Hoppy Easter! (Preschool and Two's)

Preschool Storytime:

Opening: Big Books

Book: Egg by Henkes

*For this, I wanted to make eggs to go along with the book.  I had no idea I would get the reaction from the preschoolers that I did!  I don't know if it was the combination of excitement for the egghunt or what, but they screamed and hollered the whole time!  I've included a picture below of my eggs.  I velcroed each eggs to a ruler, so that it would stand up on my puppet stage.  That way I could pull apart my eggs, to show the bird hidden inside.   For the last egg, that has a crocodile hidden inside, I used a puppet.

Fingerplay/Flannel: Hippity-Hop, Hippity-Hay

Hippity-hop, hippity-hay

Five little bunnies went out to play.

Hippity-hop, hippity-hay

One little bunny hopped away.

Hippity-hop, hippity-hay

Four little bunnies went out to play.

Credit: http://www.preschoolexpress.com/music_station04/music_station_april04.shtml

E-Book: Hop Away Big Pink Easter Monster!

*I've never done a full e-book before using my table in storytime, so I was very hesitant today to do this. I'm so glad I did! This book is like "Go away, big green monster!". The kids went crazy over it! The big pink Easter monster appears bit by bit, and then we stood up and hopped. As we hopped up and down, I would slide the next page over, and the monster disappeared and an Easter egg appeared! This is a wonderful purchase and I look forward to using the others by this author in storytime.

Fingerplay/Flannel: Jelly Bean Countdown (Feed to puppets)

Extra Books:

Time for Two’s Storytime:

Opening: Big Books

Fingerplay: If You Want to Hear a Story

Book: We’re Going on an Egg Hunt

*This is a wonderful book to read-aloud and it's great for the two's! Inside it has a lot of flaps, and I love to put up Easter eggs on my flannelboard as I go along. There are a lot of animals inside, so it's a great opportunity to incorporate puppets.

Fingerplay: Hippity-Hop, Hippity-Hay

Hippity-hop, hippity-hay Five little bunnies went out to play.

Hippity-hop, hippity-hay One little bunny hopped away.

Hippity-hop, hippity-hay Four little bunnies went out to play.

Credit: http://www.preschoolexpress.com/music_station04/music_station_april04.shtml

Book: Easter Croc

*This is a gorgeous pop-up book! The two's were very excited to go outside and hunt Easter eggs, so I don't think they enjoyed this as much as I had hoped they would.

Fingerplay/Flannel:  Jelly Beans

Extra Books:

Doris the Bookasaurus (Preschool)

Preschool Storytime:

Opening: Big Books

Book: Meet Dizzy Dinosaur

Fingerplay/Flannel: Five Little Dinos Jumping on the Bed

Book: Please, Open This Book!

*I was so excited to read this book, but the preschoolers were not so excited about it. The amusing part was at the end of this book you turn off the light on all the animals inside the book and shut them all up inside the book. One little boy spoke up and asked where all the animals went. So, I randomly opened the book up to a page to show him that the animals were okay!

Flannelboard: “Five Little Books”

TUNE: FIVE LITTLE MONKEYS

Five little books at the library

Sitting on the shelf, lonely as can be

Along comes (name) with their card for me.

To take one home to read for free.

*I found a cute fingerplay online called five little books, but I didn't like the flow. My wonderful boss heard me talking about it, so she helped me come up with this one. If you like it, please feel free to use it! I had my puppets give me library cards and I gave them back a board book. We have a giant library card that the kids can pose with when the get their own card, so one puppet gave me that and the preschoolers really got a big kick out of that. The best part was when one or two preschoolers started singing along! Please feel free to use this if you like it, that's why I shared it!

Credit: Kyndra and Casey (My boss is Casey.)

Fingerplay/Flannel: Dinosaur Hiding Behind Door

Credit: Thrive After Three

Book: Have You Seen My Dinosaur?

*This was probably the favorite part of the storytime. While I was reading, my volunteer would pop up a dinosaur behind the puppet stage. Every time I read "Have you seen my dinosaur?" the dino would stick its head up. Of course, I would never catch it! At the end, I take my butterfly net and catch a dino, but not the one the preschoolers have been seeing. I end up catching a baby dino!

Our craft is a orange dino!  We had a huge crowd of 41 kids!  We were scrambling to cut out extra crafts, because we didn't expect near this many.  But it was a very pleasant surprise to see so many new faces.  I really hope they all come back next week!

Credit: Teachers Pay Teachers

Extra Books:

Hungry Bunny (Preschool and Two's)

Preschool Storytime:

Opening: Big Books

Book: Hungry Bunny

*I was so excited to read this book to the preschoolers, and they did really, really good with it!  I was surprised, because it did take a little longer to read this than I thought, but that's okay.  Simply because this is such a wonderful interactive book, and I wanted to stop and let the preschooler do all the wonderful interactions with me.  That's the primary reason why I picked it, and that's also why I named my storytime after it!  One of the best parts of this books is that you help the bunny make a bridge with a ribbon that's included inside.  The preschoolers were just spellbound when I did this!  I ended up going almost ten minutes longer than I normally with this storytime, but the preschoolers had no problem with it!

Fingerplay: 5 Little Strawberries

5 little strawberries growing in the patch

Along comes a bunny and snatch, snatch, snatch

He ate it all up; he looked all around

And then he hopped off without a sound

(Repeat, counting down)

*For this, I put up five strawberries on my flannelboard. My volunteer stood up behind the flannelboard and had the bunny puppet pop up and take one while we all jumped up and down.

Credit: http://storytimejennifer.blogspot.com/2016/03/preschool-storytime-bunnies.html

Book: Look, Look Again

*The preschoolers adore any book that is a guessing book and this one is wonderful! The pages start with one item, then they fold out to reveal something completely different! Not only is this book visually appealing, but it also teaches counting.

Fingerplay/Flannel: Hiding game with rabbit behind different cakes

Book: Good News Bad News

*I've never read this during storytime, mainly because the only words in the whole book are "Good news, bad news". So, I decided to make props to go along with this book. I had my picnic basket, little paper raindrops, little round pink paper circles, a bumblebee puppet, a bear puppet and a printout of a cake. Why? Rabbit and mouse go on a picnic, but everything goes wrong! So, my volunteer and I would act out this book as I read. When it rained on us, I would throw out the little paper raindrops onto the kids to act as rain. We would try and share a cake with each other, which is in the book. The bad news? A bumblebee (the puppets appears) likes the cake a little too much, so I swat it away! Well, in the book one of the characters ends up splattering cake everywhere, so that's when I throw out the little pink paper circles everywhere. The preschoolers probably enjoyed more the items "raining" down on them more than the story, but it was still a lot of fun!

Our craft today was a hungry bunny with carrots!  The link isn't working for the website I found this at, sorry about that.  (We added carrots to the original craft that we found.)

Time for Two’s Storytime:

Opening: Big Books

Song: If You Want to Hear a Story

Book: Look, Look Again

*The two's adore lift-the-flap books or any kind of book that folds out.  This book is wonderful, just because nothing is at it appears!  They loved seeing just what turns out to be in this guessing book.

Fingerplay: 5 Little Strawberries

5 little strawberries growing in the patch

Along comes a bunny and snatch, snatch, snatch

He ate it all up; he looked all around

And then he hopped on without a sound

(Repeat, counting down)

http://storytimejennifer.blogspot.com/2016/03/preschool-storytime-bunnies.html

*For this, I put up five strawberries on the puppet stage behind me. Then my volunteer took the bunny puppet and would snatch a carret while we all jumped up and down. The two's usually get excited when we something like this, but today they were especially happy with it. It was wonderful seeing the joy and excitement on their faces!

Fingerplay/Flannel: Hiding game with rabbit behind cakes

Book: Peek-a-Boo Bunny

*This is a book I've never read to the two's, but they did really good with it! I had my volunteer use the puppets with it, to help move the story along. I told everyone we were going to play peek-a-boo with rabbit, and they got very excited about it!

Action: Feed Carrots to Rabbit

*To end storytime we fed carrots to our rabbit!

Our craft today was a hungry bunny with carrots!  The link isn't working for the website I found this at, sorry about that.  (We added carrots to the original craft that we found.)

New Books for April 2019

Farmyard Fun (Two's Only)

Time for Two’s Storytime:

Opening: Big Books

Fingerplay: If You Want to Hear a Story

Book: Pete the Cat: Five Little Ducks

*The two's love seeing items disappear behind me, so with this book I had the five little ducks propped up on my puppet stage. I like that this book also incorporates counting down from five to one.

Fingerplay: Farm Animal Action Cards

Fingerplay/Flannel: Barn Hiding Game

*This time our little mouse was hiding behind one of our barns.

Book: Peek-a-Moo

Fingerplay: Five Little Umbrellas

Five Umbrellas stood by the back door

The {animal} took the red one, and then there were four.

Four umbrellas pretty as can be,

The {animal} took the blue one, and then there were three.

Three umbrellas with nothing to do

TThe {animal} took the yellow one, then there two.

Two umbrellas stood watching for the sun

The {animal} took the pink one, and then there was one.

Just one umbrella alone in the hall

The {animal} took the orange one, and that was all.

Action: Scarf Dancing

*I like to pull out the scarves once a month just because the two's adore dancing with them!

The craft for storytime was the letter D for Duck!

Credit: Our Kid Things

*I apologize, I forgot to take a picture of our craft, but you can check out where we found it above.

Splish, Splash, Spring! (Preschool Only)

Preschool Storytime:

Opening: Big Books

Book: Ducks Away!

*Today we had our volunteer doing ASL while I read this book. The best part? When he made duck noises! While I read, my volunteer propped up five ducks behind me. This way, the ducks could jump into the water as I was reading.

Fingerplay: “Little Duck, Little Duck”

Little duck, little duck, jump up and down.

Little duck, little duck, don’t make a sound.

Little duck, little duck, tip-toe to me.

Little duck, little duck, slap your knees. (or bend your knees.)

Little duck, little duck, jump up and down.

Little duck, little duck, turn around

Little duck, little duck,sit back down.

Book: Move Over, Rover!

*I love using all the puppets that go along with this book, and my favorite thing to do is put them inside my doghouse! The best part is when they all go flying out of the doghouse at the very end! So much fun!

Flannel: Little Cloud Hiding Game

Book:  Ants Go Marching

*The preschoolers liked this but not near as much as I had hoped. I think it was just too much with the music playing, me holding up the book, and having little props (ants) pop up behind me.  Next time, I won't show the book, instead I'll just do music and props. The preschoolers did love doing all the actions and being sprayed by water!

Fingerplay: “Five Beautiful Flowers”  (Feed flowers to five puppets)

       Five beautiful flowers just outside my door,

       {Monkey} came and picked a flower and now there are four.

       Four beautiful flowers, two and two you see.

       {Alligator} came and picked a flower and now there are three.

       Three beautiful flowers, but before I knew,

       {Frog} came and picked a flower and now there are two.

       Two beautiful flowers in the noonday sun.

       {Elephant} came and picked a flower and now there’s just one.

       One beautiful flower standing all alone,

       {Alligator} came and picked the last one and now there are none.

The craft for storytime was the letter D for Duck!

Credit: Our Kid Things

*I apologize, I forgot to take a picture of our craft, but you can check out where we found it above.

Extra Read Alouds: