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!

Mall Storytime

Starting this past weekend, the Walt Whitman Mall began hosting its last-Saturday-of-the-month storytime in the mall's Center Court. Each week, this storytime is run by one of 8 Huntington-area libraries, rotating around from library to library, and guess what? I got to do the first one ever!

I was super excited and, of course, a little nervous. It's always a bit overwhelming when a storytime is open to all ages and you have no idea if you'll get 4 kids or 40 kids. Luckily, I wasn't in it alone. My coworker, Andrea, and I got to man this storytime event together.

What we lacked in ability to plan, we made up for in quantity of books. Since we just had no idea what to expect, we brought quite a stack along with us--20 books to be exact. Here is our pile:

We tried to pack books for every scenario: a group of moms and babies, a group of antsy pre-schoolers, a really large group of antsy pre-schoolers, a quiet and focused group of pre-schoolers, school-age kids, a group with a mix of older and younger kids...any scenario that was possible, we had the books for it!

What wound up really happening was that we had a core group of three really attentive, 4-year-old girls + a few other kids who came and went throughout the storytime (including Andrea's two sons and one of my Musical Kids regulars!).

We crammed a lot into 30 minutes. Here's what we did:

1. Jump! by Scott M. Fischer

2. The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle (with this activity kid)

3. Pete the Cat, I Love My White Shoes by Eric Litwin and James Dean

4. Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus by Mo Willems

5. Five Little Monkeys (with the monkey mitt)

6. Elephant and Piggie: We Are In a Book by Mo Willems

7. If You're Happy and You Know It by David A. Carter

8. Can You Make a Scary Face by Jan Thomas

9. What Pet To Get by Emma Dodd

What worked least: All things considered, this storytime went pretty well. I asked Andrea her thoughts and she agreed that it really worked. Sure in an ideal world, we'd have been able to do a bit more prep work, but for not knowing the ages of the kids or how many of them we'd have in attendance, we pulled this off nicely...if I do say so myself.

What worked best: I think we both agree that The Very Hungry Caterpillar activity kit is like gold. This is one of my longstanding favorite storytime props and one of Andrea's also. The kids love holding all the different signs and "feeding" the different things to the caterpillar. As the caterpillar eats through each piece of fruit in the story, I use the puppet to "chomp" through the holes in the signs as the kids hold them out, half scaring/half tickling each kid. They all shriek with glee at this! It's a sure-fire win time after time and definitely was yesterday also.

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.