Catch the Possibilities

I started off with the hello song The Learning Groove uses on their cds. Its fun and easy to teach, and while you name all the kids' names, the way the song works it doesn't take up 10 minutes to greet each child. If I have an uneven amount, I say hello to myself, to the grownups, to moms, to dads, to grandmas, etc.

I visit a preschool one day each week, and often tailor my storytimes to whatever special theme they are highlighting that week. They did a week of "unusual" transportation, so I did my best to come up with some unique things to showcase. Its a bit random, but I really like what I came up with-- and the kids did too!

Books:
(I read just the pages about pirate ships from Everything I Know, and also identified all the vocabulary for the ship parts)


Extensions:
Song: Sail, Sail, Sail Your Ship (via Storytime Katie)

Activity: Garbage Truck Sorting (idea from Miss Sarah's Storytime)
I had leftover squares of different colored construction paper from the Little Mouse's houses craft project, so I handed pieces of paper out to the kids and they had to match their paper to the color of the garbage truck on the bag (pictures via Google). Each bag has a different colored garbage truck on each one, so I only have to haul around 3 bags instead of 6!



Flannelboard: A Hunting We Will Go (a Melissa Depper standard)
Clip-Art pairs included: chimp/blimp, sheep/jeep, goat/boat (I used a pirate ship to make it more "unusual"), and rocket/pocket

Flannelboard: Pirate Ships (pattern and rhyme from Fiddlehead Kidlit)
I used the "So Many Pirate Ships" rhyme from Andrea's post, and imported her pattern into the Silhouette Studio so the machine did all the detailed cutting for me! One ship decided to go rogue and not follow the pack :)

Songs:
I'm a Book Baby (younger group)
These Are My Glasses (preschool group)
Reach for the Sky (both groups)

No matter how you do it, seems like Summer Reading just knocks everyone off their schedules and takes over your life, whether it be a couple weeks or an entire summer. I'm back with a post about the first in a mini-series of preschool science programs.

I started off with the hello song The Learning Groove uses on their cds. Its fun and easy to teach, and while you name all the kids' names, the way the song works it doesn't take up 10 minutes to greet each child. If I have an uneven amount, I say hello to myself, to the grownups, to moms, to dads, to grandmas, etc.

Then we read The Tiny Seed by Eric Carle. My group was 3-6 year olds, so I paraphrased some of the longer pages towards the end of the book as the littles were getting restless!


I photocopied a set of life cycle cards from Garden Adventures which was a great resource. Thankfully, I was able to find a copy (not listed on WorldCat) in my state to borrow. We talked about what was happening, and named the various parts of the plant as it grew roots, sprouted, grew buds, flowered, and grew fruit.

After the group portion, I let the caregivers and kids work their way at their own pace through three stations:

1. Plant a Seed
I had small pots purchased at the dollar store leftover from a spring program that they decorated with stickers and permanent markers. They planted grass seeds and could bag their pot up in a lunch bag for easy transport home. The first time I planted seeds at the library, I made the mistake of having water on the tables. While an important part of the process, it turned lots of dirt into mud, which of course ended up on the floor and was hard to clean up (we have carpeting in all but the entryway of our library). So now, dirt does get spilled, but at least it is dry and vacuums up easily.

2. Seed Sorting & Weighing
With some last-minute advice from seasoned preschool science presenter, Amy K, I purchased a balance scale. (She recommends this one, I purchased this one at a Lakeshore store near my house). Not the most accurate thing I've ever used, but it worked for our purposes of exploratory play. I purchased several varieties of seeds at the dollar store (they were just 25 cents a pack!) and dumped them out into mini-Frisbee (really any plate would work, I just happened to grab these that morning). We made grids with masking tape on the tables (I couldn't find ice cube trays on my dollar store trip) for kids to sort seeds into groups of the same seed, and see how many seeds it took to balance out a small gladiola bulb.

3. Flower Measuring
I had intended to print out some pictures of flowers, or purchase some real flowers, but that didn't happen. Instead, I pulled out some flowers I use in storytimes and music programs that I purchased at, you guessed it, the dollar store. I had a yard stick, rulers, and unifix cubes available for kids to measure with.

On each table I posed some questions to the caregivers to help inspire their conversations with the kids as they worked. Naturally some did a great job, and others were more content to chat among themselves, but hey--win some, lose some.

I learned on Monday, through a Series of Random Events, that Minnesota is adding a Picture Book award to our current Maud Hart Lovelace awards, which are all student choice awards. The new award is the Star of the North award, which features both fiction and nonfiction picture books that have not won a Caldecott medal, have been published in the 2 years prior to the award year, with special consideration for Minnesota authors (among other criteria). I decided to feature some of the books at my last storytime as a way of introducing the award.

Books we read:


We did a very informal poll at the end. Many kids liked The Astonishing Secret of Awesome Man, and several moms commented that they liked the message of Pete the Cat and His Four Groovy Buttons. Personally, I love John Rocco's art in Blackout, so that was my favorite.

• Put letters on the Chicka Chicka tree; sing ABCs (Playing & Singing)

Minnesota reporting in with a "Feels Like" temperature around 23. Watching the wind whip snow around outside the windows as light rain falls, it seems like poor timing to be posting about umbrellas. But its April! At least the sun is poking out from time to time.


Felt Board Ideas is a great site for flannel board inspiration and rhymes! She even includes a video demonstrating this rhyme, and offering suggestions for ways to extend the learning after or before the rhyme.

The umbrellas were created by an awesome teen volunteer, and were inspired by this pin (currently not available from the original source).

As you can see, each umbrella is ~6 inches from tip to tip.

Books:

• Put letters on the Chicka Chicka tree; sing ABCs (Playing & Singing) [so many bodies!]
• Letter writing practice with the dry erase boards (Writing)

Books:

• Put letters on the Chicka Chicka tree; sing ABCs (Playing & Singing)
• Letter writing practice with the dry erase boards (Writing)

• Put letters on the Chicka Chicka tree; sing ABCs (Playing & Singing)
• Letter writing practice with the dry erase boards (Writing)

• Put letters on the Chicka Chicka tree; sing ABCs (Playing & Singing)
• Letter writing practice with the dry erase boards (Writing)

• Put letters on the Chicka Chicka tree; sing ABCs (Playing & Singing)
• Letter writing practice with the dry erase boards (Writing)

I don't typically do reviews on here because, yeah, I barely have the time to get reviews written for School Library Journal. But I ordered this book with high hopes because preschool-appropriate, orchestra-themed books are really hard to come by. I love introducing all the instruments in music programs, so I am constantly on the lookout for new material.

Groan-inducing "cat" phrases aside (there's at least one per page. Consider yourselves warned!), this is a winner. The plot is fairly simple: the "Meowstro" loses his baton before the "orcatstra" (see, I told you!) is due to go on, so he goes around asking the musicians who play different instruments if they have seen it. So you have Yoshi, who plays the taiko (Japanese drum), and Erin, who plays the harp (Ireland), and so on. I won't spoil how Meowstro solves his problem, as the baton is still missing after asking 16 people (you could easily skip some of these when reading aloud to speed up the process), but I think kids will think it is quite silly. A fairly kid-friendly glossary is included giving more information about the instruments and orchestra terms mentioned in the text. Joe Lanzisero's illustrations feature cats wearing ethnic dress from the countries mentioned and fairly detailed (for cartoons) instruments. I love the expressions on all the cats' faces!

Is this an award-contender? Not in my opinion. Will it be the best book you read aloud this year? Probably not. Is it worth buying? I definitely think so. I know I will be using this musical cat-tastrophe (buh dum shhh) in storytimes soon!

This was one of the first flannel board sets I ever made. In the craft drawers at my previous job, I found several sheets of these pizza toppings. I cut them out and covered one side with contact paper and glued felt to the back. The pizza pie I cut from a large sheet of cardboard that came with a poster I purchased. My mom helped me cover it with flannel. This has been a handy little flannelboard to have to take with on outreach visits, but velcro dots don't stick as well to the flannel as they do to felt.

I have enough pieces that all the kids get one for each hand, and then we build the pizza one topping at a time, ending with the pieces of cheese. I have always thought it would be cute to get a pizza box to put the finished product in, but for this time I brought a pizza peel from home and thanked the kids for getting my lunch ready for the oven for me. :)

• Put letters on the Chicka Chicka tree; sing ABCs (Playing & Singing)
• Letter writing practice with the dry erase boards (Writing)

• Put letters on the Chicka Chicka tree; sing ABCs (Playing & Singing)
• Letter writing practice with the dry erase boards (Writing)