Flannelboard: Bear in the Lair

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

Flannelboard

I used this board for my hibernation and camping storytimes. I am honestly a little surprised that I haven't seen anyone else use this idea. I found a lot of hibernation themed storytimes for inspiration, but none of the flannelboards were quite what I wanted for the theme. I eventually latched onto the idea of a “Mouse in the House” variation with a sleeping bear in a den. I decided to keep the rocks for all the dens grey and just change the colors of the moss and foliage around the den. 

Rhymes, Songs, Games, and Fingerplays

“Bear in the Lair”

“Sleepy bear, sleepy bear, are you in the (color) lair?”

Source: Written by me!

Storytime: Hibernation

Books

Old Bear by Kevin Henkes

Hibernation Station by Michelle Meadows

Bear Snores On by Karma Wilson

Time to Sleep by Denise Fleming

Sleep Bear! by Shelby Alinsky

Hibernation by Margaret Hall

This was a really fun theme and a great one for including some nonfiction titles. There are a lot of fantastic books related to hibernation. As you can tell by the covers, most of them feature bears, but Time to Sleep, Hibernation Station, and Hibernation all talk about other animals that hibernate as well. I love Old Bear. It's a sweet story and the illustrations are so lovely!

For extension activities click read more!

Storytime: Dinosaurs II

Books

Stomp, Dinosaur, Stomp! by Margaret Mayo

Bones, Bones, Dinosaur Bones by Byron Barton

I am NOT a Dinosaur by Will Lach

Dinosaurs from Head to Tail by Stacey Roderick

Dinosaur Roar! by Paul and Henrietta Stickland

Tyrannosaurus Rex vs Edna the very First Chicken by Douglas Rees

I have a big backlog of storytme posts still sitting in my drafts, but this one was easy to get ready to post since I didn't have to take any new photographs for it and there was minimal formatting that needed to be done. As such, I'm posting it first and hoping I can get through some of my backlog in the next couple weeks!

This is my second time doing a dinosaur theme. I was going to wait about a year to recycle any themes, but I saw other librarians doing dinosaur themes for “Dinovember” and I couldn't resist! I used a lot of the same extension activities from my first dinosaur storytime, but I used a completely different set of books and found some new songs and rhymes as well. When I do dinosaur themed storytimes, I like to not have books that include dinosaurs and humans living together and also love to use books that have multiple dinosaur names included as well as nonfiction titles. I am NOT a Dinosaur was a great title to use because it outlines some prehistoric creatures that are often mistakenly identified as dinosaurs (like pteranodon and plesiosaur) which is a great teaching opportunity!

Click read more for the new dinosaur songs and rhymes I found!

Storytime: Mice

Books

Mouse and Hippo by Mike Twohy

Oops Pounce Quick Run by Mike Twohy

Mayday Mouse by Seb Braun

Hide and Squeak by Heather Vogel Frederick

Mouse Shapes by Ellen Stoll Walsh

Mousequerade Ball by Lori Moretensen

There are a lot of great picture books and children's songs about mice. There's also everyone's favorite flannelboard, "Mouse in the House," so this storytime was a definite winner!

Click read more for extension activity ideas

Art in Action: Frida Kahlo

Books

Frida Kahlo: The Artist Who Painted Herself by Margaret Frith

Me, Frida by Amy Novesky

Frida Kahlo by Ma Isabel Sanchez Vegara

Frida by Jonah Winter

Frida: Viva La Vida! Long Live Life! by Carmen T. Bernier-Grand

Viva Frida by Yuyi Morales

This was the second Art in Action program I ran, but it has taken me this long to get it up on the blog. I'm hoping to get at least some of my backlog of posts up during the holidays when I have some time off work and storytimes!

Frida Kahlo is one of my favorite artists. She has beautiful art and an inspiring story. I'm so glad that she has become such a popular figure. It was really easy to find good books about her. My favorite of these books was Me, Frida. The illustrations are very reminiscent of Frida Kahlo's own work.

After I did this program I also discovered the wonderful Lil' Libros board books. They have a great little counting book inspired by Frida too: Counting with/Contando con Frida by Patty Rodriguez. This would be another great book to pull for a Frida Kahlo related program, especially if you anticipate having younger children there. It is a bilingual book and teaches some interesting vocabulary relevant to artists, like paint brushes and portraits, as well as the blue house, La Casa Azul, which is the name of Frida's home in Coyoacán Mexico and where the Frida Kahlo museum currently is!

For my Frida Kahlo art project examples click read more.

Ukulele: Picked a Pumpkin Chord Chart

As usual, I am far behind with storytime write-ups. I have a lot of them nearly ready to go and just need to add images, but I keep putting that off. In the meantime, however, I'd like to share another seasonally appropriate chord chart I recently made. I've swapped this one in for my berry themed songs with my random song activity. This one is to the same tune (Oh My Darling Clementine) as the "Picked a Berry" song I posted about earlier this year, but is about picking pumpkins instead!

Feel free to download and use the pdf from my Google Drive if it would be useful for you!

Flannelboard: Pirates

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

I used this for my pirate storytime on Talk Like a Pirate Day! I spent far too much time making these pieces, but hopefully I will find use for them in the future. If nothing else, I can continue to do pirate themed storytimes for Talk Like a Pirate Day every year! Part of the reason I decided to do a flannelboard with five pirates instead of something like a mouse in the house variation with treasure in chests was that I wanted to make 100% sure I would have both female pirates and pirates of color in my storytime. Most books for children about pirates feature white boys as the protagonists so I thought a great way to make sure I added more diversity was to do a flannelboard with different pirates too! I've made three out of the five pirates female and each pirate has a different skin tone. The two lightest skin tones look pretty similar in photographs but they are different and I think the difference is slightly more obvious in person.

Songs, Rhymes, Games, and Fingerplays

Flannelboard: “One Brave Pirate”
(Tune: One Elephant Went Out to Play)

One brave pirate sailed out to sea
Across the blue waters, wild and free
He had such enormous fun
That he called for another brave pirate to come.

Two brave pirates sailed out to sea
Across the blue waters, wild and free
They had such enormous fun
That they called for another brave pirate to come.

Verses: Count up to five

Five brave pirates sailed out to sea
Across the blue waters, wild and free
They had such enormous fun
As they sailed together 'neath the golden sun!

Source: modified from Storytime ABCs

Flannelboard: “Five Scurvy Pirate”

Five scurvy pirates standing on the shore,
One went on a search and that left four.

Four scurvy pirates sailing out to sea,
One went for a swim and that left three.

Three scurvy pirates out on the ocean blue,
One walked the plank and that left two.

Two scurvy pirates having tons of fun,
One went below the deck and that left one.

One scurvy pirate, tired and alone,
He turned the ship around and sailed for home.

Source: Storytime ABCs

Flannelboard: Flowers

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

I used this for my flowers and garden storytime. I am honestly not terribly thrilled with how this board turned out, but I had less time to make it than with many of my previous boards. I would like to at least add cute faces to these if I use it again, but what I'd really prefer is a flannelboard with five different types of flowers! I'm thinking rose, tulip, daffodil, delphinium, and iris. I can definitely see myself using a flower themed board again in the future, so I may update this board at that point in time.

Songs, Rhymes, Games, and Fingerplays

“Out in the Garden”

Out in the garden
Growing in the sun
Were five pretty flowers
And I picked one!

Verses: Count down to one

Source: Mel's Desk

Storytime: Flowers and Garden

Books

Planting a Rainbow by Lois Ehlert

Plant the Tiny Seed by Christie Matheson

My Garden by Kevin Henkes

Lola Plants a Garden by Anna McQuinn

What Does Bunny See by Linda Sue park

Flower Garden by Eve Bunting

There are a lot of great books about flowers and gardens out there and it is a perfect theme for Spring or Summer. I did this one in late Spring, even though I'm just getting to posting it now. Plant the Tiny Seed is a fantastic interactive book if you have a small group, though it may not work as well for a larger audience. It was my favorite of the book selections for sure. I used What Does Bunny See in my bunny storytime too, but I brought it back for some of my groups who hadn't read it the first time around.

Click read more for extension activities to go with this theme.

Flannelboard: Gnomes

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

I used this for my gnome storytime. This set definitely took longer than a lot of my flannelboards, but I have a slight (okay more than slight) obsession with gnomes so I had to make it perfect. As with my superhero flannelboard, I made sure to make each gnome have a different skin tone from pale peach to dark brown and also to have both male and female gnomes represented. Most gnomes you see in artwork are white males with white beards and red hats, so I included the traditional gnome among my pieces, but there is no reason that gnomes can't come in all skin tones and hair colors! 

The list of songs and rhymes to go with this board is a bit long, so I've put it behind a cut. Click read more for gnome themed rhymes and songs to go with this cute board!

Storytime: Gnomes

Books

Go Big or Go Gnome by Kirsten Mayer

No, No. Gnome by Ashlyn Anstee

Lawn to Lawn by Dan Yaccarino

Good Night, Garden Gnome by Jamichael Henterly

The Tomten and the Fox by Astrid Lindgren

Pip the Gnome by Admar Kwant

We didn't actually have all of these books at my library. I bought a copy of Pip the Gnome specifically for this storytime and my personal collection at home because I love gnomes! I ended up using it for the toddler storytime, so I'm glad I had it! If you like to use music from CDs or videos with your storytimes, definitely consider using Emily Arrow's "No, No Gnome" song along with the book!

I was so exciting for this storytime that I even dressed up for it both times I ran it, with different gnome themed dresses each time! I dress up for storyimes when I can. I should really try to get more pictures of that since that is what the "lookbook" part of my blog title was supposed to be. 

For extension activities click read more.

Flannelboard: Eclipse

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 just a quick modification to my spaceship flannelboard that I used for my eclipse storytime. Reusing parts from old flannelboards is always a great option when you can do it!

Songs, Rhymes, Games, and Fingerplays

"Where is Bright Sun?"

Bright sun, bright sun, we’ll find you soon.
Are you behind the (color) moon?

Source: I made this up myself!

Storytime: Eclipse (Sun and Moon)

Books

Sun & Moon: A Giant Love Story by Lisa Desimini

Sun and Moon by Lindsey Yankey

What the Sun Sees/What the Moon Sees by Nancy Tafuri

Papa, Please Get the Moon for Me by Eric Carle

Sun and Moon Sisters by Kho Lê

Whose Moon is That? by Kim Krans

I have a backlog of other storytime posts to get to, but I wanted to share the eclipse one while it is still relevant! My library is not in the path of totality, but we are getting over 99% coverage with the eclipse coming up on Monday. As such, a lot of the people in the area are very excited about the eclipse. I thought it was only fitting that I do a Sun and Moon themed storytime in celebration. I was even able to find one book that has an eclipse as a central part of the story: Sun & Moon: A Giant Love Story! The rest of the books are simply about the sun and moon. I found a lot of songs about the sun and moon and modified lyrics to some of them to be more eclipse related. For those songs and other extension activities click read more.

Ukulele: Snuggle Puppy Chord Chart

I'm starting a baby storytime soon and one book I'm very excited to use for it is Sandra Boynton's Snuggle Puppy. Of course, I wanted to learn how the song for the book went and the next step was to learn how to play it on the ukulele! This song uses some new chords that the other songs I've outlined so far do not:  A, A7, and D, in addition to the G chord that you already know. Here are the fingering charts for those chords:

Fingering charts from Coustii

Since I am now in the habit of making cute chord charts for all the songs I play in storytime, I had to make one for Snuggle Puppy too, even if it was a lot harder to fit the whole song on one page! The book does not have the repeat at the end of the chorus the second time it is sung, so that's how I made my chord chart so caregivers could read along with the book while I play.

Source: Snuggle Puppy song lyrics are by Sandra Boynton and the music is by Eric Stolz. Thank you to Christy Shink on the Librarians with Ukes Facebook group for providing me with the chords!

It's a little difficult to read the chords in the jpg image, but they are much clearer in the pdf version. Feel free to download the pdf from my Google drive and use it for your own storytimes if you would like!