This week at toddler/preschool story time, we read books about friendship. Our color of the week is green.
First, we read the book, “Grandpa Green” by Lane Smith.
It’s a beautifully illustrated book that’s told from the great-grandson’s perspective of his great-grandfathers life. His great-grandfather loves to create topiary’s and that’s how the story is told; through various topiary’s. The sad note in this book that the parents picked up on but the kiddos didn’t, is that his great-grandfather has Alzheimer’s Disease and is starting to forget things.
To celebrate the color green and to tie in with the book, we made paper doll elephants and used our dot-dot markers to color them green. I really think the kids enjoyed this craft. My problem is that we had six kiddos here but only two markers.
In hindsight, I should have brought my dot-dots from home and asked a story time mom to bring in hers as well. Ah well. This gave the moms a chance to talk, the kids a chance to learn how to take turns and to play with one another and me a chance to check out books for our story time friends.
We then sang, “If You’re Friendly and You Know It” which I think the kids enjoyed. I was the only one singing so that was terrifying but it worked out well because the kids had big grins on their faces.
If You’re Friendly… added 1-26-00 Original Author Unknown
Sung to: “If you’re happy and you know it”
If you’re friendly and you know it,
clap your hands.
If you’re friendly and you know it,
clap your hands.
If you’re friendly and you know it,
and you really want to show it,
If you’re friendly and you know it,
clap your hands!
I know that type is tiny but I’m not sure how to make it bigger. Please bear with me! I’m learning more every time I blog! Here’s the website that I found a variation of the song we did today:
http://www.preschooleducation.com/sfriend.shtml
Our second book of the day was “Pine and Boof” by Ross Burach.
This is a great book about friendship and has lots of silly giggles thrown in. The kiddos were a bit distracted because we had that down time in between with the craft. I won’t put the craft in the middle of story time again! Either at the very beginning or at the end. I’ve learned my lesson! But, I got loud with this book to help draw their attention back and that seemed to work well.
Finally, we did a finger-play called “Two Little Friends”. At my conference last week, one of my classes was about diversity in story time and tips on how we can make everyone feel welcome while adding some cool things to our kiddos worlds.
We did this finger play using American Sign Language. First, we counted to ten using ASL and then we did this finger play:
Two little friends are better than one,
And three little friends are better than two
And four are much better still
Just think what four little friends can do!
Here our friends are painting their elephants.
My children’s school was selling this old kindergarten stand because they didn’t need it anymore. I picked it up for $5 you guys! I was super excited. It’s our new story time corner toy shop. The kids really like it because it’s their size and all of our fun toys fit perfectly on it’s shelves. We had to drag them away for story time!
