Many thanks to Valerie Spooner, the new youth services librarian at the Rusk County Community Library in Ladysmith. Valerie comes to libraries from a rich early childhood background, and she took the time to send us a blog post about her first storytime!
Today was my first storytime
so I wanted to do something simple and easy. We talked about book care
and created a poster to hang in the children's area of the library. Here's an
outline of what I did with links :)
- I introduced our opening song (Hands
Go Up) http://elementarylibraryroutines.wikispaces.com/Storytime,
we sang it twice
- I introduced myself to the kids and families
and I said hello to each of the children - I had nametags at the entrance,
so I was able to call everyone by name.
- I told the kids what we would be doing
- I read Mr. Wiggle's Book by Paula Craig and
we talked about it as we went
- I read Read It, Don’t Eat It! By Ian
Schoenherr and we talked about it as we went
- I introduced the poster activity. Since we could only
have four children at a time working on the poster, I also had some
book care booksmarks for them to color while they were waiting their turn.
The bookmarks
are from http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Book-Care-Rules-Coloring-Page-and-Bookmarks-FREE-855552
- After everyone was done painting, I called
them back to the storytime squares and sang the Listening Rules Song from
the Second Step Early Learning Kit http://www.barrington220.org/cms/lib2/IL01001296/Centricity/Domain/1999/ELC_Song.pdf
- I read Forest Friends go to School, available
at http://crisscrossapplesauce.typepad.com/files/forest-friends.pdf
and here’s her website http://www.kindergartenkindergarten.com/2011/08/teaching-rules-and-routines-taking-care-of-books.html.
They really liked this - maybe because it was so similar to the Mr. Wiggle
book so they knew what to expect, or maybe because they could tell that the
writing, stickers, etc. were real.
- I thanked them for coming, then I introduced
our closing song (Tickle the Clouds), and we sang it twice http://laptimesongs.com/tickle-the-clouds/
It
seems like a lot, but it filled our 30 minutes perfectly.
Labels: storytime
