Catch the Possibilities

For the last year and a half I've been visiting a group of 6-12 month old babies at one of the preschool centers in my community. I also visit the next two older groups of kids on the same day. For simplicity's sake, I've been reusing the plans for my 0-36 month in-house storytime. If you're a regular reader of Mel's Desk, you'd be familiar with most of the storytimes I present. I plan to have 20 minutes of "group" time and like to keep the book count down to 2 or 3.

Things are going well with the upper two age brackets, but I wonder if I'm providing the most that I can for the youngest group. Since I can guarantee a 2:1, 1:1, or 1:2 adult:child ratio with the current crop of in-house attendees I have, I know that bounces, tickling rhymes, fingerplays, etc. can all be done easily (as long as the child is in the mood). At the center there are, at the most, 6 kids in the class and 2 adults. So I find that all those rhymes, bounces, fingerplays, etc. don't work-- or work but not as well as I think they could.

At a previous library, the department also did regular outreach to this age group, but it was to a preschool on a college campus, so in addition to the teachers, extra students were always present, and we had a volunteer who would come, so that there was a 1:1 or 1:2 adult:child ratio and a lapsit-style storytime was possible.

I've tried experimenting with some props or exploratory play segments. For instance, today I brought a large plastic bear (from this set) and set it on the floor at the beginning of our time. I left it there and after a bit, some of the babies starting being more curious about the bear than me being there. They all had a little time holding or examining the bear before I left. I've also done a counting rhyme (10 Little Books to the tune of Michael Finnegan) with actual board books. As soon as the books were stacked up in a pile, the babies needed to be touching and opening them, so we took some time for to play with the books. But those have been kind of last minute, fly by the seat of your pants sort of decisions. On the whole, I like to be more thoughtful than not when it comes to assembling a quality storytime. :)

Since I only visit the kids once a month, the babies aren't comfortable enough with me to want to sit in my lap for a bounce. How do you all manage storytimes for such young ones in situations where a 1:1 or 1:2 adult:child ratio isn't possible? What strategies or activities could I try to add value to the books and songs I'm already using?

I wasn't sure what to choose for a topic for this week's storytime, so I did some searching and found that it was Fall Astronomy week. Great-- a space storytime it is.

Space is a fun thing to talk about, but it is also a pretty abstract concept for a preschooler. We did a lot of discussing and defining. To reinforce the new vocabulary (like gravity), I incorporated it in several places in the storytime. So here's what we did:

We start out with our "letter tree," sing the alphabet song, and choose a letter for the day.

My hello song for this year is "New Way to Say Hello" by Big Jeff. You blink your eyes, wiggle your ears, and stomp your feet before deciding that we still like the old way, waving hello.

We read A Trip Into Space by Lori Haskins Houran first. It's a great easy nonfiction about going to the International Space Station.

Since A Trip Into Space introduces the concept of gravity, we followed that book with Gravity by Jason Chin. I enjoy how the entire book is simply focused on the concept of gravity, and it is presented in a manner accessible to younger kids.

After that, I asked them if they thought we could go to space wearing just our regular clothes. "We need space clothes!" they said. So we sang "If You're Going to the Moon" which I found on Mel's Desk. I added a "get dressed" verse so we could put all three things on at once. Then we floated around in gravity-less space for a bit. To end we went back to Earth and because of gravity, we fell down.

Cover image for The mouse who ate the moon

Next we wondered if we wanted to go to space how would we get there? I proposed several traditional methods of transportation until someone shouted we need a space ship! That segued to a Four Little Rockets flannelboard from Andrea at Roving Fiddlehead.

We read a new title, The Mouse Who Ate the Moon by Petr Horáček, a funny tale of a mouse who eats a banana she thinks is part of the moon. The kids caught on right away and we had a great conversation at the end about what they thought the moon might taste like.

On the topic of the moon, we sang the song Aikendrum with the clip-art flannel set I made.