Wednesday, October 17, 2012

Storytime - Owls

The theme of storytime this week at Novel Places Bookstore was owls. There are TONS of kid's books about owls, so it was easy to find some fun ones to read at storytime. My 4 year old informed me a week or so ago that owls are "creepy because they're always going off with witches" so I made sure to read books about non-creepy owls. 

I started off by asking the kids what they could tell me about owls. They said "they live in trees", "they say whooooo", "they sleep in the daytime" and "they eat snakes." Nothing about witches, thankfully!
The first book I read was Little Owl's Night by Divya Srinivasan. The illustrations in this book are ridiculously cute! The book is about the various things a young owl sees on his nighttime adventures - lots of other cute animals are featured in the book. The kids really liked this one, and pointing out things in the illustrations (like a bear sleeping with a fish in his paw). 
The next book I read is a favorite in our house, Wow! Said the Owl by Tim Hopgood.  This book is about a little owl who stays awake during the daytime one day and sees lots of beautiful new colors that he normally misses at night. Great for teaching colors and just in general, its a good book about seeing the beauty in things we take for granted.
Next up was Owl Babies by Martin Waddell. All the kids already knew this one - its pretty popular. The book is about baby owls who wake to find their mother "missing" but soon find she just went to get them some yummy snacks.  I think this one is especially popular with working moms, since it reinforces the idea that mom always comes back. The illustrations are adorable.
At this point, we took a break and made our craft, owl masks from Oriental Trading Company. This was a good craft - it was easy enough that all the kids could do it themselves and the masks were fun to wear.
The last book I read was Owls by Gail Gibbon. This book has tons of factual information about owls, but, having read it to my son several times before, I knew I would need to skip some sections and paraphrase others. By far, the favorite parts of the book were those detailing owls eating habits (slurping up a snake) and digestive abilities. This storytime was all boys and they love to hear the gory details. 

Saturday here in Maryland was very cold, but we were all cozy at the bookstore learning about owls!

1 comment:

  1. I LOVE owls, so I am going to take note of some of these books Sara! The masks are so cute too. The kids (and parents) look totally enthralled in the last picture! Love it :)

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