Share & Play Babies (5/11/17 - 5/25/17)

I had my last session of Share & Play Babies today and I have to say, this was such an enjoyable program to do! It was a new program that I created for babies ages 3-12 months (with ages 3-5 months being a group previously not serviced at our library!). Inspired by all of Sadie's favorite things, this program crammed a LOT of juice into a three 30-minute windows (one per week).

For every single parent/baby pair in the class... this was their first library program. That means that, in the three Wednesdays that I held this program, I reached a total of nineteen new library users! That is SO awesome. So exciting! So important! So much pressure!

Each week, the format of the class was as follows:

1. Open play (with music) + introductions (8-10 minutes)
2. One book read by me (2-3 minutes)
3. One book, passed out as a class set, read individually between parents and babies (2-3 minutes)
4. Simple finger play songs (2-3 minutes)
5. Baby soccer (with music) + clean up toys (5 minutes)
6. Shaker + puppet song (2-3 minutes)
7. Parachute time (5 minutes)
8. Goodbye song (2-3 minutes)

I'll explain all the details below.

1. Open Play: I have done programs involving open play in the past, but have always thrown it in at the end. In the past, it typically felt awkward and forced for me. And it included a lot of me feeling sort of useless, smiling, and only saying things like "Awww, so cute." But after attending a few baby programs with Sadie while on maternity leave, I learned a lot about well done open play. First, I decided that open play works better at the start of the program. This gives everyone a chance to settle in, get comfortable, even come in a few minutes late without too much pressure. Second, I learned that it works well when combined with introductions. This organically opens up the conversation floor a little and is just a good way to get to know who's in the room. Plus, it turns out that chit-chatting with moms during open play is a lot easier when you have your own baby! Who knew?

This was also the first time I ever had the parents do formal introductions of themselves. I'd asked them to tell the group their name, their baby's name, and how old their baby was. As a program attendee (and specifically one who also attended my first baby program just a few months ago), I liked doing this--it made me feel more comfortable. So for this room full of first time program attendees, I included it. I think it worked well and kind of broke up the open play time, without taking the toys away from the babies. I had them do this each week, even if they'd come before, because it's a good little ice breaker and, honestly, we could probably all use the refresher.

Here are how the toys were typically set up before the start of the class:

2. One book read by me: After about 8-10 minutes of open play, each week I read the class a book. I left the toys out too because (a) I'm not really a stickler for making kids (especially babies) pay attention to me, (b) I believe babies can benefit from hearing a book while also playing with or chewing on a toy, and (c) Just why NOT let them play with a toy a little longer if that's what they're currently in the mood to do?

Throughout the three weeks of this class, these are the three books I read:

Baby Parade by Rebecca O'Connell
Charlie Chick by Nick Denchfield
Pete the Cat: Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star by James Dean (Please note: This is a lot of singing.)

3. One book, passed out as a class set, read individually between parents and babies: This was an exciting new thing that we haven't done in our library before (but I'd done in the past when working at a different library). In advance, I ordered shiny new class sets of books specifically for this program, inspired by--you guessed it--Sadie's Top 5 Lists! Throughout the three weeks of this class, I had parents share the following books with their babies:

Sneak-a-Peek Colors by Roger Priddy
Toot Toot, Beep Beep by Emma Garcia
Counting Kisses by Karen Katz

Here are a few moms and caregivers sharing Sneak-a-Peek Colors with their little ones:

4. Simple finger play songs: For most of the parents and caregivers in the program, this is was chance to sing some "old favorites" together with their babies. Both repetition for kids and re-teaching parents childhood favorites are always great! However, for a few moms who were from other countries (at least two, maybe three, in my class) this was a chance for them to learn NEW songs--important, almost vital, songs that their kids will be singing for years to come! Here are the songs we wound up covering over the three weeks:

Five Little Monkeys
Itsy Bitsy Spider
She'll Be Comin' 'Round the Mountain
Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star *
Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes
Where is Thumbkin

* I had an embarrassing moment here in week 2 of the program, where I started singing Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star but accidentally did the hand motions for Itsy Bitsy Spider! It called for a hearty do-over! So grateful for the wonderful families that I work with who aren't too judgmental!

5. Baby soccer: This was really fun! It may have been the highlight of the program! I stole the idea for this from a baby program that I attended with Sadie at my local library. For this, I brought out a decent-sized ball (see below), had the parents/caregivers lift their babies by grabbing them under their arms (also see below), and then making the kids "kick" the ball around the circle to each other. It wound up being a really awesome team building activity, working together, and making sure everyone had a chance to play. We did this for about five minutes and I almost felt bad ending it!

6. Shaker + puppet song: This is 5 minutes of programming that I get to borrow directly from Musical Kids. Here are the songs I used each week:

I Know a Chicken by Laurie Berkner (with chicken puppet)
The Owl Song by Playdate (with owl puppet)
This Land is Your Land by Josh Levine (with dog puppet)*

* There's no correlation between dogs and This Land is Your Land. I just needed another song and another puppet and I like both of these.

7. Parachute time: I am a huge fan of parachute time with babies. It always works in Musical Kids. Always. One thing that changed parachute time from how it usually goes in Musical Kids to how it wound up going in Share & Play Babies, was having the foam mat on the floor. Since I had everyone sitting, tightly packed around the foam mat, the parachute wasn't able to extend out to its full diameter, so there were several bunches and folds in the middle. Basically, a lot of extra fabric going on. It didn't really matter, just sort of changed the dynamic from what I am used to.

Here are all the parachute songs I wound up using throughout the three-week-class. I'll write out all these rhymes/chants at the end of the post!:

The Colors Over You
Peek-a-Boo!
In and Out the Window
The Wheels on the Bus
Come Under My Umbrella
If You're Happy and You Know It
Let's Go Riding in an Elevator

8. Goodbye song: Another few minutes borrowed from  Musical Kids (and basically every other non-craft program I ever do). Our goodbyes are sung to Laurie Berkner's Blow a Kiss. Always a favorite for me!

Parachute songs, in detail:

The Colors Over You (to the tune of Twinkle, Twinke, Little Star)
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

Peek-a-Boo! (to the tune of Frer Jacquez)
Where are you hiding?
Where are you hiding?
I can't see you
I can't see you
Are you over here?
Are you over there?
Peek-a-Boo!
Peek-a-Boo!

In and Out the Window
This one's on Jbrary! Watch below:




The Wheels on the Bus (done with babies lying on their backs)
The wheels on the bus go 'round and 'round (move baby's legs in a circle)
The wipers on the bus go swish, swish, swish (move baby's legs back and forth)
The windows on the bus go open and shut (open and close baby's legs)
The windows on the bus go up and down (move baby's legs up and down)

Here are a few pictures from Wheels on the Bus, which we ended with every week:

Come Under My Umbrella (to the tune of The More We Get Together)
(Fast shake) There's thunder and lightening and wind and rain
There's thunder and lightening and wind and rain
(Lift the parachute up high in unison) Come under my umbrella, umbrella, umbrella
Come under my umbrella, it's starting to storm

If You're Happy and You Know It
If you're happy and you know it lift it high...
If you're happy and you know it shake it fast...
If you know it shake it slow...

Let's Go Riding in an Elevator
I'll let Jbrary illustrate this one too. I do it with the parachute instead of scarves and sing it a lot slower (for emphasis, I guess):




What worked least: The third/last week of this program (the week that I used the books Pete the Cat: Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star and Counting Kisses) I zoomed through the open play and the books too fast. By the time I'd finished with everything I had planned, there were still 8 minutes left of the program! And the goodbye song is only only 2-minutes and 47-seconds long! So I wound up doing 5 bonus minutes of open play at the end... which was fine but a little awkward since we'd just cleaned up the toys. What's funniest here is that I purposely didn't read Counting Kisses along with the group after I'd had them read it individually for fear that it would take too long! I should have!

What worked best: Parachute time is always a favorite in any program and this was no exception! And actually I've found that, even as a patron with my own baby, I am sort of bummed when a program doesn't include any parachute time! It's always a great success!

Sadie's Top 5, Ages 3-6 months

It's already time for installment two of Sadie's Top 5! Six months old today, I have learned that there are books that hold her interest enough to read over and over and over, and books that she can barely stand to look at at all. In the end, I feel a bit on the fence about her top 5 this go around, but these are my best guesses. Presenting, Sadie's Top 5 for ages 3-6 months:

1. 1 2 3 Counting by Maxine Davenport and Cindy Roberts is ALL about the super high-contrast pictures + stand up combo (as is #2 on this list!). Due to a birth injury, we have to work extra hard with Sadie on gross motor skills and, physically, this book is a wonderful motivator for her when we're doing so! I don't even have to read it sometimes! The pages fold out like a fan, rather than turn like a traditional book, which allows it to stand and also allows lots of pages to be on display at one time. Then, between each page, there are black-and-white checkered borders that I swear are like baby eye magnets. (Click the link above to see what I'm referring to.) The combination of everything is just absolutely perfect! This book has it ALL. Even at the older end of this 3-6 month age range, we're big fans in my house!

2. Black & White by Tana Hoben is essentially another version of the book above. In fact, Tana Hoban's collection of high contrast books were most likely the inspiration for 1 2 3 Counting. Like 1 2 3 Counting, the pages of this book open up like a fan so it can stand up by itself and motivate Sadie during her exercises. The first half of the book has pictures that are black silhouettes on a white background; the second half has white silhouettes on a black background (while 1 2 3 Counting uses bold, bright colors in addition to black and white). Of all the pages, Sadie seems the most drawn to the picture of the butterfly, which also happens to be the picture with the most detail.  Overall, this is another really easy-to-look-at book for Sadie, although (according to her) just slightly less cool than the book it most likely inspired. This one might have even worked better as a 0-3 month book (but we were too busy reading and re-reading Sneak-a-Peek Colors to notice).

3. Counting Kisses by Karen Katz means LOTS of kisses from mommy. If you're not familiar with it, this book markets itself as "a kiss & read book," and it really, truly is. The book counts down from "ten little kisses on teeny tiny toes," "nine laughing kisses on busy, wriggly feet," all the way down to the one last kiss on baby's "sleepy, dreamy head." The illustrations are vibrant, sweet, and just seem to reflect love. Sadie's personal favorites are the toe kisses, feet kisses, and belly button kisses. Sometimes I cheat and give her a few extra on those (Don't tell Karen Katz!)--although lately she prefers to have her feet and belly "chomped on" instead. This book is AWESOME for mommy-baby giggles!

4.  Toot Toot, Beep Beep by Emma Garcia is all about the noise-making, so it needs to be read with a lot of enthusiasm. Each page asks the reader to make a silly car noise (such as, appropriately, "Toot toot," and "Beep beep") and, even though I've used this book in storytime for years, I've never seen a small baby's reaction to it until I read it to Sadie. Her favorite noise is the first in the book--"beep, beep"--but even the other noises don't seem to elicit the exact same reaction, the entire book is really engaging for her. Each page says something like, "Beep beep goes the little red jeep. And off he zooms," and "Vroom vroom goes the sleek black sports car. And off he speeds." So there are lots of opportunities for noise making! The vibrant colors, short text, and different tones of voice really seem to be the right combination for her. Maybe she'll be one of those kids who really likes cars. Maybe I am fostering a love of cars in her right now.

5. I had a hard time settling on a #5 for this list but ultimately realized that the answer was Sophie la Girafe: Colors from DK. This was a book that I (naively) assumed was just a marketing ploy to sell more Sophie toys (which, naturally, we own). While, yes, it may be that, it's also a book that Sadie genuinely seems to love. The text of the book says, for example "Who's hiding behind Sophie's green boat?" then you open the flap and see that it's "Margot the turtle! She loves green. She's resting on her green towel." Then at the end, the book recites all the animal friends and their favorite colors again: "Gabin loves blue. Josephine loves  yellow. Kiwi loves red. Margot loves green. Lazare loves orange. Sophie loves purple." I don't know what it is exactly, but there's something really engaging about this book. There's the usual simply drawn illustrations and bright colors, but what I think it is mostly are the really thick, cool, colorful lift-the-flap pages that Sadie is really into grabbing. They're not the ordinary thin, glued on flaps we're all used to, but almost like mini doors on each page. Like page within a page. They're so enticing! So, marketing ploy? Maybe. But enjoyable board book? Absolutely.

And that's it! More of this again when Sadie hits her 9-month-mark!

Baby Time 11/16/15

Yesterday morning I had my first session of Baby Time, a new program for ages 3-12 months. I was really looking forward to it because I've been especially enjoying my youngest Musical Kids group lately and this program would be giving me the opportunity to do more with even younger babies. Since Musical Kids gets a large turn out week after week, I'd imagined Baby Time would do the same, but as it goes in the public library, you really never know what kind of turn out you'll get until the day of the program. I wound up with only three moms and three babies, plus one older sibling. However, for a small group, it went really well!

I started with a new-to-me hello song, Hello Everybody. This was a little scary since I'm used to hearing my usual A New Way to Say Hello by Big Jeff at the start of a program. Starting with the same hello song mentally prepares me--helps my brain get into storytime mode and takes away any kind of awkwardness I might feel (especially with a new group and especially with a brand new program). So starting not only with a new-to-me hello song but one that immediately required singing, was a little nerve-wracking! But hopefully as the weeks go on and the parents also get comfortable with the song, it'll get easier for me too. I think it's really just a matter of retraining my brain a little. Anyway, here a is really great version of Hello Everybody:

Then I moved on to the meat of the program. First, I read the group Jump! by Scott Fischer, which everyone really liked. I made the book interactive by having the parents pick their babies up to have them "jump" whenever the characters in the booked jumped. This worked particularly well because I had an older sibling who enjoyed frantically jumping along too.

Then we did some lap songs: In and Out the Window and She'll Be Comin' 'Round the Mountain. I gave out handouts for these. The PDF of this handout can be downloaded here! She'll Be Comin' 'Round the Mountain is a lap bounce that includes things like lifting baby (for "yee-ha!"), tilting baby (for "woah there"), and rubbing baby's tummy (for "yum yum"). And In and Out the Window is a great one for getting in some good baby facial recognition time. I think I've linked to this before, but here's a video to illustrate how In and Out the Window goes:



I could tell the parents' arms were getting tired after Jump!, In and Out the Window, and She'll Be Comin' 'Round the Mountain, so I decided to give them a rest and read a book. I read The Babies On the Bus by Karen Katz and we all sang along. This is an easy book that's basically just a modified version of Wheels on the Bus. Also, because the babies were starting to get antsy at this point, singing a song together as a group really worked to bring back a little order and control in the room.

Before our 15 minutes of open play, I wanted to do one last activity: Lynn Kleiner's B-I-N-G-O, because I've been using it with all of the age groups of Musical Kids lately and it's been successful every single time. This song is AMAZING. It's seriously good for every age of kids. I first saw it on Lynn Kleiner's DVD that came with this instrument kit but there's no video for it online! So I'm going to do my best to describe it here:

This is a version of Bingo that has a verse and a chorus. You can hear it here! For the verse part, the parents march around in a circle, carrying or dancing their babies in their arms. (With older groups, I just have the kids march themselves in a circle.) At the chorus, everyone stops marching and faces inward. For the letters B, I, N, and G we all take a step in, one letter at a time, so by the time we're at G, we're all really close together. Then, for O, everyone runs back and the circle gets big again. Like with In and Out the Window, this is a great chance for the babies to do some facial recognition (or, in the case of an older group, a chance for the kids to giggle at how silly we all are). If you can visualize how this works, I totally recommend it with all ages! The kids and babies all love it!

Then it was time for open play. I think open play is awesome, especially with the youngest age group because you get a mix of first-time-moms and not-first-time-moms and everyone can sit and talk and relax, without any pressure. Even though I have struggled with how I appear during open play for a long time (I discuss that here), I know that it's great for both the babies and the parents. I feel satisfied when I see the parents relaxing, laughing, and discussing their kids. Yesterday I even learned a baby fact: Babies parallel play until they are about 8-months-old, when they then begin to play together. See? Thanks, open play!

Last, I wrapped up with Old MacDonald using our puppets, a tried and true repeat crowd pleaser for all. As the group sings Old MacDoland together, I come around and give each baby (and older sibling) a kiss from each animal puppet (except the cat, who nuzzles, as cats do). This always gets big gummy, baby smiles and works as an easy goodbye song.

Overall, this program went well... really well considering the small group size. And I was impressed with myself for cramming so many activities into a half-hour. I've got two more sessions to go and have already chosen my books for next week: Wiggle by Doreen Cronin (where you can have the parents wiggle their babies whenever the book says "wiggle") and Baby Parade by Rebecca O'Connell (where parents and babies can wave to the cute [and multicultural] babies in the pictures). Maybe I'll even get a bigger crew next week. Stranger things have happened!

What worked least: I probably could have stood to not change the hello song. I usually think of the hello song as as time for me to mentally compose myself for the rest of the storytime. So instead of getting myself into gear with my usual A New Way to Say Hello by Big Jeff, I had to sing a new song right off the bat. And with a brand new group that I didn't know! I'm not sure what I was thinking.

What worked best: Jump! by Scott Fischer worked really well because it was interactive for the babies and also for the older sibling. Everyone gets to jump! I'd definitely recommend this one for holding teeny attention spans in baby storytimes.