marked with * are the ones we used for this storytime. There are lots of great options for city themed books! I had a big group with a wide age range today so I chose one book with a bit more text, City Shapes, and one with very simple text and lots of interaction potential, City Animals. I wanted to include Subway as well, but we just didn't have time today. City Shapes is a fantastic book with nice rhyming text. There are great opportunities to ask the kids to point out different shapes and colors on each page. As a bonus, the child who leads readers through the city is an adorable little black girl, based off the illustrator's daughter, and there is lots of diversity in all the people on the pages. City Animals has large pages that fold out to slowly reveal a city dwelling animal after giving different clues. The kids had a lot of fun guessing what the animal was, some were much easier to guess than others. The fold out pages and big images were great for the larger group to see.

 For songs and rhymes click read more!

Citing Sources

My blog started off as a series of Google Docs that were personal resources for planning storytimes. When I wrote those out, I didn't make note of where I got specific rhymes and songs since they just for personal use and planning. Now that I'm regularly converting those documents into public blog posts, I will try to be better about citing where I find any activities I use. As a librarian, I know I should be better about citing sources!

The next storytime post I do might not have that since I've already pretty much planned the storytime in my Google Docs, but hopefully starting next month! I will also try to start taking my own pictures of crafts, either my own examples or ones the kids make, instead of pulling examples from the various craft blogs I use. 

If I have time to go back through old posts, I'll try and find the sources and also take pictures of my own craft examples. I don't want to promise anything right now though since sifting through old posts may take a while!

Storytime: Hugs, Kisses, and Love

Books

*Love Always Everywhere by Sarah Massini

~A Kiss Like This by Mary Murphy

Hug Machine by Scott Campbell

The Perfect Hug by John Walsh

~*Kitty’s Cuddles by Jane Cabrera

Love Monster by Rachel Bright

Books marked with a ~ are ones used for our toddler storytime. Books marked with a * are ones used for our all ages storytime. Today was my first week doing both toddler and all ages storytimes. Since our toddler storytime was on Valentine's Day this week, I wanted to do something thematically appropriate for the holiday without actually mentioning the holiday directly. There is a lot of debate in the storytime world about whether to do holiday storytimes or not. I think it's best to er on the side of caution and not do anyhting directly related to holidays in case some of my patrons don't celebrate them and wouldn't be comfortable attending a storytime themed around one. Hugs, kisses, and love can be enjoyed by everyone though! Our all ages storytime ended up only having two toddlers this week so the books skewed younger than they normally would for that day. Love Always Everywhere, A Kiss Like This, and Kitty's Cuddles all have pretty simple text with few words on the pages. There aren't any plots for younger kids to follow or concepts illustrated by the pictures that might be hard to understand for very little ones. Love Always Everywhere has a diverse cast of children in the illustrations, which I love. It's a very sweet book and perfect for a love themed storytime. If we had had a slightly older crowed for the all ages storytime, I probably would have used Love Monster and Hug Machine, but the sweet simple text in Love Always Everywhere was great for the younger group.

Click read more for rhymes, songs, and crafts!

Storytime: Dinosaurs

Books

*Are the Dinosaurs Dead, Dad? by Julie Middleton

Gigantosaurus by Jonny Duddle

*Inside-Outside Dinosaurs by Roxie Munro

The Littlest Dinosaur’s Big Adventure by Michael Foreman

Dig Those Dinosaurs by Lori Haskins Houran

*I Dreamt I was a Dinosaur by Stella Blackstone

Books marked with a * are the ones I used for this storytime. I have a thing about not using dinosaur stories that show people living with dinosaurs so most of these titles do not have human characters. Are The Dinosaurs Dead, Dad? does include humans with dinosaurs, but the dinosaurs are museum exhibits so that was okay for me. Both of the humans in that story are white. Dig Those Dinosaus is about paleontologists and there is some diversity in the humans included in the illustrations. Inside-Outside Dinosaurs is a non-fiction book, not a story. I shared it with the kids at the end of storytime. It has one large spread of a dinosaur skeleton over two pages with the name of the dinosaur and what it means. On the next page it has an illustration of the dinosaur in it's habitat. The kids in my group were really into the pictures in this one, so we went a little over our half hour looking at pictures of the dinosaurs!