Story Time Wednesday! Letter K! Kisses! Knuffles! Cows in the Kitchen! Kites!

 Good afternoon! Welcome to another Story time Wednesday with Mr. Mike! Today we continued our ABC adventure with a letter K story time. Today I tried something new. I remember Sueann Posthumus from the Patmos library showed us a sorting game she used when she had a Things that Go story time.I ran with that idea to sort keys instead. When the kids got into our story time room, there were keys scattered all over the floor and color matching buckets around the edge of the room. "Oh no!" I said. "Someone made a mess with all of these keys! Can you help me pick them up and put them in the buckets? Make sure to match the key color with the bucket color." So glad that Sue P. brought that idea in to share at our workshop. The little ones were scurrying all over the floor to pick up those keys. What a fun activity! I'll definitely try it again sometime.

I went back and forth about which books to pick for today. You have a lot of options when thinking about letter k. I had a few picked out, then changed my mind, and then changed it again last night before I went to bed. I ended up with a good mix of silly, heartfelt, and musical stories that the kids and parents all enjoyed. First I read Knuffle Bunny: A Cautionary Tale by Mo Willems. I brought in our Knuffle bunny from home and actually taught a lesson on how it actually is pronounced Kuh-nuffle which is the Dutch word for snuggle. Well, the parents can all relate to their own children losing a stuffed animal and not being able to understand what their upset little one wants and the kids think it's funny when Trixie does the baby talk. One of the story time Grandmas actually checked out the other two Knuffle Bunny stories so I was happy. I also picked David Ezra Stein's Dinosaur Kisses. I love this one because it makes me think of when my boys first learned to give kisses. Baby kisses are wide open mouthed, drool-soaked affairs. In this story, Dinah the baby dinosaur is trying new things like stomping, chomping, and whomping. She then sees a kiss! She gets so excited that she tries it out with many different dinosaurs and animals, all with hilarious results. The last book I chose was Cows in the Kitchen by June Krebbin. This one is a musical book with lots of animal sounds to keep the kiddos excited and participating. I had the kids sing along and I strummed/plucked the ukulele for accompaniment. I haven't done that during a book in awhile. It was fun!

The Activities:

ABC Action!

We're All here! (Skip to my lou)
Here, here, we're all here!
Here, here, we're all here!
Here, here, we're all here!
We're here at story time.
Hello _______________. How are you?
Hello _______________. How are you?
Hello _______________. How are you?
Key Sort- I printed six copies of six different colored keys on card stock. I used Yellow, Green, Orange, Pink, Light blue, and Dark blue. I had matching colored buckets to sort into, but you could use just about anything or decorate your own sorting containers. As mentioned above, I scattered all the keys on the floor ahead of time and had the kids pick them up and sort them out.

Letter K Song and Dance
/k/ /k/ /k/ Katie! (Bring both arms up above your head)
Make a line down and (Bring both arms to your toes)
Then go in and then go out (Bring arm close to your body from up above, then shoot it out again low like you're drawing a letter K in the air)
and that's a K!

Repeat three more times!

Cows in the Kitchen- Just like my greeting song, Cows in the Kitchen follows the tune of Skip to My Lou. I had all the kids practice their animal sounds with me as I read. If you use an instrument, I simply alternated between C major and G7 as I sang. When I as turning the pages, I just vamped on a C major until I was ready to sing again.

We Wave Goodbye Like This. (The Farmer in the Dell)
We wave goodbye like this. 
We wave goodbye like this.
We clap our hands for all our friends
We wave goodbye like this.
Switch it up and alternate silly waves a few times.

Craft- Letter K Kites
I hand drew the template for the letter K's. Then I used the scraps to cut out the diamond shapes for the kites. Finally, I found some purple ribbon and cut out small strips for the kids to glue onto their kites. It turned out pretty cute. I got the idea from the measured mom. If you have cotton balls, you could stick them to the background as clouds. This was fun and easy for the kids to do. Nothing more than gluing and sticking.