Parachute Play

Believe it or not, after almost 12-years of librarianship, last Wednesday's Parachute Play was my first toddler parachute program ever! And it was only my second parachute program for any age group ever! (The first was Petite Parachute Play for babies ages birth - 16 months, which I did a little over a year ago.) It seems so simple, especially since I use the parachute in my other programs so so so often, but I have long been afraid of the parachute-exclusive program! I've always worried that it would seem like it was getting boring or that I wouldn't be able to come up with enough material to fill the time. In fact, now that I have done it, I can't say that I am fully over that irrational anxiety. Parachute programs are just plain scary!

Originally, in my research for Petite Parachute Play, I stumbled across this blog post from Laughter and Literacy. The librarian who wrote it didn't fill an entire 30-minutes with specifically parachute stuff. She did other songs and stories too. This realization took the pressure was off a bit at the time, but this time around, it was a little different. This time I had toddlers. I wanted to up my game a little, and also, I didn't want the program to feel too much like my other programs where I use the parachute for just a few minutes. So I planned for 25-minutes of parachute + one big book + goodbye song. Here's how my 30-minutes broke down  (red = ipod, blue = sing, green = book):

1. Let’s All Clap is a hello song that I use often, but not in Musical Kids. I like it because it's easy, doesn't take up too much time, and I don't need the ipod to do it. I use it in most of my one-off programs for babies and toddlers and I learned it from Jbrary (of course):

After we finished  this song, I had all the grown ups lift up the parachute to reveal a bunch of balls underneath. Then I told the kids to run under, grab as many balls as they could, and throw them on top of the parachute. This sort of worked. It worked great for the kids who were about 2 and older, but 4 out of 6 of them were younger and I think this was too complex of an activity for those children.

2. Popcorn Chant by Carole Peterson, for which I had the kids bounce the balls on the parachute.

3. Popcorn by Joanie Leeds, for which I had the kids climb into the middle of the parachute and the adults shook all the balls up around them. After this song I had the kids all help me collect the balls,  then I instructed them to sit in a circle around the parachute.

4. I’m Being Swallowed by a Boa Constrictor was originally a poem by Shel Silverstein, but works really well as a parachute song! I borrowed this idea from a wonderful program that I attend regularly with my own kids at my home library. The song can be heard below (although I think the version I sang wound up being slightly different) and, when we did it with the parachute, I had everyone pull it up to the kids' body parts as we sang about them (like they're getting swallowed).

5. Colors Over You is my #1 favorite parachute song. To the tune of Twinkle, Twinkle, it goes "Red and green and yellow and blue, these are the colors over you. Red like an apple, green like a tree, yellow like the sun, and blue like the sea. Red and green and yellow and blue, these are the colors over you." This one is good for ALL ages!

6. Let’s Go Riding in an Elevator is another regular for me. It can be found in the video below and works just as well (if not better!) with the parachute and the kiddos underneath it:

7. Stop & Go by Greg & Steve was a good under-the-parachute freeze dance song.

After this song was over, I threw my little black sheep (made by Folkmanis) on to the parachute and did...

8. Baa Baa Blacksheep. The kids were still underneath for this, even though the sheep were on top of it and...

9. Mary Had a Little Lamb. Some kids liked dancing under the parachute; some liked helping us grown ups shake. 

10. Ten in the Bed by Fred Penner is fun because it's a short song and it gets faster and faster. If any of the kids are around the parachute, shaking it, the way the tempo increases usually gets everyone giggling and wiggling. The whatevers-are-in-the-middle fall off and everyone scrambles to get them back in. It's fast paced and lots of fun!

11. Wheels on the Bus is my go-to song for having the kids on top of the parachute. When I do this song, I sing three verses. (1) The wheels on the bus go round and round. (2) The wipers on the bus go swish swish swish. (3) The doors on the bus go open and shut. For the first verse, everyone sits (with the sheep in their laps, in this case) while the grown ups pull the kids around in a circle, like a ride. For the second verse, the grown ups "swish" the parachute around the kids back and forth. And, for the third verse, the grown up pull the parachute all the way down around the kids and then snap it up on the word "shut." In my head, it reminds me of a Venus fly trap and, most of the time, all the kids giggle.

12. Seals on the Bus (as a big book) was the one little non-parachute activity I worked in. I thought, since we'd just done Wheels on the Bus, it'd be cute to follow it up with Seals on the Bus. The book is about a bunch of animals that barrage a bus and make noise, basically. The seals go "erp erp erp," the snakes go "hiss hiss hiss," etc., until, on the last page, the people on the bus go "help, help, help!"

13. Blow a Kiss by Laurie Berkner is the song I always end with when I do a structured program. It's the best and everyone basically knows it means the end. Throw in some bubbles, and we've got ourselves a finale.

What worked least: Maybe, thinking back, the age group should have started at 18-months. In theory, I wanted those babies there, but in practice, I probably didn't have enough things to really accommodate their particular level.

What worked best: I think the kids enjoyed the part toward the beginning when they were crawling around on the parachute with the balls (to the song Popcorn by Joanie Leeds) the best. This was also probably the most baby-friendly activity that I did.

All in all, I still think parachute programs are intimidating. I'd do one again, absolutely, but I can't say I wouldn't be a little nervous that morning!

Easy Art

Just this morning I did a program called Easy Art! I'd been wanting to do a program like this for sooo long and I was excited about it! This was all about process, not product. It was meant to be a place where kids (ages 12-35-months) could get messy, be creative, and have fun! (In the newsletter, I wrote "dress for a mess.")

I had four "creative stations" set up (plus a grown up station for parents wanting to make hand and foot prints to take home, but it wasn't very popular). These stations consisted of covered tables, sitting flat on the floor, resting on a big tarp. Then, when the crowds (hah!) came in, I put on some music and let them move freely around the room, from station to station, making crafts and exploring with their hands. It totally worked! 

Here are the stations that I had:

Edible Finger Paint

This was sooo easy and fun! Edible finger paint is literally just Greek yogurt mixed with food coloring. That's it! My age group started at 12-months and, with a 12-month-old at home, I know that sometimes things get eaten. Often things get eaten. I wanted to make sure that even the youngest kids in the program could really get into the finger paint fun, so I mixed a few batches of this up and it really worked well! Then I put out some watercolor paper (I needed something thick to handle this thick paint) and let the kids have at it. Easy as pie!

Simple Collage

Another easy one: I put out different color construction paper, Elmers glue, big pom poms (picked the big ones out of this mixed bag from Oriental Trading), giant buttons (these from Oriental Trading), pieces of cut-up foam (I ordered these, these, and these from Oriental Trading, then just cut them into random shapes) and tissue paper circles (these from Oriental Trading). That's it. Maybe it was just all the STUFF in bright colors, but the kids really enjoyed this station. And spend a long time at it! And I loved seeing them get totally creative with this. I was a little worried that some of the parents might try to make this craft too "nice" (like, try to make a pom pom-button flower or something) but all the adults really sat back and lets the kids go to work. It was really great to see!

This was this little one's first craft ever!

Edible Marshmallow Play Dough

The edible finger paint was easy. The simple collage was easy. But the edible marshmallow play dough could have been a lot easier. If I was making one blob of this at home for one-on-one play, I actually WOULD call it easy. It's just marshmallows, coconut oil, corn starch, and food coloring. And each ball of it shown above took about 4-minutes to make. But scrambling to make a class set of this before the program (when you also have to clean up all the mess and three people called out sick that day so you're totally on your own with nobody to help) was a veritable nightmare. Also, I should have gotten another bag of marshmallows and made double this amount. 

The edible marshmallow play dough recipe can be found here (or literally like 75 other places on the Internet. This is very Google-able). Some trouble shooting type things to note:

1. This (the picture shown above) is how much I got from one regular size bag of Jet-Puffed marshmallows. For a library program sized quantity, I should have gotten two bags to make double this amount. But (a) there is no way I would have had time to make double this amount before the program started anyway, so I guess it's for the best? and (b) it really did work out fine anyway. We didn't exactly not have enough, it was just more that the kids were forced to do a little more sharing and a little bit less "building" than they would have otherwise. But it was totally still fun!

2. The play dough got really firm, really quickly. This recipe is kind of meant for immediate play, I guess. I made 7 balls of dough (see picture above) starting at 9:00am when I walked in the building. (It was the first thing I did in terms of set-up.) When the program started at 11:00, most of the balls were already so hard they were difficult to work with! I gave them a quick microwave--about 4-5 seconds for two on a plate--and this seemed to help a lot, but then they needed to cool! Overall, I found that if the play dough was being actively played with, it stayed soft, but if I just let a ball of it sit out, it firmed up quickly and needed to be microwaved back to squishiness. Luckily, the kids were playing with this pretty much nonstop for the whole 45-minute program, so most of my microwaving was done in the beginning.

3. I microwaved one ball for, I guess, too long? I don't know what happened, really, but when I took it out of the microwave, it was SO HOT and SO STICKY. I mushed it around a bunch of times in my hands to try to get it to be more normal, but finally I wound up having to add more corn starch and that did the trick. When in doubt, add cornstarch!

With all that said, this was the most popular table by far! Everyone loved it! I would 100% do it again in the future with (a) more marshmallows and (b) more time.

Giant Paper and Crayons

Paper and crayons = If it aint broken, don't fix it! I made a last minute call to also toss just big, giant paper and crayons out on a table-- nothin' fancy at all. As a kid, I never discriminated between things like cool, homemade play dough (that took the all of the librarian's energy for the entire day to make), and just a plain old basket of crayons, so I figured these kids probably wouldn't either! And it couldn't hurt to have one more activity out. With the 1-3's age group, this was a perfect extra-- especially for the younger end of the age range! What's better than just a basket of crayons and giant pieces of white paper? (Maybe marshmallow play dough is slightly better, but this really is fun too!)

What worked least: While the post above might make it sound like the answer to this question would be the edible marshmallow play dough, that is not the case! While, yes, the marshmallow play dough was a headache (And a lot of rushing. And a lot of stressing. And a huge mess), it was seriously just SO MUCH FUN, that it was worth it! The fun outweighed the bad! What actually worked least was the foot and hand printing (not even mentioned above)! Mostly, because it just didn't get used.

Why:

Originally I'd planned my four stations to be: (1) The edible finger paint (2) the collage (3) the marshmallow play dough and (4) the "bonus foot print craft" (which was meant to be a strawberry footprint, borrowed from my Grandparents' Day Brunch n Craft). But, at the last minute, I decided to change it up. I decided to keep the "real" paint up on a high table (off the floor) so that the grown ups could use it if they wanted but that it was away from the kids, and to instead, use the big paper and crayons as the last station on the floor. I think, because of this, it just went largely unnoticed, even though I did point it out several times. I had to include it today it because I'd advertised a "bonus foot print craft" in the newsletter but next time, I think I'd skip it entirely and just make the coloring station a little more elaborate instead. Maybe I'd include different mediums like markers and colored pencils, in addition to the crayons. And maybe even some stickers. Why not!?

What worked best: The collage! It was awesome and just absolutely perfect for little hands and creative brains! I think the nature of the stuff I put out was perfect for inspiring kids this age, and also perfect for keeping adults away from trying to create something "pretty." Like I said, this was meant to be all about process not product. And it was! It was seriously great! I'm really happy with how it worked out.

All in all, I DEFINITELY want to do this program again in the future but with a few tweaks and more set up time for sure! 

My First Story Time and Stop In Stories

My First Story Time and Stop In Stories are two peas in a pod, two of a kind, a perfect pair. In fact, they are more or less the same exact program with a few small differences:

1. Stop In Stories is a summer-only program. My First Story Time is all year long.

2. Stop In Stories has no registration. My First Story Time does (and is, specifically, for one and two-year-olds).

3. Stop In Stories is at our Main branch. My First Story Time is at our Station branch.

Other than that, the actual flow of these two programs is identical. And I have to say, I've really come to love this simple, no-frills storytime. It's a real "less is more" kind of program, covering lots of early literacy skills without a lot of mess, set-up, or supplies.

Basically each week consists of books (four or five), songs (three or four), at least one prop (scarves, shakers, drums, or the parachute), and a valiant effort to always include at least one puppet.

For a complete list of my favorite books for this age group, view my "Baby Time" list on the Recommended Storytime Books by Topic page. I try to (but don't always) update it every time I use a new book with the 1-2-year-old crowd.

Here's some scarf fun that we had at My First Story Time around May/June:

My top five favorite My First Story Time/Stop In Stories books are:

Cat's Colors by Jane Cabrera

Dear Zoo by Rod Campbell

Freight Train by Donald Crews

Jump! by Scott M. Fischer

Baby Parade by Rebecca O'Connell

Again, for a complete list of my favorite books for this age group, view my "Baby Time" list on the Recommended Storytime Books by Topic page!

My top five favorite My First Story Time/Stop In Stories songs are (red = ipod, blue = sing)*:

The Scarf is on My Head (scarves) **

Popcorn Kernals (scarves) **

Elevator Song by Mary Lee Sunseri (lap song)

I Know a Chicken by Laurie Berkner (shakers + chicken puppet)

Old MacDonald (with 5 or 6 animal puppets)

* This list does not include any parachute songs (despite my love of the parachute)! I have a list of my top five parachute songs at the end of this post!

** The handout for The Scarf is On My Head & Popcorn Kernels can be downloaded here. The Scarf is On My Head goes to the tune of The Farmer in the Dell and is possibly the reigning favorite scarf song. Popcorn Kernels goes to the tune of Frère Jacques and, for this one, we start out by waving our scarves over our heads, then crumpling them into balls in our hands (the pot), then we shake them up in their crumpled balls, and then toss them up in the air for them to "pop." It's fun. I've done a handful of different scarf songs with this age group but these two seem to stand out as the overall favorites.

What works least: I've learned over time that you can't come back from the parachute. It excites the kids so much that if you try to do something like read a book after it, you might as well just sit and silently read to yourself. It doesn't work. It's been a long time since I have even attempted anything post-parachute--I've learned my lesson--but unfortunately, sometimes this problem happens when books follow any song. Or even sometimes when they don't. Yet, you need songs to break up the books and hold the kids attention! It's a catch 22, I guess, but it's to be expected. I try really, really hard to pick easy and/or interactive books to immediately follow songs and that definitely helps ease them back into listening mode.

What works best: The parachute. Like I said, nothing can come back from it because it's really always such a success. In fact, here is a BONUS list of my top five favorite (and most-used) parachute songs, not only from My First Story Time and Stop In Stories, but also from Musical Kids (red = ipod, blue = sing):

Thunder & Lightening *

These Are The Colors Over You **

Slow and Fast by Hap Palmer 

Let's Go Riding in an Elevator ***

Wheels on the Bus ****

* Thunder & Lightening is a short parachute song to the tune of The More We Get Together. We start out by shaking the parachute low and fast for the first verse, then lift up high for the second. It goes like this: 

There's thunder and lightening and wind and rain,

There's thunder and lightening and wind and rain,

Come under my umbrella, umbrella, umbrella,

Come under my umbrella, it's starting to storm.

** These are the Colors Over You, thanks (as usual) to Jbrary, is a nice, calm, song, perfect for the smallest babies. Here's how it goes:

*** This is Let's Go Riding in an Elevator, again, thanks to Jbrary:



I sing this a lot slower for suspense. Then I have the kids go under the parachute as the floors move up higher and it works really, really well. They love it!

**** Wheels on the Bus is an on-top-of-the-'chute song. I have all the kids sit down flat in the middle of the parachute. There are usually 1 or 2 kids who are either afraid of this or who would just prefer to stand outside the parachute with the grown ups, but the majority of the group likes this part the best of all! We do three verses: 

1. The wheels on the bus go 'round and 'round

2. The wipers on the bus go swish swish swish

3. The doors on the bus go open and shut

When the kids are all seated in the middle, the grown ups pull up from the parachute's handles and we all walk around in a circle, giving the kids a ride. We do this for the first verse (the wheels on the bus go 'round and 'round). Then, for the second verse, the adults "swish" the parachute around the kids as we sing. For the third verse, we lift the parachute up around the kids like a big barrier and then, on the word "shut" we snap the barrier down, basically creating a little peek-a-boo game. Last, we sing verse #1 again, walking in the opposite direction from the we did the first time. This works well for babies (6 months and older) as well as the 3-5's crowd!

There are a bunch of others that I use frequently (take a look through some of my Musical Kids posts for more ideas!), but these five are, for sure, my favorites!

Happy story time-ing!