Wednesday, April 3, 2013

Totally Tots- Colors & Shapes

Today was our first session of Spring Story Time and it was great seeing all the kids so excited to start a new round of stories, songs, and finger plays.  I was amazed that they all remembered our opening song and were ready to participate.  Starting with today's session, I am trying a new approach to make sure we practice good library behaviors like listening, stay seated, keep our hands on our lap, and our mouth closed when we are not singing.  I am hoping this would help my older tots transition into the Pre-K story time in the fall, plus it might help create a sort of "organized chaos."

We started with our opening song "The More We Get Together"and our  "Let's Start Story Time" since we were seated the last verse "and put your bottoms on the floor" was a bit pointless.Our first book was

Seven Blind Mice

Seven Blind Mice by Ed Young. I recently meet the author and couldn't wait to share this book with my tots.  I even created my own flannel to go with the story.  The kids were really good at trying to figure what the Something was and by mouse #4 they knew it was an Elephant.  This was a great book to review our colors.





We followed with the song "If  You Are Wearing Orange Today" I made sure to skip to all the different colors kids were wearing like reds, purples, greens, pinks, and greys.  I created a simple flannel using images to help the kids associate different objects and things in nature with colors- like apple and red. Our next book was


Monsters Love Colors

Monsters Love Colors by Mike Austin.  I just read this book a few weeks ago and loved the story. It reminded me of "Mouse Paint"and how the mice created new colors using red, yellow and blue.  There is a cute rhyming to it and lots, and lots of color.  I found this song "The Shape Song" and went ahead and made different shapes for the kids to hold up and wave all around.  We finished with a new book I just found as part of my Monarch Nominee challenge.

Perfect Square

Perfect Square by Michael Hall.  I loved the book and the concept of the transforming square but I think some of they kids were getting a bit restless so we moved on to our closing song "We Wave Goodbye Like This.".