Flannel Friday: I Am Cold!

It's not winter yet, but there's definitely a chill in the air. I forgot to bring a sweater to work yesterday and ended up wrapping a large piece of felt around me like a shawl. A shawl that I would occasionally snip pieces off for my flannel set.

I plan on using this one more towards the colder days of winter, but if yesterday is any indication that may come sooner than anticipated.

The poem (with some modifications) comes from Joanna Cole and Stephanie Calmenson's Bug in a Rug: Reading Fun for Just-Beginners and it's called  I Am Cold.

Here's Little Boy Blue all bundled up for winter...

But a CAT got his... HAT!

A GOAT got his... COAT!

A KANGAROO took his... SHOES!

And some ANTS got his... PANTS!

And now he's COLD!

The simple rhymes make a great guessing game for toddlers and underwear is never not funny.

Flannel Friday is being hosted today by Katie at Storytime Katie. As always you can find out more about Flannel Friday and browse past round-ups at the official website.

Castle Building Day

We built a castle last Saturday.

I started them off with this.

And left out a lot of boxes. A LOT.

A couple boys stopped by first. They stacked with style more than they built. Notice the telescope up top and the blue paper to cover up any legs keeping guard behind the castle.

And then the girls came through. They used more butcher paper, opened up boxes, went to town on the tape strips that I had pre-cut and asked for pipe cleaners, markers and scissors. I gave them safety scissors and cut the boxes myself to their specifications.

They were big on decorating. Each of the hearts up top has a different builder's name on it. 

I made them a princess puppet and they made her a bed to sleep in.

And rooms for themselves underneath in the dungeons.

I got my inspiration for this  drop-in program from Rachel's blog (sometimes I talk like I know her, that's how often I visit her blog) and the boxes from the generous produce staff at the local Safeway. Once I explained that we'd be using them for programming in the library, they were more than happy to open up the store room to me and all the apple and banana boxes that I could carry. If you're going to try this, make sure you ask a few days before you need the boxes so they'll have time to store them up.

The last thing we did for our castle project was to make a thank you card for the great guys who made it all possible.

The castle will stay up for a week. I anticipate happy story time babies, a few more "who farted?" jokes and many, many more changes to the structure of the castle.

Flannel Friday: The Ants Go Marching

I realized a while back that we count a lot in story time, but we don't usually have visual representation of the numbers. Hence the Ants Go Marching. I did a little rejiggering so all the things the little ant does would have an object (shouting yippee! after 3 would have been hard to put up on the flannel board), but it's bright and it's pretty and it gets the kids excited.

The ants go marching 1 by 1,

Ho-rah, ho-rah,

the ants go marching 1 by 1,

Ho-rah, ho-rah

The ant go marching 1 by 1

The little one stops to stare at the sun

The little one stops to tie his shoe

The little one stoops to pick up a key

The little one stops to open the door

The little one sees the bees in the hive

And they all go marching down,

to the ground,

to get out of the rain,

rain, rain, rain

Flannel Friday is being hosted by Sharon at Rain Makes Applesauce (I totally should have saved my applesauce flannel for this week!) and if you want to learn more about Flannel Friday you can always visit the official website for more information!

Theme Thursday: Apple of My Eye

Instead of a traditional "Yay! It's Fall" story time, I decided to focus on the best part of fall: Apples. And of course, applesauce.

Song: Good Morning Dear Earth

Song/Flannel: 5 Little Apples

(I learned this as a finger play, but one of my two year olds and her grandma taught me a song version the week before and I like it so much better that way)

Way up high in the apple tree,

5 red apples smiled down at me,

I shook that tree as hard as I could,

Down came an apple,

Mmmm, Mmmm, Good!

Book: Ten Red Apples by Pat Hutchins

Song: Itsy Bitsy Spider

Baby Bounce: Criss Cross, Line, Line

Flannel: Making Applesauce

Book: The Seasons of Arnold's Apple Tree by Gail Gibbons

 

Song: Shake Your Sillies Out

Song: Grand Old Duke of York

Song: The More We Get Together

Book: Apple Trees by Robin Nelson

Poem: Apples and Honey

(I wrote a quick poem about the Rosh Hashanah tradition of dipping apples into honey. And then I debated for a loooooong time about how culturally inappropriate it was for me, the most gentile of gentiles, to write a Rosh Hashanah poem and use it in story time. I ended up going for it.)

Apples, apples, honey, honey,

together in my mouth,

yummy, yummy

Take the apple from the tree,

Steal the honey from the bees,

Chop the apple, dip it in,

That's the way the new year begins,

A hope for sweetness in the year,

And it all begins with us, right here!

Song: Turn Around

Make and Take Craft: Apple Prints

Supplies:

-apples

-paint

-paper

-knife

-sponges

Process: I soaked sponges in paint and then used them like stamp pads for the apples. The mess factor was way lower than I was expecting and it helped the kids get the right amount of paint on the apple each time. Cut the apples before story time, straight down the middle for the traditional print or in round slices to get the star center. After story time I passed out paper and let the kids go crazy, stamping away. Everyone LOVED the statisfying thunk of the heavy apple on the paper and it was cool to see how many different end results could come out of the very same beginnings. For 16 kids we used 4 apples.

Time: Prep took 5 minutes, but put the paint on the sponges early to allow it time to sink in. The craft took 30 minutes.

Movie Mondays

It all started because I really wanted to see How to Train Your Dragon and I finally learned how to set up the big screen and use the projector that's been languishing in back room for months. A quick bulletin board later Movie Mondays were born. Every Monday in the months of August and September we showed a movie based on a children's book and had an accompanying craft that somehow fit the theme of the movie.

It wasn't the most well attended series we've ever had, mostly it was a nice distraction for me and for the regular after school kids. We did get a few people to check out the books that the movies were based on though, and I count that as a win any day.

A few of my older regular kids are really into crafts, so if there are any extra I leave the craft box out all week.

 

For How to Train Your Dragon we made paper chain dragons.

For Beauty and the Beast we made Beastly masks. Although most of the kids that day went with beautiful masks instead.

 

Fox faces went with The Fantastic Mr. Fox

And flip books proved to be very unpopular for celebrating movies with Hugo. Seriously though, you try coming up with a craft that goes with this movie. Ugh.

And finally, yesterday, we made bright owls for the movie Hoot.