C is for Cows and Cookies (Preschool and Two's)

Preschool Storytime:

Opening: Big Books

Action: Farm Riddles

*Instead of showing the animal from the book, I read off the words from board book. Then I had the preschoolers guess what animal I was describing. After that I had my volunteer have the puppet pop up behind me.

E-Book:  I Am Not a Cow

*I have learned the preschoolers don't enjoy me using my Kindle, but I am in love with this e-book. So, I made big flashcards to use, which this e-book will let you print out. The preschoolers didn't enjoy this as much as I had hoped, but they did like it.

Fingerplay/Flannel: Five Little Cows Jumping on the Bed

Fingerplay: Farm Action Cards

Book: Does a Cow Say Boo?

*Right away, the preschoolers caught on and told me that no animal says BOO! Only humans do! I was pleasantly surprised by this, which made this book that much more enjoyable to read to them.

Fingerplay/Flannel: Hiding Game

Little cow, little cow, where can you be?

Are you behind the {red} barn, let’s see!

Book: Cookie’s Week

*This is a favorite book of mine to read for a cookie or cat theme.  Can you tell why?  It is a very short book, with only a few words to a page.  I like to make it more interactive by having items cut out to make "rain" down onto the preschoolers.  Why?  Because all throughout the book Cookie makes things fall down.  So, I like to have things fall out of the book onto the preschoolers.  They go crazy over this and many times take the items that they catch and glue onto the craft for that week.  I love it!

I wanted something different for our craft and the kids love a lift-the-flap craft, so that's what we did!  The first picture is of the cow with the mouth closed and the second is of the mouth open.  What is the cow eating?  Cookies of course!  When I showed the craft tot he preschoolers the reaction was absolutely priceless!  One little boys mouth just fell open in astonishment, so adorable!

Extra Books:

Time for Two’s Storytime:

Opening: Big Books

Fingerplay: If You Want to Hear a Story

Book:  Who Ate All the Cookie Dough?

Fingerplay/Flannel: Hiding Game

Little cow, little cow, where can you be?

Are you behind the {red} barn, let’s see!

Fingerplay: Farm Action Cards

Board Book: Mixed-Up Animal Sounds

*I was so excited to use this book, but didn't realize that it was a little too confusing for the two's. A few of the older two's understand that the sounds were mixed up and corrected me when I was asking them what each animal sounded like. Next time I will reserve this for the older preschoolers.

The two's did the same craft as the preschoolers pictured above.  The only thing that the two's glued down was the teeth, cookies, hair and ears.  This made it a little easier on them and they all loved making the cow.

Extra Books:

B is for Bubbles and Bathtime (Preschool and Two's)

Preschool Storytime:

Opening: Big Books

Fingerplay: Bathtub

For this activity I tell the preschoolers that I have to find my bathtub before I could start my first story. Then I will hold up wrong items until I show the bathtub. I just print out a bunch of clipart items, such as a shark, pirate ship, funny items to make them laugh.

Book: Pig the Stinker

Fingerplay: Five Bars of Soap (Book: 1,000 Fingerplays & Action Rhymes)

    Five bars of soap and not one more.

    {Puppet} took one and then there were four.

    Four bars of soap for everyone to see.

    {Puppet} took one, and then there were three.

    Three bars of soap, we’re almost through.

    {Puppet} took one, and then there were two.

    Two bars of soap, having lots of fun.

    {Puppet} took one, and then there was one.

    One bar of soap, sitting all alone.

    {Puppet} took it, and then there was none.

*I edited this and decided to have my puppets take the bars of soap.  You can also do five rubber ducks instead of soap.

Book: Peep and Egg: I’m Not Taking a Bath

*This is a great read-aloud for storytime, because the preschoolers can help you repeat the line "I'm not taking a bath!" My favorite part was when one little girl spoke up and told me that peep and egg was going down to the swimming pool!

Fingerplay: 5 Rubber Ducks (Use puppet stage)

5 rubber ducks came out to play,

Battling the waves in the tub today.

Along came the splash that sent one to shore,

And then he couldn’t play anymore.

4 rubber ducks…

3 rubber ducks…

2 rubber ducks…

1 rubber duck came out to play,

Battling the waves in the tub today.

Along came the splash that sent him to shore,

Now no rubber ducks can play anymore.

*I have five rubber ducks up on my puppet stage.  When we say the line in bold, we throw our hands up high into the air.  My volunteer will spray some water over the puppet stage, much to the preschoolers' delight!

Credit: Miss Mary Liberry

Fingerplay: 5 Pigs in the Mud (roll, jump, stomp)

5 little pigs rolled in the mud 

Squishy, squashy, felt so good. 

The farmer took one piggy out.

Oink, oink, oink that piggy did shout! (Flip pig over to clean side)

Action: Bubble Machine

Extra Books: 

*My favorite part of the craft was getting to see how the preschooler placed the ears on the bear. They turned out so cute!

Time for Two’s Storytime:

Opening: Big Books

Fingerplay: If You Want to Hear a Story

Board Book: Bathtime for Little Rabbit

Fingerplay/Flannel: Hiding Game with Duck in Truck

Fingerplay: 5 Pigs in the Mud (roll, jump, stomp)

5 little pigs rolled in the mud 

Squishy, squashy, felt so good. 

The farmer took one piggy out.

Oink, oink, oink that piggy did shout! (Flip pig over to clean side)

*I was excited to use this with the two's, but they didn't seem to understand the concept of clean and dirty

Book: Get Out of my Bath!

Fingerplay: 5 Rubber Ducks (Use puppet stage)

5 rubber ducks came out to play,

Battling the waves in the tub today.

Along came the splash that sent one to shore,

And then he couldn’t play anymore.

4 rubber ducks…

3 rubber ducks…

2 rubber ducks…

1 rubber duck came out to play,

Battling the waves in the tub today.

Along came the splash that sent him to shore,

Now no rubber ducks can play anymore.

* I have five rubber ducks up on my puppet stage.  When we say the line in bold, we throw our hands up high into the air.  

Credit: Miss Mary Liberry

Action: Bubble Machine

*Below is the craft that the 2's made!

A is for Allosaur Has Lost His Roar (Preschool and Two's)

Preschool Storytime:

Opening: Big Books

Book:  Pete the Kitty the Case of the Hiccups

*This is the first time I've read this book in storytime and it was amazing! I had all the preschoolers stand up with me and do all the action to "help" me get rid of the hiccups.

Fingerplay/Flannel: Pete the Cat and His Shoes Hiding Game

Fingerplay: Put the Baby to Bed

Put the Baby to Bed

Now it’s time to go to sleep  
(Hold up right index finger.)
Put the baby to bed.      
(Place index finger on left palm)Cover the baby in the bed.    
(Wrap left fingers around right index.)
Kiss the baby good-night.      
(Pretend to kiss finger.)Waaa!  Waaa!      
(Hold up right index finger and cry.)The baby’s awake!What can we do?
(Insert children’s suggestions and continue the rhyme. 
For example, give it a bottle, change its diapers, give it a toy, read a book, etc.)
*The preschoolers had a blast doing this!  One little boy told me to give the baby a dinosaur!
Credit: https://drjeanandfriends.blogspot.com/search?q=put+the+baby+to+bed

E-Book: My Allosaur Has Lost His Roar

*I love this book, the illustrations are hilarious! That being said, my preschool crowd just isn't into the e-book thing too much. I think if I had a way of projecting the book onto my screen, they would enjoy them better.

Fingerplay/Flannel: Five Little Dinos Jumping on the Bed

Book: Pigs Make Me Sneeze!

*As usual, Piggie and Elephant books are always a big hit at storytime!

I wanted to incorporate dinosaurs and band-aids into the craft, so below is what I came up with. The preschoolers really put their imagination into creating their dinosaur. I have to say that the spots ended up all over the place! I am trying to incorporate letter recognition into some of the crafts also, and the preschoolers did really good matching up the letters on their craft.

Time for Two’s Storytime:

Opening: Big Books

Fingerplay: If You Want to Hear a Story

Book: So Cozy

Fingerplay/Flannel: Pete the Cat and His Shoes Hiding Game

Fingerplay: Action Cards

Board Book: Stomp Stomp

Fingerplay/Flannel: Five Little Dinos Jumping on the Bed

Book: Achoo!

*The two's did really well with the dinosaur craft.  I was worried about the letters on it, but I think the parents helped with it.

August New Books 2019

Happy Birthday Harry!

I'm late posting, but last week we celebrated Harry's birthday!  Shew, I'm still recovering from it!  We had an amazing attendance of people, so I'm very grateful for that!  We had 150 Kids and 75 Adults show up, which is astounding.  Below are pics from everything we did.  On to the next party!

My favorite part is the giant chess set which we were able to borrow.  Don't you love it???  Our inside games were the chess set, bingo, pin the sock on Dobby and musical chairs.  Click here to get the free bingo game which is absolutely magical!

Here is the front row of our musical chairs, which the kids didn't want to stop playing.

I was a little scared to attempt drawing Dobby, but I had fun with it!

Outside we had three games, giant connect four, giant bubbles and giant bowling.  Aren't the characters adorable on the bowling pins below?  My character made them for me and I just love them!!!

Originally this craft was a bookmark, but I wanted to make it bigger.  So, we enlarged it!  Everyone really seemed to like it, and the good thing is we do have plenty left over.  I think that everyone didn't realize that they could make one of each, so that was my fault that I didn't clarify that.

Credit: Artsy Fartsy Mama

Snake Corner Bookmark

Credit: Easy Peasy and Fun

Harry Corner Bookmark

Credit: Artsy Fartsy Mama

This craft was the only one the kids didn't seem to like, even though I loved it!

We had one other craft which was the most popular and it was our button maker!  We had all the house buttons to choose from and then some smaller buttons that had really cute sayings on them.  Unfortunately I didn't take pictures but our machine is super easy to use and everyone loved it!

Pictured below are the food we had and needless to say we run out of everything very quickly!  We do have a fabulous popcorn machine and we went through five bags of popcorn.  After that we called it quits on the popcorn.  We did make two 2-liters of butterbeer, four batches of Kool-Aid and all the food pictured below.  We had some hungry people, but that's okay!

I did make two of these, but everyone loves cupcakes!  I have to say, the pull-apart cupcake cakes are super easy, they just take a lot of icing to cover.

This was my favorite thing to make and very simple to mold.  I am definitely going to make something like for our October party.  Simple ingredients, little prep time and the kids went crazy over it!  We did have two of these, so that helped with feeding people.  Also, you can see in the picture that we had chocolate chip cookies and Jelly Belly jelly beans.

My volunteer made the birdcage and the owl.  The owl is from a washcloth, isn't it cute?  To find out how to make him, click here!

I love putting things on the floor, to lead people into the auditorium.  So, what better thing to use than spiders!!!

Well, that's all she wrote.  Professor  Mcgonagall signing off!  Until next time!