Sadie's Top 5, 12-18 months

While, yes, this post is coming a couple of days early, I can't believe we're just a couple of days away from a year-and-a-half! Where does the time go? I cannot BELIEVE how fast the past 6-months have gone!  Since Sadie's birthday, she's gotten SO much better at sitting through books and will even sit for several books in a row! Some of her very favorites are still some of her past picks (A Kiss Like This by Mary Murphy, Toot Toot Beep Beep by Emma Garcia, Sneak-a-Peak Colors by Roger Priddy, Five Little Elves by Dan Yaccarino, and the Margaret Miller Look Baby! books), but in the interest of variety, I've set my rule about only posting books one time each and I'm sticking to it! So with that, here are Sadie's Top 5 for ages 12-18 months, which have not been posted in past lists:

Three Little Mermaids by Mara Van Fleet-- and also the similar Little Color Fairies, Night-Night Princess, and Mama's Pajamas (also all by Mara Van Fleet)-- have all really piqued Sadie's interest on the later end of this age bracket. I tried a few of these with her when she was about 10-months-old and, while she certainly enjoyed them even then, she is really the perfect age for them now, at 18-months. In fact, Sadie is intrigued by these books from the moment she sees the pull-tabs on the covers! She is constantly handing them to me to read to her. They are each SO interactive; the pull-tab covers are just the start! On the first page of Three Little Mermaids, for example, there is an octopus holding a fun, sticky lollipop that Sadie likes to touch over and over again. The book also has fuzzy seals, bumpy star fish, flaps to open, and--best of all--MORE PULL TABS! What's crazy is that, while these stories themselves seem like they'd be too long to be interesting to a child this age (in Three Little Mermaids, all the sea friends help the mermaids prepare for a tea party), I think Sadie is actually focused on the stories! Even when we come across a rare non-interactive page, she still seems engaged. It's so crazy! We can read any of these four selections over and over, or switch between them, and she's happy for a while. So thanks, Mara Van Fleet, for letting this very pregnant momma sit for a few minutes while her active toddler actually interacts with a few books in a row!

Pete the Cat: The Wheels on the Bus by James Dean has been a hit in our house since Sadie was a newborn, but only now has it become one of our solid, regular go-to's. Or should I say, one of Sadie's solid, regular go-to's. She is always yanking this one off her (fairly tightly packed) bookshelf and handing it to me to read to her. She'll sit nicely in her chair while I sing The Wheels on the Bus song (with some fun variations thanks to Pete) over and over, and occasionally point out things like the bird, the dog, and Pete's guitar. Sadie definitely learned the word "guitar" because of Pete the Cat. She's even just begun to mimic The Wheels on the Bus hand motions that I try to do along (as I also hold the book). This is one we're gonna read again and again for a long time in our house!

Dear Zoo by Rod Campbell is a CLASSIC that I have been just waiting for Sadie to be old enough for. And now she is! In fact, I think this book has helped Sadie hone in on some of her animal sounds. She's mastered the elephant noise, lion noise, and snake noise, I'm certain, thanks to Dear Zoo. If you're unfamiliar, the premise of this story is simple. The narrator wrote to the zoo to send him/her a pet and each pet that comes back is unfit. The elephant is too big, the lion is too fierce, the frog is too jumpy, etc. But, at the end, the zoo sends a dog (finally!) and it's just perfect! Sadie loves to lift the flaps as we read and she has an easier time finding which end to lift from in this book that in other books. (If you look carefully, there's a small, half-circle cut out next to each flap that guides little fingers to the right spot and I think it really helps!) Just like the dog at the end of the story, this book is perfect for us!

This exact "Slide and Find" version of Brown Bear, Brown Bear What Do You See? by Bill Martin Jr. and Eric Carle is a book that Sadie keeps migrating toward, especially toward the second half of this age-range. She lovessssss to slide the little tabs to reveal the animals underneath. Then, when we finish reading it, she almost always asks for, "More?" so we read it again! Also--here's something crazy-- her favorite animal in the book is not an animal at all but the teacher on the second to last page! She LOVES the "chee chee!" Maybe it's the glasses? Who knows! Another classic book, making our top 5 list today!

That's Not My Kitten by Fiona Watt and Rachel Wells is a favorite from the earlier end of this age range-- one that Sadie still definitely enjoys now but really stood out as a favorite when she was about 12-14-months-old. The first time we read this, the day after her birthday, I pointed out all the "touchy-feely" spots in the book for her and then every time we've read it thereafter, Sadie's felt the spots herself, without any guidance. The "plot" is simple. Each spread says something like, "That's not my kitten, its ears are too soft," or "That's not my kitten, its bell is too shiny," or "That's not my kitten, its paws are too rough" until the last page, when we finally find the narrators kitten and it has a big, soft belly! This is another one I am able to read to her a few times in a row without her getting too antsy. Side note: Sometimes (often), when I read this, I change the word "kitten" to "cat" because  I feel like it makes things simpler for Sadie, but I'll probably stop doing this soon.

Next up... Sadie's Top 5 as a TWO-YEAR-OLD. 😳

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!

Tablet Tales (+ Amateur App Reviews)

This program was inspired by Nicole, my friend and fellow librarian. We ran into each other at the doctor's office one afternoon and, obviously, like everyone does, started discussing library program ideas. In our conversation, she mentioned doing a program called Tablet Tales at her library and for me, that got the wheels turning. I wanted to a program called Tablet Tales. (I've been on an alliteration kick.)

Nicole told me that for her Tablet Tales, she was planning to go through a few apps with the kids, and then, for the second half of the program, to pass out her library's iPads and Nexus 7 tablets for the families to mess around with. Her library has a whole slue of tablets for patron use... but ours doesn't. So I needed an alternative plan.

My program description read:

Did you know that there are tons of fun picture book apps? Let's enjoy "reading a few apps" together and then make a simple craft related to one of them.

So first I picked two apps. I decided on Dear Zoo and Lars and Friends. Then, instead of passing out iPads and Nexus 7s, I had the kids make a Dear Zoo craft, which I took (and modified) from Kiz Club. Maybe not as cool as tablets, but they had fun anyway!

I set up the proxima and had the iPad projected on the wall. The apps went over well!  I did Dear Zoo first, assuming (correctly) that many of the kids already knew the story. I selected the option to read the story myself, then had the kids stand up and take turns prodding the iPad, opening the different packages and making the animals move around and make noises. For this app, I probably could have done without the proxima altogether, since most of the group was focused on the actual iPad in my hand. But it was nice to have it up on the wall anyway. And I did wind up using it a lot for Lars and Friends.

Cute Dear Zoo anecdote: A bunch of the kids knew the story so well that they were able to fill in things like "but he was too grumpy!" and "but he was too scary!" before I even read the words. This was a group of true Dear Zoo fans (including the librarian)!

The app itself has 3 choices when you first open it up: "Read the Book" (that's what I did), "Read to Me," and "Picture Pairs." In "Read the Book" and "Read to Me" (both following the the story, Dear Zoo by Rod Campbell), the animals all make noise and move around a little when touched--which is a cute interactive feature that the kids really seemed to like. In the last scene (the one with the puppy), you get to throw a little red ball and play fetch with the dog. Super cute. The "Picture Pairs" selection brings you to a simple matching game with the animals from the book, which can also be adjusted to "Words and Pictures," where you make matching phrases like "Too Jumpy!" to the monkey picture or "Too Grumpy" to the camel.

Overall, it's a cute app and a great companion to the actual book BUT it's kinda glitchy! Sometimes you get trapped! Two examples: At the end of the story, when you're brought to the game of fetch, sometimes you can't get out. It's just an endless fetch game. You can't even read on to get to the last passage of the book ("He was perfect! I kept him."), because it happens after fetch. Also glitchy--after winning the "Picture Pairs" game, a cute "Congratulations!" screen pops up, but that one's another trap. Neither glitch makes the app unusable, since both occur at (at least somewhat) natural endings, but they're annoying none the less.

Also, is this app no longer available? Does anyone know? I can't find it in the app store anymore.

Anyway, then we moved on to Lars and Friends. I told the group to sit down and I did all the "iPadding" myself this time. They could just relax and enjoy the story. The app ($2.99 on iTunes) has 4 sections: "Storybook," "Puzzles," "Learn," and "Info" (which has to be unlocked by an adult and is basically just the credits).

I used "Storybook" which defaults to letting you read the story yourself but also has a little icon you can press to have it read for you. Each page is interactive, but only slightly. For the purposes of storytime, it was the perfect amount of interaction. There was movement on each page, but not so much that detracted from the story or was so much that the kids wanted to press the iPad themselves.

In the story, Lars, a horse, loves to run around. One day, the other horses are too tired to run with him and Lars has to find other things to do. So he winds up hanging out with a bunch of other different animals. The cool and different thing about Lars and Friends, is that the story focuses on what these different groups of animals are called. Some examples: a school of fish, a mob of kangaroos, a memory of elephants, a tower of giraffes, and a knot of frogs. It's cool and, yay, educational! I'm considering using this app again for future programs, maybe Books n Play for Pre-K?

The other usable sections of the app, "Puzzles," and "Learn" provide simple and educational activities. I didn't use "Puzzles" in my program (but it's exactly what it sounds like: animal puzzles, varying in their degree of difficulty) but I did use "Learn" a little after I finished the story. This section goes through 48 different kids of animals and what their "group" is called. You click the picture of the animal and it says something like, "A drove of goats," or "A mess of iguanas." This is what the screen looks like. There are 2 additional similar screens you can arrow through:

The kids liked touching the pictures and hearing the words, but I'm not sure they cared (or were even old enough to care) about what the app was actually saying. It was pretty clear by the speed at which they were pressing things that they just liked the whole action/reaction thing and not the actual, name-learning element. Eh. As long as their smiling and enjoying, I guess? Maybe a little education subtly crept in there.

Last, we moved on to the craft: Make-Your-Own Dear Zoo Books (modified from these Kiz Club printables). I pre-made each child an 8-page book as well as a pile of boxes/doors/packages printed on cardstock. Then the kids were able to color all the parts and then assemble their books with tape.

You can download the 8-page Make-Your-Own Dear Zoo book here!

You can download the pictures of boxes/doors/packages here!

What worked least: I wasn't sure how I was going to do this until I saw the group I had. Whether or not I would let the kids interact directly with the iPad would have a lot to do with the number of kids I had and also their personalities. I also wasn't sure where I was going to have them sit. Or stand. I wanted them to be able to see the apps projected on the wall, but I also wanted them within arms length of the iPad so they could be part of the interaction. Luckily, when the kids arrived, they were all kids that I knew. I positioned them next to me, sitting as I stood, facing the wall with the projected image. They were a really well-behaved group who, for the most part, understood the concept of taking turns and this helped me a lot. I probably could have looked a little more prepared upon their arrival, but really, I just didn't know how it was all going to go down until I saw who I had! It's ok. It all worked out.

What else was a little awkward: The craft was really time consuming. This program was 30-minutes long and I did the apps for 15-minutes and the craft for 15-minutes (which is what I'd planned). But nobody finished their craft in 15-minutes. Everyone wound up staying late. I think if I'd made the program 45-minutes long instead, I would have eliminated some rushy, guilty type feelings at the very end.

What was the biggest challenge: Picking two apps was nothing. I could have picked 10! But having to come up with an app-related craft...now THAT was a challenge. I'd love to do a Tablet Tales program again, especially since the apps were the highlight of the program, but there's just no way kids can sit for 30-minutes of only stories, even if they are interactive, and coming up with a craft was a major challenge for me. Instead though, I want to really make it a point to use more apps in other programs like Books n Play for Pre-K, because sometimes they're just so good!

What worked best: The apps! The kids liked interacting with the iPad a lot and I think it's always fun to see something projected big on the wall. Even when I did Lars and Friends, where the kids didn't directly interact until we did the "Learn" section at the end, they still enjoyed hearing the story and seeing the animals come to life as I read. Like a magic, animated picture book. It was really cool! Plus, I had some moms ask me about the apps, which is always a good sign. Yay!