This was our second week of summer reading, which had the overall CSLP theme of "Adventure Begins at Your Library". I usually pick loose weekly themes after I've booked performer/presenters based on their shows; this week I booked an interactive steel drum performance so used "Exploring the Arts" as the theme for the week. This was a very fun, busy, and noisy storytime!
My toddler storytimes incorporate a lot of repetition and movement, with generally only one book, followed by activities that are usually open-ended, exploratory, and play-based. We started with our "Hello" song, followed by this month's warm-up song:
Hello, Everybody
(from Jbrary)
Hello, everybody, can you touch your nose?
Touch your nose, touch your nose?
Hello, everybody, can you touch your nose?
Touch - Your - Nose
(I do 4-5 verses with various body parts/actions)
Next we did two movement songs with props. This month, we are using shaker eggs and I chose two recorded songs, "I Can Shake My Shaker Egg" by Eric Litwin & Michael Levine and "I Know a Chicken" by Laurie Berkner:
If You're Ready for a Story
This book has beautiful, creative illustrations that use handprints and fingerprints to create images of flowers, trees, butterflies, a dragon, and more. I immediately fell in love with the idea of using handprint art for one of our activities, but as I read the book in storytime I realized the text really didn't flow that well or tie in to the pictures well enough. Sometimes I do an additional song or rhyme after the book, but I had a large group and I was losing them, so I went straight to counting with bubbles, which is how I end every toddler storytime.
Pop, pop, pop go all the bubbles,
Activities
- Handprint Collage - Inspired by our book, but I used large stamp pads with washable ink instead of paint because it is easier, less messy, and dries much faster. Also provided markers for adding details.
- Dot Painting - While perhaps not as creative as others, young kids really love this and it gives them practice with their fine motor skills and eye-hand coordination, and they can play with color. While I do give them printed templates with the circles to fill, they always have the option of turning it over and doing their own thing on the back.
- Play-Dough Sculpture - Provided several different colors of play-doh, cookie cutters, rotary cutters, plastic knives, and rolling pins and just let them do their own thing! Parents love when we do this at the library, because so many don't do it at home (unfortunately). I emphasize that rolling, squishing, and cutting dough is such great exercise for little hands and fingers, building strength and motor skills.
- Musical Instruments - I could not come up with anything I liked for the sensory bin, so I decided to just put all the instruments in it. After all, they are definitely sensory! I felt a little bad about it, because I knew my assistant and some of the adults (and some kids) would have a hard time with the noise, but I felt I just had to this time and knew most of the kids would love them.
The book I chose was great for inspiring an activity, but not so great for a group read-aloud, and I lost all but the oldest kids' attention, but of course quickly re-gained it when I brought out the bubbles! A few families opted not to stay for the activities, or not very long, due to being overwhelmed by the noise and number of people, and that's okay. Usually, after they have been coming regularly and get to know people, they get used to it, plus it's usually not as noisy as it was today 😉. For example, the child in the photo above gleefully banging the cymbals with a huge grin of pure joy on their face used to be very quiet and shy, and would leave right after storytime instead of staying for the activities. Now, they stay afterward and dive right in!
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