Toddler Time - Space

This week's Toddler Time is all about SPACE! No particular reason why, I just thought a space program would be fun. :)

Stories We Shared

Today we shared two books. Over the summer I've started to get a slightly older crowd, and that means I can sometimes share a slightly more detailed book. Our first book was an older one, but one I think is a lot of fun. Dogs in Space still has Pluto listed as a planet (sadface), but I just changed the title to "dwarf planet." This was a fun book (better for the older kids than the younger) and had a ton of good talking points. We talked about why Mercury might be hot and Pluto cold, what an asteroid is, and the red spot on Jupiter.
Next up we read I Want to be an Astronaut. Super fun and simple. This is definitely a good story for the younger kids.

Flannels We Shared
I did two magnet rhymes today (the magnet board seemed more fitting than the flannel board). The first was based off the 5 Elephants Went Out to Play (hard to sing with astronauts, but we managed) and the second was a super simple Rocket poem. (pictures to come)

     Three Little Astronauts
     One little astronaut went out to play
     Over the moon and far away.
     He had such enormous fun
     That he called for another astronaut to come!

     Two little astronauts went out to play
     Over the moon and far away.
     They had such enormous fun
     That they called for another astronaut to come!

     Three little astronauts went out to play
     Over the moon and far away.
     They had such enormous fun
     That they called for everyone to come!

     I'm a Little Rocket

     I'm a little rocket,

     Pointing to the moon!

     5, 4, 3, 2, 1... 

     Blast off, zoom!

Songs We Shared

Today we sang our shaker song (of course) and sang Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star, and The Itsy Bitsy Spider. 

Early Literacy Tips We Shared

• Having a large vocabulary, knowing the names of things, is one of the skills children need when they later learn to sound out words. 
• When you come to a word that is not familiar to your child, use that word and explain it in a way your child can understand. Books give us different words than those we use in conversation. Knowing many words helps children with reading when they try to sound out words. 

Toddler Time - Clap and Stomp

I felt the need to do lots of singing and moving around for today's story time, so we had a Clapping and Stomping program today.

Stories We Shared

Today we read a favorite of mine: Stop Snoring Bernard! by Zachariah O'Hara. I LOVE this book so much. Love, love, love. Bernard is adorable and snoring is so much fun. If you have an active group getting them to yell "STOP SNORING BERNARD!" with you is so much fun.

Flannels We Shared

Our flannel today was "Who Said Moo?" from the Clueless Librarian. They loved my cow and horse the most. (Note: chicken feet are hard!)

Rhymes We Shared

Today we sang a lot. A LOT. We started out with If You're Happy and You Know It (just clapping, stomping, and yelling hooray), which we sung twice, of course. Then we moved onto Old MacDonald Had a Farm (cow, pig, and sheep). And of course, our favorite (I do love this too) Shaker Song (with all the verses!) and a new shaker song: Shake It to the East (by guess who!), followed by Twinkle Twinkle.

     Shake It to the East

     Shake it to the east
     Shake it to the west
     Shake it all around
     and then you take a rest
     Shake your shakers up
     Shake your shakers down
     Shake it, shake it, shake it,
     and then you settle down.

Early Literacy Tips We Shared

• Activities like clapping and stomping help a child to build motor skills and boost coordination!
• Introducing your child to songs, rhymes, and books is a great way to help your child expand his or her vocabulary since books and rhymes often contain a larger variety of words than what we typically use in conversation.

Toddler Time - Purple

Still going strong in our color series today! We're almost done though. I think we're all just a little relieved. The 7 week series was ambitious and interesting, but we're all getting a little bored. If I do a series like this again (IF), I'll limit it to 3 weeks. Today's theme was purple!

Stories We Shared

Today we read Purple Little Bird. I've seen some adaptations of this in flannel, and I would love to do that some day, but the story is adorable on its own.

Flannels We Shared

Once again we did our Little Bird flannel. The kids love matching our birds to their nests, but are pretty much done with the rhyme. We now just ask which bird goes with which nest and play with them. Which works!

Rhymes We Shared

Our first song of the day was We Love Purple. I found this one on Preschool Express. It's from Heather McPhail. It is fun, but it will get stuck in your head!

     We love purple, we love purple.
     Yes, we do.  Yes, we do.
     Purple grapes and eggplant,
     Purple plums and grape juice,
     Just for me, just for you.

We also played a game today. We played a scavenger hunt style game where I had taped purple crayons all over the program room and while we sang the Color Chorus from Teaching Mama. My kids found purple crayons on the wall and put them in my basket. Totally adorable.

     If you see a purple crayon, pick it up.

     If you see a purple crayon, pick it up.

     Stand and wiggle, give a SHOUT!

     If you see a purple crayon, pick it up!

Of course we sang the Shaker Song, Eensy Weensy, and Twinke Twinkle Little Star today.

Early Literacy Tips We Shared

• Babies can begin to associate words with objects and people as early as 6 months. Parents who identify the color of objects and frequently repeat this concept will find that their toddlers will start to recognize color names quickly.

Toddler Time - Blue

Welcome to week 5 of my color series for Toddler Time! This week we're focusing on the color blue! This week I disovered that it isn't super easy to find short, easy to remember rhymes about the color blue (if you have any leave them in the comments! I'm always looking for more.). Stories are easy, but rhymes not so much. I didn't want to have to fall back on Two Little Bluebirds [Blackbirds] so I went to pinterest and the Flannel Friday board to find an easy rhyme that went with the color blue.

Stories We Shared

It has been SUPER nice here this week, so everyone was wicked full of energy. So today we focused more on things that kept us moving and singing, and only read one book. We read My Blue Boat by Chris Demarest. It was a super cute story with awesome illustrations.

Flannels We Shared
We're still in our color series (only two weeks to go now) so we did our usual routine of the Little Bird rhyme and one new flannel. This week's flannel comes from Storytime Katie. The original rhyme is 5 Big Whales, but I wanted blue, so changed it to 5 Blue Whales. We had more fun just playing with the whales and making them swim than with the rhyme, but I think that was in part due to everyone wanting to be outside. This week I had a teen volunteer help me with my flannels.

     Five Blue Whales
     Five blue whales in the sea offshore
     One swam up to spout and that left four.
     Four blue whales in the deep blue sea
     One swam up to spout and that left three.
     Three blue whales in the sea so blue
     One swam up to spout and that left two.
     Two blue whales having loads of fun
     One swam up to spout and that left one.
     One blue whale longing for the sun
     He swam up to spout, and that left none!

Rhymes We Shared
This week's big winner was the Shake Your Shaker song from Jbrary. This week the toddlers were huge into the song and we sung it three times, each time to giant smiles. I think we'll continue to use this song when the color series is over.
As as usual for our color series we danced to De Colores and sung Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.

Early Literacy Tips We Shared

• Parents, don't forget that repetition helpls children develop and maintain connections in their brains. This is one of the reasons we've been repeating so much in Toddler Time recently. 
• Parents who identify the color of objects and frequently repeat this concept will find that their toddlers will start to recognize color names quickly. 

Toddler Time - Green

Today was the fourth week of my color series, so our color was green. I had a parent tell me that I do a wonderful job and how much her toddler loves coming, so I think that's some good feeback. :) It's always super nice to hear that I'm doing something good.

Stories We Shared:

Today we read two stories about green. The first was Green by Laura Vaccaro Seeger (super fitting). This is perfect for Toddler Time. PERFECT. Each page has a color of green and a matching illustration. We didn't read every page, but the pages we did read fascinated the toddlers. Our second book was a big book version of Jump Frog Jump by Robert Kalan. This is another classic, and the big book format was awesome.

Flannels We Shared:
Since today was green I had to sing Five Green and Speckled Frogs. I just had to. And Five Green and Speckled Frogs is fantastic for flannels, so I made five flannel frogs to go along. (my photo is a little blurry, it doesn't do my frogs justice.)

Rhymes We Shared:
It's the middle of my color series, so we repeated the same rhymes from before. We shook our shakers to Shake Your Shaker from Jbrary, waved our scarves to De Colores by Raffi, and twinkled our scarves, fingers, and shakers to Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.

Early Literacy Tips We Shared:

• Parents, you may have noticed that we're repeating a lot recently. This is because research shows that repetition helps young children form and maintain connections in their brain and nervous systems. 
• Color and shape are among the first concepts babies learn. Babies can begin to associate words with objects and people as early as 6 months. Parents who identify the color of objects and frequently repeat this concept will find that their toddlers will start to recognize color names quickly. (I try have my tips memorized, but for some reason even though I've been using these tips for a couple of weeks I lost this one halfway through and had to dig out my notes. It was pretty funny. I just wish my parents had been able to complete my tip for me, that would have been awesome!)

Toddler Time - Bunnies!

Wow! Two weeks in a row without having to cancel! I'm on a roll. I had a good sized crowd today, with lots of new faces, so the word about Toddler Time is spreading. Which is totally awesome. The program is still pretty much organized chaos, since Toddlers. But they have fun, the parents have fun, and I enjoy it, so that's all that matters.
This story time was all about Bunnies because it's spring. And I like bunnies. (Also I was told to do an Easter story time, but I don't think it really has a place in Story Time since it's a religious holiday. Bunnies was my compromise.) This was also slightly shorter as a story time since I'm still coughing and under the weather.
Onto the books!

Books We Shared:

The first book we shared was What Does Bunny See by Linda Sue
Park. While it isn't my favorite I do love the illustrations in this one. They're bright, colorful, and full of things too look at. The kids who knew their colors liked saying what colors Bunny saw too.

Our second book is an old favorite of mine. We read Little White Rabbit by Kevin Henkes. Kevin Henkes is a favorite of mine. His stories are so readable- even the longer ones like Wemberly Worried (though I have a soft spot for Wemberly Worried since my cat Winston is a Wemberly). In this one I just love the way Kevin Henkes draws. His rabbit is just so darn cute. And the giant two-page illustration spread of what Rabbit daydreams really got the attention of my kids today.

Flannels We Shared:
This wasn't strictly a flannel, since I just used paper images cut out with a magnet on them. Since I've been sick I've been slacking off on the actual flannels. I will turn it into a real flannel at some point though. This "flannel" is one I created myself based on a rhyme by Jean Warren. I added a few stanzas to her rhyme and made the bunnies a little silly.

     Four Little Bunnies

     By Jean Warren
     Four little bunnies went out to lunch.
     They found some carrots and took a bunch.
     They ate the carrots with a crunch, crunch, crunch!
   
     Four little bunnies went out to lunch.
     They found some lettuce and took a bunch.
     They ate the lettuce with a munch, munch, munch!
          Broccoli, apple, oranges, spaghetti, cookies

This rhyme was a hit. If nothing else than for the big pictures of food. Even the littlest ones got excited when they saw pictures of food they recognized.

Action Rhymes We Shared:

I found this rhyme on Verona Story Time, a storytime blog by the Verona Public Library. This was a HUGE hit and we ended up singing it four or five times. Which is a lot when it's repeated three times.

     Hop, Hop, Hop Along

     Hop, hop, hop along

     Or bounce on someone’s knee

     Higher and higher and higher and higher

     Bunny-hop with me!

          [Repeat 3 times]

This also makes a great lapsit song with parents holding their baby on their laps. Since I have toddlers we bounced. A lot.

For a second activity I handed out egg shakers and we danced to Raffi's Shake My Sillies Out. I also sang, which surprised some of the parents. :) What can I say? I love Raffi.

Early Literacy Tips We Shared:

This week I tried something different. I reused most of the same tips from last week. I wanted to see if any of the parents rememberd them. I didn't get any comments, but I did get more nods. I might try doing some more repetition. 

• Learning different animal names will help a child to build their vocabulary. The larger a child’s vocabulary the more words he will be able to recognize and understand in print and in speech.
• Activities like hopping in place will help your child build coordination and the large muscle groups in his or her legs.

Toddler Time - Birds

Today's Toddler Time was about Birds. It's finally spring up here in Maine, and I was feeling optimistic with a spring theme. Since we still have about 2 feet of snow in areas it doesn't feel very spring-like outside.

Books We Shared:

Our first book, Little Owl Lost by Chris Haughton, tells the story of an owl that falls out of his nest and must find his way back to his Mommy. He's helped along the way by a squirrel who jumps on the features Little Owl says his Mommy has and ask if animals like bears, frogs, and bunnies are Little Owl's Mommy. The kids really
liked saying if each creature was Little Owl's Mommy.

Our second book of the day was Early Bird by Toni Yuli. We
pulled out the scarves for this one and followed Early Bird's activities by moving our scarves. This is a super cute and the kids loved it.

Flannels We Shared:
Today's flannel is based off the Little Mouse flannel we've done in the past. I tried to find the website I stole it from, but I could not. I'm sorry. I was a bad librarian and didn't bookmark/record my resources. (If you know of a site that lists it please post in the comments.)

     Little Chick
     Little Chick, Little Chick where are you?
    Are you in the  ________ egg?
        (repeat for each color)

Action Rhymes We Shared:

We did two action rhymes today. First up is the favorite Two Little Blackbirds. For this rhyme I handed out blackbird puppets to everyone. Everyone got at least two (sometimes more, lol) paper blackbirds taped onto a craft stick. As we sang the song we acted out the rhyme with the puppets.

    Two Little Blackbirds

    Two little blackbirds sitting on a hill,

    One named Jack, and one named Jill.

    Fly away Jack,

    Fly away Jill.

    Come back Jack,

    Come back Jill!

Our second rhyme was a spin off of Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear called Little Birds, Little Birds. I found this one on Storytime Katie. 

    Little Birds

    Little birds, little birds, jump up and down

    Little birds, little birds, don’t make a sound

    Little birds, little birds, peep, peep, peep

    Little birds, little birds, sleep, sleep, sleep

    Little birds, little birds, fly to the leaves

    Little birds, little birds, sit down please.

Early Literacy Tips We Shared:

• Learning different animal names will help a child to build their vocabulary. The larger a child’s vocabulary the more words he will be able to recognize and understand in print and in speech.
• Having your toddler hear rhymes prepares him for later being able to recognize and say when words rhyme. This is critical later when your child learns to read because they need to hear the smaller sounds in words to later be able to sound out words.
• Songs and rhymes like Little Bird and Teddy Bear help toddlers to work on their motor skills by jumping, turning, and sitting.