Let's Get Messy!
Note: I have learned a few things since I began these outreach storytimes. One of the major lessons I learned is that I need to do LESS books, and longer books towards the beginning. More songs, fingerplays, and other activities involving props are a good way to mix things up and get the wiggles out. Enjoy!
Hello song: I'm in the Mood for Singing...
I love the different verses you can use with this song. We did singing, reading, and listening. I think it definitely helps everyone get into storytime mode!
I've started using this warm-up at the beginning and often times throughout storytime, when the children get wiggly and need to refocus on listening to a story (especially after a song)! It goes like this: 1. Eyes watching (make glasses around eyes with your hands) 2. Ears listening (put hands behind ears) 3. Voices quiet (point to mouth) 4. Body calm (Give yourself a hug) 5. Caring hearts (Put hand over heart)
I found this idea on the Jbrary blog (where, well, I pretty much learn about everything cool and awesome, and end up borrowing everything!), in a post that talks about kindergarten teacher wisdom, and one of the kindergarten teachers uses this "mantra" with her kids. It really works well for calming everyone down, and my regulars have just about got the hang of it so that I only need to ask them for numbers and they know what to do!
Usually I don't read "hello" books - I find that my "hello" song is usually enough to get us started off. However, I stumbled upon this book when planning for this storytime, and had to use it. It is simple, bold, colorful, and has lots of opportunities to get kids interacting with the book. They can all meow, chirp, and hee-haw to say hello, and also point out which animal says what! It was great for getting the kids engaged and opening up at the beginning of the storytime.
Song: Bubble Bubble POP!
I adore this song. The kids can help you call out what color we should do for each fish. It also involves counting! So good.
This book is, of course, a favorite. With many chances to shout out colors, it gives kids a lot of chances to interact with the book. I have done the flannel version in the past, but I haven't yet ventured into flannels with my outreach storytimes at Whole Foods. The flannel that goes with Dog's Colorful Day is usually more fun to use with smaller groups, because everyone can come up and put a color on dog when you get to each color in the story!
Stretcher song: We Wiggle and Wiggle and Stop!
This is such a good little tune for getting the wiggles out. I've learned that by mid-storytime, it's a must! As Dana and Lindsey (Jbrary) mention in their video, it's a great song to teach kids how to follow directions. It took everyone a few tries to get the STOP! down, but they did eventually get it! Many giggles during this little wiggle release.
You may remember this little activity/stretch from my very first post, in which I used shaker eggs to go along with this little mantra. The mantra originates, to my knowledge, from a storytime video posted by the New York Public Library in which the librarian did a little wiggle release that goes: "wiggle your hands way up high / wiggle them way down low / wiggle them side to side / wiggle them on your shoulders / wiggle them on your head / wiggle them on your belly / and then put them all to bed".
Now, for this "messy" storytime, I handed out paint brushes and we used those. So it went like this: "paint way up high / paint way down low / etc..." It worked well. We did the exercise twice. It's a great stretcher!
This book was a good follow up to the above stretcher/activity, Paint Way Up High! because it involves a character who is painting different parts of her body! So you can ask the kids to find their heads, back, arms, etc. One thing I will mention about this book is that I had a concerned parent approach me after storytime because it has the word "ain't" in it, and "ain't isn't taught to kids in school, so why would you want to teach it to them now?" - So, I explained that it is just silly, and that the book is a play off of the old folk tune "ain't gonna rain no mo'", but the parent was bemused and left with their opinions still in place. Oh well, what are you going to do? This is a part of storytime; sometimes people just want to share their opinions.
I made this song up to the tune of Frere Jaques. This is the first song I've written for storytime, yay! However most of it is adapted from "Tap Your Sticks" that I borrowed from Jbrary. Heh heh. We used brushes as our props, instead of rhythm sticks, as you probably have already guessed. Anyway, my version goes like this:
"Swipe your brushes, Swipe your brushes / 1 2 3, 1 2 3 / Can you paint a picture, Can you paint a picture / Just like me, Just like me / Swipe your brushes, Swipe your brushes / way up high, way up high / now let’s all bend down, now let’s all bend down / and paint the ground, paint the ground"
Song: Classic Alphabet Song (you know how it goes!) We sang this song in preparation for the next activity...
Activity: Alphabet "Painting"
We pretended to paint letters of the alphabet with our brushes, as I called them out, on the floor in front of us. It was just a little activity I wanted to try, to see how the kids would handle it. They were pretty good! Parents really got involved in this one, which was nice. Who knows if everyone knew how to paint a letter G? I told them uppercase letters. But we ended on letter "O" so that everyone could feel good about at least painting one letter. ;)
Moving on from painting, this is a messy book that everyone is sure to love. The truck in the book gets SO dirty and the sounds of the mess and the truck are just so fun to have everyone call out together! I put this one toward the end because it really helped to pull their attention back in.
Action Song: This Is the Way...
Well, we sure got messy. Now it's time to clean up! This song was great for drawing our messiness to an end. I saw it on Jbrary, but I know it is a pretty popular tune. It goes like this: "This is the way we wash our arms, Wash our arms, wash our arms / This is the way we wash our arms, So early in the morning (other verses: tummies, elbows, heads, toes...)
Goodbye Song: Bread, Butter, Marmalade & Jam
Instead of "hello" we simply substituted "goodbye". Definitely turning into a favorite -- I get lots of giggles with this one!!
Handout:
- storytime plan / song lyrics
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