Cats Storytime! -

I’m so excited to tell you that we had seventeen friends join us today for storytime! 17!!!! Our little children’s room was crowded!

Our theme today was cats and our color of the week was white. I had planned on reading, “It Looked Like Spilt Milk” but our big books haven’t arrived yet so I’ll read that one during “M” week. But, because it didn’t arrive, I was scrambling to find a new craft for this week. White themed crafts were a lot harder craft to come up with on the fly than I thought they would be.

We started with our good morning welcome rhyme, “Hands Go Up”. Our regulars are always excited to show the new kids our routine. Then we did two fingerplays. We started with “5 Little Kittens”. I found it on one of my favorite librarian bloggers, Storytime Katie. Here’s the link to her page: https://storytimekatie.com/2013/01/28/cats/

Fingerplay: “Little Kittens”
Five little kittens (hand in a fist)
All black and white
Sleeping very soundly
All through the night
Meow, meow, meow, meow, meow (raise each finger individually)
It’s time to get up now.
Credit: Pierce County Library

Then we did “Where is Big Cat?” to the tune of “Where is Thumbkin?” I found it on a website I just found. I love her website! It’s got lots of great ideas on there. https://www.adventuresofabookworm.com/2015/03/18/storytime-kitten/

Where Is Big Cat (Tune: Where is Thumbkin)

Before starting I introduce the kids to Big Cat (my thumbs) and Little Cat (my pinkies). The cats give a little meow and the kids show me their Big Cat and Little Cat.

Where is big cat, where i big cat (hide thumbs)
Here I am, here I am (bring thumbs out)
How are you today cat (wiggle one thumb)
Very well I thank you (wiggle other thumb)
Meow, meow, meow (put thumbs behind back)
Meow, meow, meow

(repeat with little cat)

Then we read “Big Cat, Little Cat” by Elisha Cooper. It’s a great book about friendship and showing the new guy around to make him feel more comfortable. It also touches on death briefly. I know the moms caught it but most of the kids didn’t. I did have one little girl in the front row tear up when the older cat “didn’t come back anymore”. So I tried to keep moving because the story ends happily. Great read for this age group. This book is also a Caldecott Honor book!

Next, we read a folder story. I really love these! This one came from Dr. Jean. You can find her here: http://www.drjean.org/html/monthly_act/act_2009/02_Feb/pg16.html

Folder stories are great and the kids love them. I modified our story to have a white cat for our color theme. It’s really easy and the kids liked to snap along with the words.

Our last story today was a classic. “Pete the Cat: I Love My White Shoes” by Eric Litwin and James Dean. We had two kids that knew this book and were reading along with me (LOVED this!!!!). The other kids picked it up pretty quickly and started singing Pete’s song with us. Hands down, my favorite storytime book that we’ve read this fall. When the kids can pick it up that quickly, you know you’ve got a winner.

For our craft, I said I was struggling. Everything I found involved a lot of cutting, which I didn’t have time for. I also didn’t want to do something difficult. So, I printed off cat outlines on yellow paper because both of our covers today were yellow.

Then I handed out white stickers and told the kids to make their yellow cats turn white. We didn’t have enough white stickers (they are from the 8th grade level accelerated reader stickers that NEVER get used!) because we had 17 kids there and I was planning on around 9 so we just had to make do with yellowish white cats.

I tried to keep it simple because they are toddlers and preschoolers. This craft helped them with hand eye coordination and attention to detail because those white stickers are hard to see on those white sheets.