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!

Storytime - Eric Carle Stories

This week was my first storytime in Novel Places new location (upstairs from where it was previously). It was great - there's a dedicated room for the kids books and a table already set up for crafts. Plus, the kids loved looking out the windows from the second floor!

The first book I read was a new one that Marino and I found at Fenton Street Market called Slowly, Slowly, Slowly Said the Sloth. I hadn't heard of it before but we both love it. The story is about an adorable sloth and his slow ways. The sloth gets some insults from other jungle creatures but he explains that he is just being himself. Its a quick read and a cute story.

Next, I read The Very Hungry Caterpillar. We had recently read this one (during our "Bugs" storytime), but its a classic! The kids actually read it to me this time, which was very cute. I love to see children excited about reading!

I gave the kids some choices of what to read next and they wanted to hear Baby Bear, Baby Bear, What Do You See?. All the "What Do You See" books are so fun - the kids love seeing the animals and guessing what's next (and remembering the names at the end of the book).

I let the kids pick the next book and the wanted to hear The Grouchy Ladybug. This is another one we read during our "bugs" storytime, but the kids LOVE this one and are always very animated about the more threatening animals. Plus, I love how the ladybug is knocked into shape at the end (literally and figuratively).

For craft time, I let the kids pick out a picture from The World of Eric Carle Coloring Book to decorate. The book has great pictures from various Eric Carle books and gorgeous stickers, too. I had lots of crayons, colored pencils, pom poms and feathers to let the kids be creative in decorating their animals and bugs. It's always fun to see them express themselves in a creative way - everyone's pictures turn out so different.

Storytime - Bugs

My most recent storytime theme was bugs. There's soooo many fun stories, songs and crafts centering around bugs; I actually had a hard time narrowing down what to use.

I started out by asking the kids to share their names and their favorite bugs. Next we sang "The Itsy Bitsy Spider", which even the older kids seemed to like (the hand movements make it interactive and fun).

The first book we read was Bugs, Bugs, Bugs by Bob Barner. This was my first time reading this book, but it was perfect - it covered characteristics of various bugs, it rhymed and had cute pictures.

The next book I read was one of my son's favorites, The Grouchy Ladybug. This is an Eric Carle book and very similar to The Very Hungry Caterpillar (but a bit edgier). I was surprised that my son was the only child there who knew the story, but they all really enjoyed it. The premise of the book is that a very crabby ladybug approaches various threatening animals and asks them if they want to fight, but when they agree, she dismisses them with "you're too small" reply. That is until a humpback whale puts her in her place (literally and figuratively). Its a fun book, with great illustrations.
Next, we played the "Mystery Box" game, which is inspired by my librarian friend's blog. This is always a big hit with the kids; even if the "guessing" part is easy, they love to see what's inside the box. The week's mystery box was filled with Melissa and Doug Sunny Patch Bugs (which are also a lot of fun to bury in the sandbox and have my son find them). This game was a bit of a challenge, though. I'm not sure how much younger kids know about the characteristics of different bugs, so there were a lot of wrong guesses before we got the right ones, but ideally that means the kids learned something (I can hope, right?).

The last book I read was The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle. Even the parents enjoyed hearing this story, that many remember from their own childhood. All the kids knew the story but still got excited at the end when the beautiful butterfly appeared.

This week's craft involved making these fun little bugs. I gave the kids the option to use finger paint and use their finger prints as the bug's bodies or to use dot markers for the bodies. Most of them used both. The "bugs" below are the ones I made as examples. The kids seemed to really enjoy making the bugs (and making a mess).

Storytime - Springtime

This week I wanted to talk about Spring, although here in Maryland, it's felt like Spring for the past month! I asked the kids to tell me something special that happens in Spring when they introduce themselves. They said cute things, like baby birds are born, flowers grow, the Easter Bunny comes. Of course, my son said that the Grinch comes in Spring. Poor guy. Easter Bunny, the Grinch, its all the same :)

The first book I read this week was Spring is Here by Will Hillenbrand. This is from a series of stories about a big bear and his woodland friends (a mole is the other main character of this story). In this story, Mole tries different tactics to wake the bear out of his hibernation slumber until he finds bears sweet spot (and tires himself in the process). The kids thought this one was very funny and they all enjoyed it (in fact, my son and I reenacted the story later that day).
The second book I read was And Then It's Spring by Julie Folgiano and Erin Stead. Wow, the kids LOVED this book! Essentially, the book is about the long wait for plants to grow, and imagined perils to the plants in the meantime. The illustrations are gorgeous and the kids loved combing through the pictures to identify what was growing and all the silly things happening in the pictures. In fact, they spent the whole story huddled around me pointing to things in the book. It was adorable; I love to see the kids get excited over a book!

I had planned to read a third book (about the Easter bunny) but it didn't arrive in time and reading the second book took significantly longer than I expected due to the kids' enthusiasm, so it worked out for the best.

This week's craft I had bought on sale at Michael's a few months ago with this theme in mind. The kit came with everything needed to make 10 each of 2 different crafts (ladybug and daisy). The kids enjoyed making these (all they required more glue than I expected) and were happy to take them home.

Jazzy Storytime

Storytime on February 25th had a Jazz/Mardi Gras theme. I had planned to do this theme the weekend prior to Fat Tuesday, but ended up too sick to speak, let alone do storytime!

I started out by playing the kids the song "When We're Human" from the Princess and the Frog soundtrack as a way to orient them to the concept of jazz music. I talked a bit about Mardi Gras and New Orleans. I read This Jazz Man by Karen Ehrhardt (this is one of my favorite books to read my son), which I first learned about on the Confessions of a Real Librarian blog (great resource for storytime ideas). I then played the audiobook of CD of Jazz Fly by Matthew Gollub and "read along" using the physical book. The kids LOVED the Jazz Fly CD and they all got up and started dancing as it played. It was really fun to watch them get so excited!

After the stories, I played the rest of the Princess and the Frog soundtrack, and we made Mardi Gras masks using random art supplies I had (plastic masks were sold in 3 packs at Michael's). I had feathers, foam stickers, glitter glue and pom poms for the kids to use for their masks. They really enjoyed the craft, and showing them off when they were done. 

Here's a few pictures of some of the kids and their creations.

I was really impressed with how interested the kids were in jazz and how well they responded to the music. I plan to do another music themed storytime soon - playing music really seems to get everyone energized and social.

About Me & My Part-time Storytime

I'm a full-time working mom to an amazing (almost) 4 year old boy. Since having my son, I discovered the joy of reading aloud and found an opportunity to facilitate a storytime on the weekends at a very cool local independent bookstore. I have no budget and not a lot of extra time to prepare, so these storytimes are a good challenge to my creativity!

Thanks for reading!