Hooray for letter S! It's Story time "Wednesday!"

Wow! Busy Busy Busy! So much to prepare for before Summer Reading takes off. I've been totally involved in giving presentations to students, ordering enough books, and organizing the final details for all of the library's outstanding programs and fun! We're also going to start filming short YouTube videos of fun science experiments that you can do at home! For now, let's look at the final story time of the spring and summer for me.

Letter S was almost too easy to find books for, so I chose to dig around a little bit and do something a little different. I chose Splash! which is a Houghton Mifflin reader that I still have from my teaching days. I also did Pete the Cat, Rockin in my School Shoes, by Eric Litwin and James Dean, (Yes, I know that's not a very different pick. It's just so much fun to get the guitar out to play and sing those.) and I'm a Shark! by Bob Shea. All three were really big hits. The thing I really like about the Houghton Mifflin reader was that the text was minimal, but since it was a big book, the pictures were huge and the absorbed the students interest like a sponge! It also has a small, non-fiction learning connection at the end about how baby animals play that the kids loved. Nobody captures a preschool aged child's mix of confidence and uncertainty quite like Bob Shea! I've become a bit of a fanboy of his recently since discovering that all of his picture books are incredible, not just the Dinosaur Vs. series. Also, nobody draws somebody yelling quite like he does:

See what I mean?






Anyway, this is my final blog for the summer, outside of updating event flyers. I will see you in September when Story times pick back up again, until then...here's what we did today!

ABC Action from heidisongs
Greeing Song 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?
I'm glad you're here today!

Letter S song and dance from heidisongs.

Letter S puzzle from Story Time Katie! (Awesome blog/website. Seriously brilliant.)

Letter S Snake

Cut the letter S out from an internet template
Stick two googly eyes on the head.
Glue a red tongue to the back of the head
Decorate with whatever you want to. We used dot stickers.

 The above photo doesn't show all of the little ones that have made an impact on me during my first year of story time. But some here have been coming nearly every week since last September. I couldn't be more grateful to see these wonderful little faces every Wednesday (and sometimes Monday too.)