Catch the Possibilities

Nancy Foss from Galion Public Library asked if I could post these fun extension activities for Put Me in the Zoo by Robert Lopshire. My preschoolers and toddlers would get such a kick out of putting spots on the dog-- and using contact paper instead of felt is a good option for helping the poms stay stuck. Plus then you'd have to draw the dog once. (If I had to draw that, once would be plenty for me!) Enjoy!

I've been aware of my state's early childhood standards for a few years now, but it wasn't until I was contracted for a small project to help seed a database with storytime plans that I really spent time thinking how they might be applied to storytimes.

Lest you be mistaken, I'm not one of those "everyone sit down look at the teacher and don't even think about moving your body or your mouth for the next 30 minutes" kinds of librarians. (Do I even know any librarians like that? Hmmm). At any rate, I'm the kind of person who finds brain research, knowledge from other practitioners like occupational and speech therapists, inspiration from current events, new books, or other librarians super fascinating and interesting, but my goal is to use all of that to craft fun, playful, developmentally appropriate learning experiences centered around books and story.

So my challenge to myself this program year was, how could I utilize the domains and components of the early childhood standards to inform my storytime planning?

Here's what the overarching planning and development phase looked like:

I printed hard copies of our state's early childhood indicators of progress for birth to 3 and 3 to 5 and put them in a 3-ring binder.

Then I wrote out a list of every date I had Rock, Rattle, and Rhyme (Birth to 3) and Family Storytime (All ages, but targeted presentation for 3-5 year olds). I filled in places where I knew I already had special guests or other plans already made for the entire program year (Sept-May in my case).

I wanted to work my way through the domains and components as closely as they were presented in the documents, realizing of course, that overall human development isn't necessarily a linear process. But these documents were developed by lots of early childhood educators and specialists and it would seem likely to me that the order of things wasn't just random.

I made one significant exception in the Birth to 3 category. I decided to move much of domain 4, physical and motor development, to the end of the program year. As I had 30 dates to fill with 14 components, I will repeat all 14 twice, and both fine motor development and exploration and discovery will get a third date because they seemed easy to translate into storytimes.

With the 3-5 category, synchronicity prevailed and I had 21 components to place into 21 dates, so no adjusting needed to be made.

I placed the master lists of components and dates in the front of each section. This way, when it's time to plan some storytimes, I can just grab the binder and have everything at my fingertips.

Stay tuned for my storytime plans and thoughts about the experience!

One of the things I've been thinking about a lot lately is library buildings, services, patrons (and non-users), design and the future. Bryce's thoughtful look at the ACE study (here) got the ball rolling for me on trauma-information library service and what that might look like and the two have been swirling around in my brain all summer.

This is my attempt at a "twist" cone, if you will, of the two concepts. I did a bad librarian thing and forgot to write down the citation information for one of the books, so I'll list all the resources I've read so far at the end in my feeble attempt to give credit where credit is due, albeit in a roundabout fashion.

Talk about bang for your buck-- I spent $13 (only because I was out of bubble solution) and 15 minutes at the dollar store, 30 minutes getting ready (because every single bubble container had to have the foil peeled off. Oy!), and 40 or so kids and caregivers had smiles on their faces. Bubbles never seem to lose their magic no matter how old you get.

Here's what I bought:
3-pack Bubbles with wands (4)
32 oz. bottle Bubble Fun Bubbles (1)
Bubble sword (1)
Bubble Fun Bubble Blowers (2)
Touchable Bubbles (2)
Grab-a-Bubble Bubble Storm (2)
Bubble Wand Set- came with 10 different wands (1)

I had 4 different stations set up:

1. Bubble Painting
2. Make Your Own Bubble Wand (using wire I had on hand)
3. Bubble Wands (I just set out a bunch of bottles of bubbles and all the wands I could find)
4. Special Bubble Tools (the bubble sword, blowers, bubble storms, and touchable bubbles)

By far, simply letting the kids blow as many bubbles as they wanted was the most fun. The Touchable Bubbles were also a big hit. You wait a few seconds after you blow them, and then you can catch them in your hands!

I started to have a panic attack when I looked around and saw little white blobs all over the carpet, but they actually wiped up fine with a disinfecting wipe, and I think they would have even just sucked up with the vacuum, but once I started wiping them up I just kept going. I had hoped it would be warm enough to be outside, since Minnesota is having an early spring this year, but it was a little too cool yet this morning. But knowing that they don't stick permanently to the carpet, I would totally use them indoors again. Though I would bring a Swiffer from home to save the knees of my pants next time.

It hardly gets easier than this! Enjoy!

Great minds think alike-- we had multiple fish ideas this week!
Five Little Fish on Flannelboard Fun (my storytime kids would lose their minds when that clown fish came out!)
Bubble Bubble Pop! on Literacious (this set is so versatile!)
Five Rubber Ducks on One Little Librarian (okay, so these aren't fish, but how cute are these?)

Karlyn's Librarian Life has many ideas for a bedtime/pajama themed storytime, including this version of The Pajama Party! 

Three new animal themed ideas:
Five Little Monkeys Teasing Mr. Crocodile finger puppets from The Buckeye Librarian (my preschool kids would be on the floor laughing when they saw the mouth on that crocodile!)
Oh no! Someone Left the Barn Door Open at Fun with Friends at Storytime  (this would be fun for a peekaboo storytime with babies/tots, but you could also give clues and use it to work on prediction with older kids!)
Three Little Penguins Sliding on the Ice on Flannelboard Fun (this would be fun for a baby or toddler storytime-- my littles can't make it through five sometimes!)

Speaking of versatile sets...check out This is a Square on Flannelboard Fun. The possibilities are endless! :) 

Thanks to everyone who shared; see you next week at What Happens in Storytime... for a birthday extravaganza! 
 

As always, check the Flannel Friday website, Facebook, and Pinterest accounts for more information and past Flannel Friday creations. Are you on the Flannel Friday map? Add yourself via this survey.

We've all experienced that moment where everything seems to be working so well, and chalk it up to luck. Which, it could be; a happy happenstance. But is there a way to be more intentional to work toward those positive, cohesive programs?

Ms. Miller says there is. She uses a lesson design tool which asks her to consider the following questions for each lesson:

• What is the focus of the lesson? What do I want students to learn?
• Why is this important? How will it help students?
• How do I use this skill or strategy myself?
• What connections can I help students make?

Then she thinks about how to do this in a group setting:

• What books and/or materials will I need?
• Are there structures or formats that I need to show students how to do?
• How will I release responsibility to students during the lesson?
• Will students and I co-construct an anchor chart? What is its focus?

Then students have guided or independent practice:

• What books and/or materials will students need?
• What do I want the students to do? Individually, and/or in pairs, and/or in small groups
• What will I do? confer, listen in, observe, meet with students in small groups

And lastly, reflect, share, and teach:

• What did you learn (content)? How will you teach us?
• What did you learn about yourself as a reader today that you didn't know before (process)? How will you teach us? 

Then you reflect from an educator perspective:

• What did I learn from my students during the workshop?
• Where do I/we need to go next with our learning?

So. We're not classroom teachers. We might see a group of kids for 60 minutes and never have that same combination of kids again. We almost always have wide age ranges of kids in our programs, which means that we might have some kids who can read, some who can't, some who have learning disabilities we don't know about, or who will need 59 minutes to feel safe and comfortable expressing their thoughts. Is it still possible to be intentional about our program design?

I think it is. Hopefully Ms. Miller doesn't mind me borrowing some of her ideas!

Here's my first attempt at drafting a document that I could imagine myself realistically using to plan programs, but also reflects intentionality. What do you think?

In her section on creating classroom culture, she makes the point that, "when we want to cultivate dispositions for thinking in our students, we want to show them what good thinking sounds like, why it's important, and where it can lead us. Yes, we can tell them the importance of being curious or reflective, or even explicitly teach lessons focusing on attributes like these, but unless we also share our literate lives with children and think aloud to make our dispositions for thinking visible in authentic ways across the day and over time, it's unlikely to make a real difference." (pg 51).

I've been consciously using phrases like "good thinking!" or "I never thought of this in that way, that's an interesting choice!" when interacting with kids making projects or answering my questions in storytimes, but I'm reflecting now on how to take that a step further.

In the mixed-ages environment that we often see in storytimes, is is possible to incorporate authentic moments of transparent thinking without losing the group?

Here's where the librarian in me started jumping up and down while reading this chapter. When learning about comprehension strategies of proficient readers, Ms. Miller had an "ah!" moment. As she reports, Pearson, Roehler, Dole, and Duffy (1992) learned that active, thoughtful readers use just a handful of comprehension strategies, like:

• activating their prior knowledge and making connections between what they know and new information they encounter in the texts they read
• drawing inferences from the texts they read to form conclusions, make critical judgements, and create unique interpretations
• asking questions of themselves, the authors they encounter, and the texts they read
• determining the most important ideas and themes in texts they read
• summerizing and synthesizing information within and across texts
• monitoring the adequacy of their understanding
• creating visual and other sensory images during and after reading (pgs 52-53)

Sound familiar to anyone? Librarians who are familiar with Every Child Ready to Read and Every Child Ready to Read 2 skills and activities are likely already incorporating practices in their storytimes building skills that address these strategies, albeit in a developmentally appropriate way.

But have we transferred those skills into our other programming? STEAM programs are easy to put your thinking on display, since those types of programs are naturally curious, questioning,  and problem solving based. But a Ninjago program? Star Wars Reads Day? Gingerbread houses? I'm challenging myself to work at engaging the learners in my programs by putting my thinking on display. We're a WiFi library; why not take a moment in a program to say, "you know what, I don't know what a fox sounds like, but I would like to. I wonder if it sounds like a dog or more like a wolf? I bet I could find a video of a fox on YouTube. Let me get an iPad and we can look it up and listen together." How would that change the culture of the program, or the relationship I have with the kids in the program?

Do you put your thinking on display? What challenges do you find in finding places for authentic thinking with multi-aged groups? Why do you keep doing it?