Toddler Tales 3/13/19

Toddler Tales! I've been on a super traditional toddler story time kick lately and this one, for ages 2-4 at our branch library, was tons of fun! It was a 3-week-session with a different theme each week. The first week we did animals, the second week we did food, and the third week we did bugs. Today I'm blogging about week 2 and my all-time favorite storytime theme-- Food!

First we started with the book Little Green Peas by Keith Baker, which is great for this age group because it gets them to name colors and it's also super silly! Peas flying kites? Peas sailing boats? Peas living in royal castles? So silly! 

Then we moved on to the (loosely food related) Pete the Cat: I Love My White Shoes by James Dean and Eric Litwin. I use this book, basically, as often as I can get away with. It was also on Sadie's Top 5, Ages 18-24 Months list. This one is a favorite for SO MANY kids. If you're not yet familiar, this is the story of cool cat Pete who loves his white shoes so much that he sings about them. The book has singing, color recognition, and lots of silliness! Plus, there's a super-cool, positive message at the end. It makes for a big hit with a pretty large age group. Pluuuuuuus it ties really nicely into this great, simple food song called Picked A Strawberry, thanks to Jbrary!:

When I sing Picked A Strawberry with Pete the Cat: I Love My White Shoes, I usually have us pick strawberries first and blueberries second. This follows along with the order of the berries in the book. Then I have the kids name other things we can pick. For this particular storytime, we wound up picking apples, peaches, oranges, carrots, and bananas. One kid also suggested chocolate! If only!!

Last, we read Hi, Pizza Man by Virginia Walter. This is a great one because a lot of kids don't know it and a lot of parents/caregivers don't either. It's about waiting for pizza and speculating who will bring it. Will it be a pizza man? A pizza woman? A pizza dog? A pizza cat? A pizza snake? Once again, this book has great repetition and lots of silliness. And, instead of having the kids name colors, this time they get to name animal sounds. A little variety!

Then we sang one last song, P-I-Z-Z-A, another perfect tie in, and also taken from Jbrary:



I had all the letters, P I Z Z A, hung up so I could pull them down for a little visual as we sang. See the photo above.

Then it became craft time! We all marched down the hall to the small, sunny craft room to make paper plate personal pizzas (that's a lot of P-words!).

This was a fun craft that required a lot of prep on my part! Each pizza has crayon sauce (I only put out red and orange crayons), collaged paper toppings (This was the majority of my prep work. I cut piles of yellow cheese, red pepperoni, and green peppers.), and tissue paper crust (I cut brown tissue paper squares, thinking the kids would ball them up before they glued, up but some just glued them on as is-- that's ok too!). Here are a few delicious looking finished products:

What worked least: While the pizza craft worked, I had some anxiety about it going in. I worried that it would be too fast. Like, I was afraid that it would only take the kids 5 minutes to make. But actually, it was totally fine! In fact, a craft that took any longer probably wouldn't have held the interest of the kids in this age range anyway. So, aside from the prep work and somewhat obnoxious clean up, all was well!

What worked best: It's a tie between Pete The Cat and Hi, Pizza Man! While Pete The Cat is kind of a guaranteed success, Hi, Pizza Man! is also a fun title that most people don't know, and that gets the kids involved and participating. Overall, basically, this was a storytime worth blogging about.

Old MacDonald Storytime

I may have only had three toddlers in attendance, but my Old MacDonald Storytime (for ages 18-35 months) a few weeks ago was still a super fun program! And one that I plan on doing again, perhaps in a more popular time slot. It was a simple toddler storytime. First, I read two stories, then we had a big singalong with puppets, and last, there was a mommy & me type craft. This is going to be a very short blog post because it was such a simple program, but I really had a lot of fun so I'd like to share! Here's what went on:

First, books:

Where is the Green Sheep by Mem Fox -- This was perfect for the older end of the 18-35 month age range but kind of worked even with the 18-month-old of the group!

Spot Goes to the Farm by Eric Hill --  This one SUPER worked for me because I had such a small group and the kids were able to participate in the lifting the flaps! This book wouldn't have worked with a group of more than, say, 5 kids. But with 3? It was absolutely perfect!

Next, Sing-a-long: 

No surprise here, we sang Old MacDonald! I had 9 puppets, all hiding under a blanket, who I took out one-by-one as we sang. It worked really well! Our farm was really big. It had a cow, pig, chicken, duck, cat, dog, lamb, frog, and turkey. After we sang the verse for each animal, I left that puppet out so the kids could see it or pet it. I'm not sure if this would have been pure chaos or not with a bigger group, but with my little trio, it was totally fun. The kids really loved to be up and down, playing with the puppets as they appeared from under the blanket. Again, thanks to the group size, this singalong was really manageable. I probably would have handled it differently with a bigger group.

Last, Craft:

I had the kids make farm scenes. I put out white construction paper, pre-cut barns in two pieces (made with the Cricut), glue sticks, markers, and animal foam stickers (these from Discount School Supply)

What worked least: The time. This program was a ton of fun and, if I do say so myself, perfectly age-appropriate, but I just didn't have the crowd I'd planned for or wanted.

What worked best: I think the sing-a-long was a huge hit. Leaving all the farm animals out for the kids to play with was perfect, although, again, I'm not sure if it would have worked or not if I'd had a bigger group.

Final thought: I will be doing this program again over the summer in a different time slot!

Baby Shark Storytime!

New blog post doo doo doo doo doo doo, new blog post doo doo doo doo doo doo, new blog post doo doo doo doo doo doo, new blog post! Here it is doo doo doo doo doo doo, here it is doo doo doo doo doo doo, here it is doo doo doo doo doo doo, here it is! Baby shark storytime! I did this program two weeks ago already but life and work got hectic suddenly so I'm only getting to blog about it now. But actually, despite the delay, I've been so excited to share this post! I'm kind of proud of myself for this one. It was the only Baby Shark Storytime (that I know of) in our county!

The newsletter description said, "If you love Baby Shark, join us for some shark stories, a shark craft, and, of course, a sing-along." I decided to make the program for kids ages 2 and up because, really, don't all kids love Baby Shark? However, the biggest challenge for me in planning quickly became finding stories and a craft that would be appealing to kids of all ages. In the end, for books, I settled on Baby Shark Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo by John John Bajet and the not-really-totally-about-sharks book, I Spy Under the Sea by Edward Gibbs. Even though neither of these are really stories per say, they worked well for the young, active group I had. For a craft, I had the kids make shark fins, which I figured would be done more simply (and with more parental help) for the younger kids and with more detail for the older kids. More on this below. Baby Shark Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo was a fun book choice because it was familiar, yet the movements and words were slightly different than those in the Pinkfong version that made Baby Shark suddenly super popular. (For example, the book had "Great White Shark" where you bring your arm and your leg together.) And, as far as I Spy Under the Sea goes, I find that "Who am I?" type books (which is what it is) tend to be a hit with a wide variety of ages too. The older end of the age group loved totally acing the guesses before I even finished reading out the clues.

After the books, it was craft time. Shark fins! To make this, I took this template here, enlarged it a little, added two little x's on the bottom tab for hold punch guides, and printed 2 copies on light blue cardstock for every kid registered. To make the wearable shark fin, have each kid/parent cut out two of these fins, glue them together and fold the two bottom tabs (under the dotted line) in opposite directions. Like this:

Then punch two holds in each tab (which, again, I marked with x's so there was no thinking required!) and string (pre-cut) elastic through the holes. Then, have the kids decorate the fins however they want! I put out markers, gems, foam stickers, buttons, and pom poms (and glue). Even the younger kids were able to enjoy themselves with help from their parents.

Troubleshooting tip: Some kids cut off the tabs on the bottom. Some kids glued the tabs together. These things are probably my fault because I am a really bad craft explainer.

When there were only a few minutes left I gathered the group up for one more singalong (I mean, this was Baby Shark Storytime after all). This time we sang along to the Pinkfong version of the song that made Baby Shark the hit that we all know and love. (Love? Hm. Not sure.) I just played the Youtube video on a blutooth speaker and had everyone gather 'round. It was SO MUCH FUN. I mean the song is only, like, 2-minutes long but what a super fun 2-minutes we had together!

What worked least: Like I said, I did a bad job explaining how to do the craft. I do crafts so infrequently that I think, honestly, I may have just been a little out of practice. Good thing I had extra fins ready to go!

What worked best: The singalong at the end was so much fun! Everyone was singing loud and proud and smiling and just, genuinely, enjoying!

That's the end doo doo doo doo doo doo, that's the end doo doo doo doo doo doo, that's the end doo doo doo doo doo doo, that's the end!

Diverse Families Shortlist (A Readers Advisory Post)

A few months ago a friend asked me for book recommendations for her daughter, who's a couple of months older than Sadie. She was in search of books showing a variety of diverse families because she'd realized that most of her daughters books feature people who look like her.  This immediately made me realize that most of Sadie's books also show families like ours: two-parent, heterosexual, and white. So off I went on a search! Both for Niamh and for Sadie! I wanted to find some books that were great and that also had different types of kids and families. I asked other librarians for recommendations, read about 20/25 picture books, and vetted from there. So for anyone else searching for something similar who may stumble across this post, I am sharing my work. This is my official Diverse Families Shortlist (aka, a bib.):

Here We Are: Notes for Living on Planet Earth by Oliver Jeffers is a book I stumbled across when looking for books about stars and space. It is, in fact, about stars and space, but it's also such a subtle book about diversity! It's AWESOME. It's written as kind of a guidebook for babies about how to live here on Earth. The illustrations are, in true Oliver Jeffers fashion, freakin' amazing-- soooo detailed and cute, the kinds of spreads you just want to stare at for 15-minutes before turning the page. It's subtle in its diversity message and isn't really, like, "about that," but absolutely just continues to feature lots and lots of different kinds of people. Particularly, there is one page that says, "People come in many shapes, sizes and colors. We may all look different, act different and sound different, but don't be fooled, we are all people." And then there are, like, 70 different drawings of people all over that spread. They're all different colors (including blue and green) and doing really different things-- one man is playing bagpipes, a kid is holding a soccer ball, there's a bee catcher in a mask, two women getting married, a man in a hijab, an astronaut, a man with a long beard and no shoes holding a "please help" sign, a ballerina, a rabbi, etc. So many different people! It's a great page in a great, albeit somewhat unrelated to the topic otherwise, book. Recommended age range: 2-5 years, depending on attention spans.

Mommy, Mama, and Me by Lesléa Newman is sweet and simple. At first I thought this book might be a little "too in your face about diversity" for me. Like, I didn't want books about diversity as much as books that just happen to show different people, but then I read it to Sadie and I saw how completely unquestioning she was about it and I realized, no, this book isn't about diversity at all. It's just a nice, simple story that happens to show same-sex parents and it's me who's just a jerk for judging it before I read it. In little rhyming text, this book is about a kid and his mommy and mama and all the nice things they do together and how they love each other. Sadie likes it a lot! Recommended age range: birth through 3-years.

Monday is One Day by Arthur A. Levine is a book about working parents and how hard it is for us to be apart from our babies. It has sweet, rhyming text and shows a different working family on each page. The families are fairly diverse, though there's not a TON of them-- a black mom and dad with two kids, a white boy with his older (perhaps grandparent?) family, a blonde single mom, two white dads with a son and a dog, and a few others. I'm partial to a book about working parents and I appreciate the subtle, but not pushy, diversity that is shown throughout. Recommended age range: 2-5 years, thought I haven't tried reading it to Sadie (yet).

Littles And How They Grow by Kelly DiPucchio shows babies more than it shows whole families but a few families did sneak in there. The book features rhyming text, lots of cute babies, and multicultural illustrations. The few family members that do make appearances are interracial and same sex, but super subtle, just totally not a big deal, which is awesome. Sadie really likes looking at the babies in this book, especially the newborn on the first page. Important emotional spoiler note for parents: The last page of this book is about how fast the littles grow up and it shows a girl getting on a school bus and it separately made both my husband and me cry. You have been warned! Recommended age range: birth through 3-years. (This is the book Sadie is reading in the photo above.)

Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes by Mem Fox is a Sadie favorite! It shows a variety of babies with varying skin tones and outfits and in varying kinds of places who all have one thing in common: ten little fingers and ten little toes. This doesn't show families, per say, just reminds us that, no matter where you're from, or what you wear, we're all the same underneath. A simple yet powerful message in a super short book good for even the smallest babies! If you've got a baby crazed toddler like I do, this book might be a hit for you and a great way to effortlessly introduce diversity. Recommended age range: birth through 3-years.

Sterling, Best Dog Ever by Aidan Cassie is a good book if you're in the market for a cute story that just happens to feature interracial parents. It also has a great "be yourself" message that's good for everybody! It's about a dog searching for his forever home, but who gets super mixed up trying to be all these other things he thinks he is supposed to be-- a fork, a whisk, a stick. Such a sweet little story with just the right touch of subtle diversity. Recommended age range: 4-7 years.

Harriet Gets Carried Away by Jessie Sima, like Sterling, Best Dog Ever, is also a cute story that happens to feature interracial parents, except this book one-ups the interracial parents with interracial same-sex parents! Plus the story is ADORABLE! Like, it's just so innocent and sweet! Recommended age range: 3+ years. (I really see no upper age limit for this one.)

Puppy, Puppy, Puppy by Julie Sternberg is yet another cute story that happens to feature interracial parents, this time about a baby and his puppy. Diversity for dog lovers! Super cute! Recommended age range: 3-6 years.

Families by Shelley Rotner and Sheila M. Kelly is more "about diversity" than the books preceding it. It's packed with real photos of tons of different families. It makes no attempt to be subtle, but rather, it's a straightforward telling of all the different types of families that can exist. "Some  families have children born to them. Some adopt." "Some children have one parent. Some have two-- a mom and a dad, or two moms or two dads." And at the end it says, "There are many different kinds of families. What about yours?" It's just a nice, straightforward way of explaining differences to kids. Recommended age range: birth through 5-years, depending on attention spans.

Families, Families, Families by Suzanne Lang and Max Lang is really similar to Families, but shorter and with cute animal families, instead of real photos. While I think the real photos are probably a better tool for showing actual family diversity, I think the animals (and just less busy pages in general) might appeal more to younger kids. Or just different kids. So while the text is similar to the book above, the totally different type of pictures might be just what some kids need. Recommended age range: birth through 3-years.

The Great Big Book of Families by Mary Hoffman is similar to the two books above, but this time with longer text and illustrations of kids, as opposed to photos or illustrations of animals. This book, like the others above, shows big families, small families, single parent families, same-sex parent families, interracial families, etc., but this book also mentions a ton of other, less-discussed types of families (and just, like, life situations in general): homeschooling, being unemployed, being homeless, families who can't afford a vacation, families who shop at thrift stores, parents who have new partners, and so many more! The last two pages say, "So families can be big, small, happy, sad, rich, poor, loud, quiet, mad, good-tempered, worried, or happy-go-lucky. Most families are all of these things some of the time. What's yours like today?" This is a seriously great book for showing kids how diverse real life real families can be, and for exposing them to different situations, helping to (hopefully) raise kind, open-minded children. The last line--"What's yours like today?"--brings kids into the book, kind of showing them that any of these situations could be relate-able or potentially relate-able to them.  Recommended age range: 3-5 years.

Todd Par books in general should also be mentioned here. While his illustrations don't seem to resonate with Sadie at the moment, his books all have really wonderful messages and bright, happy pictures that I feel like most kids would enjoy. Highlights are The Family Book, We Belong Together (about adoption), The I Love You Book, Be Who You Are, and Love the World.

Readers advisory is a scary world for me so I hope this post was at least somewhat helpful to at least some people. As Niamh's mom, Rachel, says "It is so important for children to not only read books that mirror their lives but also ones that act as windows to others." Let's raise our kids to be open-minded and loving to all! Happy reading!

Dramatic Storytime

Hi. I want to start this post off by admitting that many of my library programs are kind of similar to each other. I am a bit of a two trick pony, as well as a firm believer that if it ain't broke, don't fix it.  But this morning I had the opportunity to try something kind of different and, as my colleagues can attest, I was really excited about it! For ages 18-35 months, I now present my super fun, new, different program... Dramatic Storytime!

(Ok, I can't lie. I may have copied [borrowed] the overarching idea for this program from an event I attended with my daughter at Think Big! Theater. But all the details and all the work for it were mine and mine alone! I actually did something creative for once!)

So, anyway. the theme of Dramatic Storytime was Three Little Kittens. If you're unfamiliar with the story of the Three Little Kittens, let me include a quick summery of it for you. If you are familiar with it, feel free to skip this next paragraph:

The story of the Three Little Kittens, according to Wikipedia, "is a sophisticated piece usually attributed to American poet Eliza Lee Cabot Follen (1787–1860). With the passage of time, the poem has been absorbed into the Mother Goose collection. The rhyme tells of three kittens who first lose, then find and soil, their mittens. When all is finally set to rights, the kittens receive their mother's approval and some pie."

Here's how it worked. The whole program was based around very slowly reading and acting out the book, Three Little Kittens by Paul Galdone (just a retelling of the classic tale). The kids played the part of the three (or in this case, 8) little kittens and I played the part of the Mother Kitten. When they signed in, I let them choose a cat nose to wear for their "costume" so they could really be the kittens. I would say 1/4 of the kids wore the nose for about 3 minutes and the other 3/4 of the kids wouldn't touch them. I wore cat ears because, really, they're kinda cute.

Throughout the story, there were three main breaks for activities-- aka "acting." The program broke down like this:

Read a few pages from the book. (The kittens lose their mittens, cry, are told by Mother Kitten that they can have no pie, and then find their mittens.)

Activity one: The kittens search for their mittens. This involved the kids digging through a pile of die-cut paper mittens as well as other die-cut shapes in search of two matching mittens.

 

 

Read a few pages from the book. (The kittens tell Mother Kitten that they have found their mittens and Mother Kitten tells them that they can have some pie.)

Activity two: The kittens shall have some pie. This involved making this very simple paper plate cherry pie craft from Glued to My Crafts.

Read a few pages from the book. (The kittens eat the pie with their mittens on thus soiling their mittens, cry, and then go wash and dry their mittens.)

Activity three: The kittens wash their mittens and hang them out to dry. First, this involved the kids basically just playing with pre-cut felt mittens, a few empty detergent bottles, a couple of tiny spray bottles, and a big bin of water.

After about 8-minutes of water play time, I told them to bring their mittens over to the "laundry line" to hang them up to dry. The laundry line was just a bunch of clothes pins on a piece of yarn that I taped to the side of a table. It worked perfectly.

Read the last few pages from the book. (The kittens tell Mother Kitten that they have washed their mittens, she praises them, and then they all smell a rat close by-- which, I explained to the kids, was even better than pie to a cat!) THE END.

Activity four: Unrelated to the story, we listen to The Three Little Kittens song and mother ktiten (me) blows bubbles. Uh, just like I said, when I got to the end of the book, I put on The Three Little Kittens song (this version from Mother Goose Club Playhouse on YouTube) and blew bubbles for the kids to play in a few minutes before we said goodbye. Just a quick extra thing that I could be sure would be a hit.

What worked least: So minor, but I allotted 45-minutes for this program and it took exactly 39. It was so much fun and such a success, overall, that I really really really don't think anyone would quibble over the 6 minutes, but I like things to be perfect so it bothered me a little that I couldn't make the time perfect too. Still, I think I really did time things out pretty well, considering it was a totally new program and a totally new idea that I've never done before. So, yay, good for  me!

What worked best: Seriously, all of it was awesome. I think everyone really liked sitting for a minute, then doing an activity, then sitting for a minute, then doing an activity. It broke the program up nicely and was perfect for short little attention spans. Of the four activities (five, if you include reading the book!), I thought the "washing" would be the stand-out favorite for sure, with bubbles as the second favorite. Honestly, I was way off! I think the favorite activities were a tie between activities 1 and 2-- the searching for a pair of matching paper mittens and the pie craft! Who would have ever guessed?

All in all, I had such a great time planning, prepping, and doing this program and I feel really proud of it! So I shall leave you all with this question: What other books or stories lend themselves to a dramatic storytime?

Snow Much Fun!

I have this thing about winter. Mostly, I absolutely despise it. But for the month of December, and the month of December ONLY, I actually kinda like it! It's new! It's exciting! The holidays are upon us! And my winter coat still feels cozy instead of cumbersome! Last Friday I decided to embrace the one lasting good thing about winter-- playing in the snow! (Please note: I hate the snow and wish it would just stay July forever. But bringing my daughters outside with the neighborhood kids on a solid, no-pressure-to-drive-in-it snow day IS sort of enjoyable.) So, despite my true feelings, I was able to muster up enthusiasm--quite a bit actually--for an exciting, snow-themed program.

Snow Much Fun!, for ages 2-5, was, well, snow much fun. It consisted of 3 parts:

1. A book. Specifically, The Jacket I Wear In the Snow by Shirley Neitzel (an oldie but a goodie!). If you're not familiar with it, this book uses lots of repetitive words and pictures to explain all of the bundling that goes in to getting ready for a day in the snow. And it replaces certain words with pictures. For example the word "jacket" is always a picture of a jacket. The word "zipper" is always a picture of a zipper. It's good for little ones because, theoretically, they can chime in as they recognize the pictures. Each page builds on another item that the main character has to wear to go outside. In my head, I imagined the kids chiming in each time one of these repetitive pictures presented itself. I definitely thought there would be a lot of kids yelling "mittens!" and "socks!" But in real life, I mostly just read it straight through and was lucky if they chimed in for just the last word on each page, "snow." That was fine though. It held most of the kids' attention, even that of a couple of two-year-olds.

2. A mommy & me craft. I decided on snowflake tape resist watercolor paintings. Basically, for this,  mom/dad/caregiver puts down painters tape in the shape of simple snowflakes and then the kids can watercolor over the whole sheet however they want. Then, later, when the tape is pulled up, it looks like a snowy sky-- stolen from Little Bins for Little Hands, thank you.

Here are a few picture of kids working on their craft:

And here are a few finished products (minus the ripping off of the painters tape):

3. Sensory play. This was the part of the program that I was the most excited about. It was a chance for the kids to play in homemade snow. The snow wasn't made with the kids, but rather ahead of time for the kids. There are a lot of homemade snow recipes floating around out there on the ol' Internet, but the one I used today is one that I used once before a few years ago in a program called "Snowmen For Everyone." It's made with only baking soda and white conditioner. I found a few different recipes online with slightly different ratios of each of these items, but I wound up working out a super easy one:

Two 1-lb boxes of baking soda + 1 cup of conditioner

Last time I made this snow, I wound up doing a ton of measuring and portioning and it made a huge mess and took forever. This time, I figured out this shortcut and it was super quick and easy. 2 boxes. 1 cup. Mix. Done. You wind up with something the consistency of dense, wet snow. It's like the kind that's good for making a snowman and that you hate to clean off your car. We even tossed it in the refrigerator for 45-minutes before using it so it was cold like snow! In the future, if I ever do this program again, I would do 4 boxes of baking soda and 2 cups of conditioner in each bin. But today I used 2 boxes and 1 cup and it really worked out just fine. There wasn't a ton, but there was enough. I added a few plastic toy animals, matchbox cars, and plastic spoons to each bin, and--viola!--donezo! Fun snow to play with inside!

What worked least: I'll say the book worked least, but not because it was a bad book or even because it just wasn't a success. It was, in fact, probably about as successful as reading to 2-4 year-olds can be! But compared to the craft and the homemade snow, I'd call the book the least exciting part of the program. That's ok! Something has to be.

What worked best: Is it not obvious? The snow! SNOW MUCH FUN.

Sadie's Top 5, 18-24 months

Apologies for this post coming late. I've been on  a bit of a blog-break since I have been on maternity leave. Sadie is now two-years-old and has become a big sister! We welcomed baby Callie in early June and have had our hands full! While I hope to still keep up with Sadie's favorites every 6-months, I've decided not to list favorite books for Callie because 1. They're largely the same books, and 2. Apparently, with two babies, you don't get to read nearly as much as you do with just one. (And you feel very bad and guilty about it.) Anyway, while I'm not sure if this list is entirely accurate because sometimes it's hard to tell and also because, man, toddlers are really freakin' fickle, here's my best guess at Sadie's up-to-age-two favorites:

Pete the Cat, I Love My White Shoes by James Dean and Eric Litwin is a favorite for SO MANY kids. And mine is no exception. If you're not yet familiar, this is the story of cool cat Pete who loves his white shoes so much that he sings this song: I love my white shoes, I love my white shoes, I love my white shoes. Then he proceeds to accidentally dye his shoes a bunch of different colors by stepping in stuff like a large pile of strawberries and a puddle of mud. But does Pete cry? Goodness, no! He just sings a new song every time his shoes change colors. He's so cool! The moral of Pete's story is, "no matter what you step in, just keep walking along and singing your song. Because it's all good." In our case, Sadie particularly loves naming the things Pete steps in and (sometimes) naming the colors. She also always enjoys shaking her head "no" when I ask her if Pete cries. This is a book that will be a favorite for most kids for many years. We love Pete!

Fruits of India by Jill Hartley might seem like an unusual choice, but at this age, Sadie loves to correctly identify things. And she also loves fruit. I read somewhere that once children learn that every object has a name attached to it, they'll quickly want to learn all of these names. And that held true for Sadie, particularly around the 19/20-month mark. The book is simple. East page just has a picture of a fruit + its name. While some of the fruits in this book are ones we don't see here in the USA, many of them are familiar: bananas, apples, grapes, etc. It's kind of perfect for teaching the names of fruits to kids this age, actually. I would highly recommend this one for kids in this "learning the names of things" age group. Especially fruit-loving kids like Sadie.

Row, Row, Row, Your Boat by Jane Cabrera is a longer version of the classic song we all know, accompanied by adorable animal illustrations (I'm a big Jane Cabrera fan!). A sample verse: "Row, row, row your boat, watch the tiger prowl. If you see is mighty pounce, don't forget to growl." Like with Fruits of India, this book was great for Sadie to learn to name different animals. Her favorite page is the one at the end with Mommy Dog. I think anything Jane Cabrera does it a masterpiece, but her illustrations combined with this song = a major win for us!

Off to School! by Sesame Workshop, affectionately called "Elmo Book" in my house, is a favorite for more reasons than just being about Elmo. While it's true that Sadie does enjoy pretty much any book about the Sesame Street characters, this book has a lot more to give! For starters, while it's an actual story, the language and length, paired with familiar and colorful illustrations are absolutely perfect for this age group. It's also interactive! On one page, it asks the reader to rub Elmo's tummy. On another, it asks to help "pour the cereal into the bowl" by tapping the picture of the box. Another page asks the reader to practice deep breathing (take deep breaths). It's all really great! Cute story, familiar characters, and interactive text. Throw in a little color and object naming and you've got a 10-minute activity! That's something Sadie and mommy can both get behind!

Bath Time! from Sterling Children's Books had a really long run as Sadie's absolute favorite for over a month. It's a very short story that, basically, starts out with the narrator (a bunch of different animals) pleading the reader not to take a bath, then reluctantly agreeing to take the bath, and then admitting that said bath was nice. Each page has a different animal photo/narrator. So, for example, the first page has a picture of a raccoon and says, "I don't want to take a bath!" Then the third page has a rhino and says "Alright, fine. Let's get it over with." Later in the book there is a bear that says "Ooohhh. This water feels nice..." And the very last page has a human baby that says, "Maybe taking baths isn't so bad after all!" It's cute. I originally checked it out of the library because Sadie hated baths and I was trying to persuade her to like them again. Then, one day, she decided she did! Maybe it worked? Or maybe she just saw her friend in the tub and wanted to join her. Either way, we really like this book.

Ok! A month late but I got it up! Next Sadie's Top 5 coming in a few months!