Pickles for My Picnic

It's summertime and picnics are on the schedule. I've done some other posts for PICNIC that needed one more fun activity! I have an interactive rhyme about a jar of pickles for our lunch.  I made a large jar shape and added the light grey lid shape with silver fabric paint. I made about 30 pickle circles with felt and used dark green fabric paint for the peel and white fabric paint for the seeds.  I can hand out the pickles and tell the kiddos to listen as I give a clue. I then say, "If you're wearing sandals today, bring up your pickle and add it to my jar.". I'll continue with different clues,  If your name starts with (say a letter); or if you have a dog for a pet... We'll celebrate together when the jar is full of pickles! Pickles are so much Fun with Friends at Storytime!

                                      

Two Delicious Pickles!

 Happy Summer time! Just in time for picnics I have a new finger puppet set.  Here are my Two Little Pickles.  I just used a Google image and jazzed them up with fabric paint, and googley eyes.  These two make me smile 

Two little Pickles in the fridge being chill.

One is Sweet and the other is Dill.

Roll away Sweet… Roll away Dill.

Come back Sweet...Come back Dill.

Two little Pickles in the fridge are so chill!

One is Sweet and the other is Dill.  

Be sure to smile when you say 'sweet' and pucker up after you say 'dill'.  LOL!

Yummy pickles are so much Fun with Friends at Storytime!  

The Luck of the Irish

I really enjoy St. Patrick's Day!  I've posted a few posts before here and here...and here (potatoes). I also found some terrific ideas @ Jen In The Library's blogpost about St. Patrick's Day. I've got a little riddle/rhyme set to use with the flannelboard to go with a St. Patrick's day storytime. It's my Green Guessing Game.  I used some Google images that I printed, laminated, cut out and put a small piece of velcro on the back. I had to add some green sequins to the traffic light for a shiny green 'go'. LOL!  I'm sure this game will lead to a lot of discussion! 

St. Patrick's day and the color green are a lot of Fun with Friends at Storytime! 

The rest of the Flannel Friday roundup is @heytherelibrary. Be sure to check out the Flannel Friday Pinterest Boards for other great ideas!

Down by the Pond

We have a pond near our house that we visit when the grandkids come over. They never get tired of walking to the pond to look for tadpoles or frogs or dragonflies or other bugs or geese or turtles or fish or just to throw in a few rocks to watch the ripples and hear the 'splooosh".  I am doing a special set of storytimes at the end of the year celebration at my favorite preschool and I decided to do a 'Down by the Pond' theme. I have a flannelboard version of Mr. Gumpy's Outing by John Burningham that is always a big hit! I will sing/read the Jo MacDonald book.  I have several felt sets of assorted pond life I could use but I especially wanted to do turtles and I really wanted something new. So, I made up a new rhyme about 5 turtles by the pond that I call 'Turtle Fun'.  Here are my 5 little turtles. The middle pic of the turtle's tummy is closest to the true colors of felt. The flash made the shell look yellow and it's really an olive green. The turtles are about 6 to 8 inches long.  I like my pieces to be big! LOL! Turtles at the Pond are so much Fun with Friends at Storytime!

 

Check with Dana and Lindsey @ Jbrary for the rest of this week's Roundup!  Have questions about Flannel Friday? Check out the Flannel Friday official blog.  Be sure to  join us on the Flannel Friday Facebook page and enjoy the great Flannel Friday Pinterest boards too!

Monster Mash!

Lisa at Thrive After Three inspired me to share my monster 'stuff' this week. There are several great Flannel Friday posts on the Pinterest boards too.  Here's my inspiration for today's not-a-flannel prop and rhyme; Lucy at In The Children's Room. I loved the rhyme, but I wanted to use it more interactively. I laminated Google images of the food items and hand them out to the children. As I say the rhyme the children holding the items bring them up and 'feed' them to the monster.  Everyone loves this one!

A Munching Monster
by Marian Swinger

A Monster ate a monster lunch,
a monster pie,
a monster *punch
a monster apple,
a monster plum,
the monster filled his monster tum.
He licked a monster lollipop
He drank a bottle of monster pop.
He chomped a monster chocolate cake
...and got a Monster stomach ache!
* adaptation by Lucy

My Monster is poster board with card stock embellishments and the whole thing was laminated.  His arms and legs are velcroed to the back of the Monster so that I can take them off and store them more easily.  I velcroed the big round body/head to a box that I lined with black paper.  I usually make 4 of each item just to be sure I have enough for everyone.



Here's another Monster to go with this fun theme!

I have 2 sets of felt pieces for Go Away Big Green Monster.  I made my sets a long time ago but I found several on the Flannel Friday Pinterest boards. The first set I use as I read the book.  The other set, with the individual hair and teeth pieces, is for the children to help me build a Big Green Monster as I read the book.  I will let the kiddos play with that set too.  We love to say "GO AWAY Big Green Monster!!" Check out this youtube animation of the book.

We usually sing Laurie Berkner's great song, Monster Boogie too. I found a cute youtube version here.Monsters are soooo much Fun with Friends at Storytime!

Yummy for my Tummy

I shared a National Nutrition Month Special Storytime this week at my library.  We annually collaborate with our county's Health Dept. to share nutrition and exercise information with parents and caregivers. It's a great opportunity to talk about N is for Nutrition and explain that big word to little children.  I love to hear big words coming from preschool children and I usually have a couple of word lovers in storytime that will use that word at home later!  I used one of my favorites for this nutrition theme, Burger Boy by Alan Durant. I had planned to use Keith Baker's adorable book, 1-2-3 Peas but ran out of time.  I used a counting color fruit rhyme (here) that I made up a long time ago with some not-flannel board props.   I used Google images of the fruits and diecut numbers and mounted them on different colors of construction paper and then laminated the papers. I just flipped the pages as I said the rhyme.  A great followup to the fruit rhyme was Laurie Berkner's  fun song, Fruit Salad Salsa!
I also adapted a rhyme I found here that is a take off of  Brown Bear, Brown Bear.  I call it, Brown Bread, Brown Bread. (Try saying that fast three times! LOL!)  I added some more foods and changed the ending to be more like the book's ending with healthy children looking at ...(name all the foods we used).    I used small/medium sized Google images of the foods and printed them on card stock, laminated and cut out enough to hand out to the children.  As I said the rhyme and put a picture of the food on my 'plate' on the flannel board, the children holding that food brought it up and put it on the large plastic plate I was holding on my lap.  I pointed to each food on the flannel board as we recapped all the healthy foods we had seen. We also talked about the foods we like to eat!  I gently discouraged saying 'yuck' about foods that other people liked.  I pointed out that we all like different things and that's o.k.!
Here is one of my favorite rhymes and flannel prop that goes along with  1-2-3 Peas:

Five Little Peas
Five little peas in a pea pod pressed,
One grew, two grew and so did all the rest.
They grew and they grew and they did not stop!
Until one day the pod went...POP!

I usually hold the pea pod vertically with two hands so that the children can see the 'peas'.  When I say POP! loudly, I thump the underside of the 'pod' and send the peas flying!  This is a big hit everytime!  Another rhyme that I do is Pea Soup. I can't remember where I found it. 
Pea Soup
One little pea jumped into the pot,
and waited for the soup to get hot. (* I put a green pom pom pea in my hand "pot" as we count)
Two little peas...
Three little peas...
Four little peas...
Five little peas...
Finally, the soup got so very hot,
All the little peas jumped out of the pot!  (* I throw the "peas" up into the air)

I wish I had had enough time to do all the 'pea' stuff. But, we had fun with the things we did! This is really a fun theme and a great collaboration with our county Health Dept. too!  

Go Green! St. Patrick's Day

I love St. Patrick's day!  It's so much fun!  When I taught in a church preschool I could tell about the young boy, Patrick, kidnapped and taken from his family.  God helped him to escape and go home to his family in Britain and later to return to Ireland as a missionary.    He used the shamrock to explain about the Trinity of God. I have used this book  for telling about the real St. Patrick to preschoolers;  Patrick: Patron Saint of Ireland by Tomie dePaola. I don't read the whole book or even show all the pages.  I'm dealing with 2 and 3 year olds.  I don't get into a lot of theology with preschoolers! ( I haven't used this book in my library storytime although I do offer it as part of my book display).
At my library storytime I do tell the children that the day is about a real person named Patrick that lived a long time ago in a place called Ireland.  Then I might say, "On St. Patrick's day we wear something green (they show me what they have that's green) and we talk about leprechauns and shamrocks."  I use this as a springboard to talk about what is real and what is pretend.  We count felt shamrocks and talk about the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.  St. Patrick was real, shamrocks are real, rainbows are real too. Leprechauns and their tricks and  pots of gold are pretend!
But...it's fun to pretend! 
I initially found this rhyme by Jean Warren in The Best of Totline Newsletter on page 81. I enlarged the patterns to make my leprechauns larger.  I used pellon and colored pencils and glue and glitter. Every self- respecting leprechaun has buckles that are shiny gold; not to mention shiny green shamrocks too!

Five Little Leprechauns

One day out walking,

I happened  to see

Five little leprechauns

Coming toward me.

They ran to a house.

They ran through the door.

I managed to catch one.

Then there were four.

Four little leprechauns

Climbed up a tree.

I caught another.

Then there were three.

Three little leprechauns

Hid in a shoe.

I caught another.

Then there were two.

Two little leprechauns

Started to run.

I caught another.

Then there was one.

One little leprechaun

Ran to his gold.

He grabbed some coins

Then stepped out bold.

“Give back my friends,

And I’ll give you this gold.”

So I set them all free.

Now my story is told!

Since I don't have a song that's about St. Patrick's day, I like to use Mr. Al's song, 'Please Stand Up' about the colors of our clothes.  Of course, I always suggest that we can pretend that we are wearing rainbow shirts or pants so that we can all 'stand up' on every color as the song goes along.
It's fun to pretend that we're all Irish for a day of Storytime Fun!