Bunny Rabbits - Family Storytime

I have this really cute bunny felt set with 2 rhymes and a song to go with them, so since it was the beginning of Spring when we start to see baby bunnies appear and close to Easter I decided to do rabbits for my theme.

I started with my welcome song and introductions, and then realized I completely forgot to grab the non-fiction book I had intended to use in the introduction. I moved on to our story song and decided since it was a slightly older crowd than usual I would get to read one of the longer stories, Muncha, Muncha, Muncha by Candace Fleming and G. Brian Karas, which I love.

In this story, Mr. McGreely finally plants the garden he's always dreamed of, but just when the fruits of his labor are ready to pick, 3 hungry bunnies sneak in and eat them. He tries everything to keep them out, but they still get in every time. There is a lot of repetition, plus an increasingly angry Mr. McGreely.

After that we did a counting down rhyme with the flannel board:

Five Little Bunnies

(modified from Let's Play Music)

Five little bunnies playing on the floor;

One hopped away, and then there were four.

Four little bunnies hiding behind a tree;

One climbed up, and then there were three.

Three little bunnies wondered what to do;

One went to sleep, and then there were two.

Two little bunnies looking for some fun;

One jumped down a hole, and then there was one.

One little bunny, alone in the sun;

He hopped home to his burrow, and then there was none.

[For the pattern and more ways to use this felt set, see my "Flannel Friday Five Little Bunnies" post.]

Then we read another favorite of mine, Everybunny Dance by Ellie Sandall. I love this book because it is is so interactive and incorporates movement. The audience can stand up and pretend to be one of the bunnies and act out the motions with them as they dance and twirl, clap their paws, bang a drum, toot a horn, and sing, until the fox shows up! 

Then all the bunnies must run and hide, holding their breath and not making a sound. But as it turns out, the fox is only looking for an audience. 

Despite these books always proving to be extremely engaging in the past, I was completely loosing my audience so I decided to call it quits, and went right to our closing song, then put out the materials for the optional craft.

Craft

I actually put out two options for the craft, one was making a simple paper headband with bunny ears. I cut paper strips for the headband, and printed out sheets with the bunny ears and let them cut them out, figuring they would be easier to color that way, and maybe the kids would get some practice with scissor skills.

For the second, I borrowed a cute idea from another children's librarian who was gracious enough to share her file with me, to make a Duck-Rabbit. If you look at it one way, it's a bunny, but if you flip it over, then it's a duck! I printed it out, and provided crayons, scissors, googly eyes, and cotton balls for tails. I also used feathers last time, but opted not to this time because they are so messy and irritating. I saw one bunny leaving that must've grown up near a nuclear waste dump site, because he had about a dozen eyes all over his body, LOL! This was my example:

How It Went

I have to say, this was a very disappointing and dissatisfying storytime, despite all the components having been extremely engaging and well-received in previous storytimes. My "cute little animals" themed outreach visit last week went much better.

This is the weekend all-ages family storytime, and we (the two children's librarians and two children's associates) each do it one weekend a month. It doesn't have a regular crowd like the weekly storytimes do, so you really have a different crowd each time, and you never know what ages you'll get.

I was at first pleasantly surprised when I saw it was a slightly older crowd than usual, which usually means they are more engaged and can do longer, more sophisticated books and they pay attention and participate more. Not this time. I don't know what it is, but people here often just will not sit close enough to me to really see and hear well. I keep encouraging them to move in close, and sometimes they will, sometimes they won't. This group just wouldn't; it was like they thought I had some terrible contagious disease. I even had one family sit behind me!

No matter how hard I tried, I just couldn't keep them engaged, and there was too much chatting amongst themselves by both parents and kids, distractions from other stuff going on, and the parents weren't really doing anything to help keep the kids focused. I really though I'd have a lot of fun with this storytime, and ended up cutting it short instead. I find I'm enjoying my outreach visit more than this in-library storytime much of the time, but there are still days when I get a good group and it goes really well. 

Flannel Friday - Five Little Bunnies

Five Little Bunnies

(modified from Let's Play Music)

Five little bunnies playing on the floor;

One hopped away, and then there were four.

Four little bunnies hiding behind a tree;

One climbed up, and then there were three.

Three little bunnies wondered what to do;

One went to sleep, and then there were two.

Two little bunnies looking for some fun;

One jumped down a hole, and then there was one.

One little bunny, alone in the sun;

He hopped home to his burrow, and then there was none.

Obviously you can use the word "bunnies" or "rabbits", whichever you prefer, and this could of course be used around Easter time, but any time as well. I initially put this together to have an activity to follow the book Everybunny Dance!

I made a quick and easy pattern using the shapes tool in MS Publisher, with ovals for the ears and circles for the head, body, and tail. Feel free to use my bunny pattern, or make your own. I decided to use a mix of white and brown bunnies, but you could make them all the same, or use other colors. 

When I go to the trouble to make felt pieces, I like them to be multi-purpose, so I will try to find other songs or rhymes to use them with. The first rhyme uses counting and rhyming words; this next song works on letter recognition with the addition of felt letters spelling out "bunny" and the tune of the classic song "Bingo":

B-U-N-N-Y

I know a pet that's soft and cute, 

And "Bunny" is its name-oh.

B - U - N - N - Y

B - U - N - N - Y

B - U - N - N - Y

And "Bunny" is its name-oh!

Repeat, and after each verse turn one rabbit around, and instead of saying that letter, either clap or hop in it's place (depending on space and preference).

And here is a "Five Little Bunnies" rhyme that counts up instead of down:

Five Little Bunnies

One little bunny, wondering what to do,

another bunny came along, then there were two.

Two little bunnies, hopping like me (Hop)

Another bunny came along, then there were three.

Three little bunnies, jumping around outdoors,

Another bunny joined them and then there were four.

Four little bunnies, so fluffy and alive,

Another bunny joined them, then there were five.

Five little bunnies, ready for some fun,

Hopped away in the warm, spring sun.

For more felt & flannel ideas and tips, check out the Flannel Friday Facebook group and Pinterest Boards! To share your flannel, submit via the Flannel Friday Tumblr. For complete information and all the details, visit the main Flannel Friday website.

Preschool Storytime - Rabbits

This storytime actually came from a plan I prepared for an assignment. The original plan called for Everybunny Dance! by Ellie Sandall, which is what I did for the interview, but since I had already done that book and Candace Fleming's Muncha! Muncha! Muncha! with this group recently, I used the alternate books from the plan I had prepared.

We started with our welcome song, then I introduced the topic with a non-fiction book, Rabbits, Rabbits & More Rabbits by Gail Gibbons to give them a few interesting facts about rabbits, and the difference between rabbits and hares. Then we moved on to our story song, with added bunny-themed verses.

For our first story I chose The Little Rabbit Who Liked to Say Moo by Jonathan Allen. This is a cute story of a little bunny who likes to try making the sounds of other animals, and the other baby farm animals all join in. Eventually, they all decide that while it is fun making other sounds, the like their own sounds best, except for the rabbit who surprises the audience in a twist ending. 

Kids love making the animal sounds, which helps with phonological awareness, and they can identify the animals. Short, simple text and very cute illustrations.

I followed that with a cute flannel board and rhyme. I used the "Shapes" tool in publisher to make a simple bunny pattern with ovals for the ears and circles for the head, body, and tail, then drew on mouth and whiskers and added googly eyes.

Five Little Bunnies

Five little bunnies playing on the floor;

One hopped away, and then there were four.

Four little bunnies hiding behind a tree;

One climbed up, and then there were three.

Three little bunnies wondered what to do;

One went to sleep, and then there were two.

Two little bunnies looking for some fun;

One jumped down a hole, and then there was one.

One little bunny, alone in the sun;

He hopped home to his burrow, and then there was none.

After the first time, I had the kids put the hand they used down, and use their other hand in order to be sure their non-dominant hand got some fine-motor exercise, too.

Our last story is one of my boss's favorites, Duck! Rabbit! by Amy Krause Rosenthal andTom Lichtenheld. This is an exercise in perspective and point of view as we have an image that can be seen as a duck or a rabbit.

Two unseen voices argue back and forth, each presenting different observations to support their opinion. In the end, they start to see each other's point of view. Then, look, there's an anteater! Or is it a dinosaur??

While reading the story, the kids will also argue back and forth about whether it's a duck or a rabbit. Afterward, we tried  to take a vote and graph it, but it didn't work out quite as well as I'd hoped. Three-year olds just can't really grasp the concept of voting, or making a choice and sticking to it. 

I tried a show of hands, I tried getting them to line up on different sides of the room, but they would keep changing their minds. It was like an episode of Keystone Cops, LOL! We finally got them to stay on one side or the other, and I showed them how to do a simple bar graph of the results to work on pre-math skills.

After that, we sang our closing song and passed out stickers.

How It Went

Overall it went okay, though slightly downhill at the end. They really liked the first book and the rhyme. They didn't quite seem to get Duck! Rabbit!, although I did hear some arguing about whether it was a duck or a rabbit, and voting and graphing were just too much for them to grasp. While I really like the idea of adding math literacy to storytime, I think I will have to stick to sorting and grouping activities and shapes with the younger ones.