Happy Mother's Day! (Preschool)

Preschool Storytime:

Opening: Big Books

Fingerplay: I Love Mommy (B-I-N-G-O)

    I love her and she loves me

    And Mommy is her name-o

    M-O-M-M-Y, M-O-M-M-Y, M-O-M-M-Y

    And Mommy is her name-o

*I was really worried about asking the kids to spell out mommy, but they did awesome!  We put up the letters on the flannelboard one at a time, to help with letter recognition.  When we sang the song they were a little lost, but we have never sang B-I-N-G-O before, so that's understandable.  I'm trying to work in more spelling and alphabet recognition, and this was a lot of fun!  

Book: Cow That Laid an Egg 

*The kids enjoyed this book, but I think they liked the cow puppet more than the book!  I was very happy that the kids informed me right away that cows don't lay eggs.  We took a bowl and turned it into a nest, and inside it was a black spotted egg.  Inside my egg was a baby chicken!  My cow puppet sat on the nest while I read the story, and my volunteer showed the egg to the kids.  What really cracked me up was when a little one told me the chicken was a duck!  My favorite part of the story is when the baby chicken open its mouth and says MOOO!!!  Sadly, that part was lost on the kids, but still a fun read-aloud.

Fingerplay/Flannel: Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed

*As always, the kids love jumping!  I think we can jump the whole storytime, not stop and they wouldn't complain!

Book: What Not to Give Your Mom

*I love this book, and usually the kids will shout out to me that's not right!  But this time they didn't seem to enjoy it as much.  I will probably take a break from it next year and change it out with a different book.  I still think it's a really cute read!

Fingerplay: “Give Mom a Kiss” (With Puppets)

*My kids love standing up and acting like animals!  You can see this great action fingerplay here.

Fingerplay/Flannel: Little dog, little dog, are you in the {colored} doghouse?

*This is just like the little mouse hiding game, but I have different colored doghouses.  I told the kids I've lost my little dog and need to get him back home to his mom.  The kids went crazy today telling me what color doghouse to look behind for the dog!

Book: Pouch!  (Use kangaroo flannel pieces)

*Here we go jumping again!  The kids went crazy over this book!  I have two flannel kangaroos, and each mama has a pouch that the baby can jump in and out of.  As we read the book, baby kangaroo jumps out of mama's pouch, so we all stand up and jump while we I'm reading.  Then we all sit back down until we get to the next page, and we do it all again.  Such a great read for this time of year!

Book/Action: Mama Loves You by Caroline Stutson 

*We ran out of time for this, and unfortunately I don't have the book to read.  But I found a wonderful idea to use, and that is you take hearts and put the animal on one side.  Then you read the rhyme for each animal, and then flip it over after the kids guess the animal to reveal if they are right or not.  What I plan on doing next time is take puppets, read the rhyme, then after the kids guess what animal it is, give the the heart to my puppet.  I found this wonderful idea here.

Fingerplay: “If You Love Mom, Let Her Know It”

       If you love mom, and you know it, clap your hands. (sing twice)

       For the love she always gives, and the caring way she lives.

       If you love your mom, let her know it, clap your hands.

       Continue with: Stomp your feet, Shout hooray!

*Anytime we sing a variation of "If You're Happy and You Know It" the kids love it.  But today we ran out of time for this song.  Hopefully next time!

Book: Mother, Mother, I Want Another!

*I didn't get to read this book, but it's a great one to do!  I like to use my puppets during this and feed them items from the story.  Next year I hope to do this story, it's always a winner with the kids.

For our craft today, I wanted to come up with an actual card the kids could make.  I had no idea it would make them so happy!  Many of the kids came up to me afterwards, to get their sticker, and they were so proud to open up their creation to show me the inside!  So precious!  I found the idea for a grape card here, but I haven't gotten brave enough to use paint yet with my preschoolers.  So, I decided to use paper circles instead, and do my own version.  The kids had an outline inside the card to help guide them, and they glued down purple circles and the green leaf.  There are two pictures so that you can see the saying on the front and inside of the card.  

The front says: Heard it through the grapevine....

The inside says: Love you bunches!  Happy Mother's Day 2017

Time for Two's Storytime

Opening: Big Books

Fingerplay: If You Want to Hear a Story

Book: Mother, Mother, I Want Another

*I love this story, but today I think the kids enjoyed the puppets more than they did the book. Sometimes that will happen!

Fingerplay: “Give Mom a Kiss” (With Puppets)

*My kids love standing up and acting like animals!  You can see this great action fingerplay here.

Fingerplay/Flannel: Little dog, little dog, are you in the {colored} doghouse?

*This is just like the little mouse hiding game, but I have different colored doghouses.  I told the kids I've lost my little dog and need to get him back home to his mom.  The kids went crazy today telling me what color doghouse to look behind for the dog!

Book: Pouch!  (Use kangaroo flannel pieces)

*Here we go jumping again!  The kids went crazy over this book!  I have two flannel kangaroos, and each mama has a pouch that the baby can jump in and out of.  As we read the book, baby kangaroo jumps out of mama's pouch, so we all stand up and jump while we I'm reading.  Then we all sit back down until we get to the next page, and we do it all again.  Such a great read for this time of year!

Action: Five Flowers

*I usually read the fingerplay that goes along with the five flowers, but that didn't happen. I had a very low crowd today, but a few two's were very, very active! So instead I just fed my five flowers to my puppets, which made the two's very happy.

Action: Heart Dancing

*We ended storytime today dancing around with our hearts before placing them on our flannelboard.

Our craft today was an umbrella with hearts! The twos glued everything on the card, and they turned out great! I found this precious idea here. The original craft uses cupcake liners, which is precious, but I didn't want to attempt that with the two's.

Extra Books:

Are You My Mommy? (Board Book)

Baby Bear, Baby Bear

I Love My Mommy by Jonathan Litton

Who’s Hiding?