Pixelbeard the Librarian: Happy Tuesday! Storytime Blog all about Feelings!

Happy Tuesday! It was a wonderful day for a storytime today! This storytime was all about talking about our feelings. We talked about how everyone has feelings and it's okay to feel all those things. It was easy to find good books about our feelings and the ones I did find were very much enjoyed by all my little peanuts.

Books:
Now I feel Silly and Other Moods that Make My Day: Jamie Lee Curtis/Laura Cornell
My Friend is Sad: Mo Willems
I'm Tired and other Body Feelings: Claire Hibbert/Simona Dimitri

What We Did:
Greeting Song:
1.) Greeting Song- The storytime train is coming (She'll be comin round the mountain)
Oh the storytime train is coming! How are you? (everyone yells CHOO CHOO!)
Yes, the storytime train is coming! How are you? (CHOO CHOO!)
Now the storytime train is coming! Oh the storytime train is coming! Yes the storytime train is coming! How are you? (CHOO CHOO!)

Let's say hello to _____. How are you? (CHOO CHOO!)
Repeat for all kids in attendance

2.) Get our bodies ready to read song: This is the way

This is the way I clap my hands, clap my hands, clap my hands.
This is the way I clap my hands when I'm at storytime.
Repeat with other motions, i.e. stomp feet, jump up and down, tap my head, wiggle my nose. Always end with
This is the way I sit in my spot, sit in my spot, sit in my spot. This is the way I sit in my spot when I'm at storytime.

3.) I made two cubes out of cardboard and covered them with different colored construction paper. I wrote an emotion on each side of one cube, and an animal on each side of the other cube. Then the kids and I would pretend to be whatever animal was rolled.

4.) Ruby the Chicken- MY NEW PUPPET! Ruby played the emotional animal game with the kids. She's a great puppet because each of her wings accommodates a hand. You can do so much with two hands doing the puppetry. I love her and the kids did too! They were high-fiving her out the door!

5.) Awesome Rainbows- My son is in Kindergarten this year. I volunteer in his classroom on Monday mornings and this is where I saw the dance group Koo Koo Kangaroo doing this song as a dance video. I'm posting a link to this video on Youtube. I have to say, if you want to add some pizzazz to your storytime with some fun and physically tiring dance moves, Get into Koo Koo Kangaroo. There are lots of songs to choose from and their driving dance beats and silly song concepts will have your peanuts bouncing!

6.) Feelings Magnet board- This can be done as a flannel board, but I like Magnets better, so there. I made faces in MS Word to show one of six emotions, Sad, Happy, Mad, Confused, Surprised, and Scared. I also printed a a dialogue bubble to match the faces with one emotion inside each.

7.) Playtime- Today I had three different stations, I will label them A,B,C.

Station A- Texture painting. This was simple. I bought some fun paintbrushes and paint rollers and let the kids have at it. It's more meaningful to a preschool child to create something of their own, than a craft that you designed.

Station B- Mirrors and Dry erase Markers- To tie-in with our feelings theme I provided hand mirrors, white boards, dry erase markers, and cloth erasers. The kids made different faces into the mirrors and then drew themselves on the whiteboards. Most of it was scribbling and making silly faces in the mirrors, but that still worked their fine motor and grasp in a fun way.

Station C- Funny Faces magnet books- I've had these books for while sitting in the toy area and thought that today would be a great time to incorporate them into a storytime.