S is for Snake

And it's time for Letter S! There were so many cool things we could do for S that it was not easy to narrow it down. But I did.
Firstly, I pulled out our Folk Manis shark puppet to greet the kids as they arrived.
It was a very small crowd today so we didn't get very loud when we sang, but as always we started with "If You're Happy and You Know It". We moved on to talk about the weather and then sang our alphabet.
Show & Tell was small but we had a seashell and Spiderman make an appearance.

Our first book was "The Little Mouse, The Red Ripe Strawberry and The Big Hungry Bear" by Don and Audrey Wood.
Next came the Shaker Eggs. I recently purchased more shaker eggs for my storytime supply closet so we will be doing more songs like the one we did today-"Shake Your Shaker Eggs" by We Kids Rock.
Our second book today was "Can You Make a Scary Face?" by Jan Thomas- a great interactive picture book.

And then came the shark! I am super excited about my Storytime Shark.

I got this idea from Pinterest of course and Kristina from Toddler Approved. I made my shark from a piece of heavy weight poster board and painted it grey. I cut some fish out with my Cricut and added the letters to one set.

I also made another for shapes and colors and another with numbers. I am hoping my shark will hold up for many storytimes to come!
For today's storytime I passed out all of the letters we have learned so far and as we went through the alphabet whoever had that letter brought it up and fed it to the shark. It was fun!
After that we headed to the tables and our activities.
Our Letter S animal was a snake.

For this one, I gave the kids strips of colored paper along with scissors so we could practice our scissor skills. They made their own triangles to glue onto their snake.
I recently added a set of alphabet stamps to our storytime supplies and got to use them right away for the letter S! There were several great printables out there for this purpose, but in the end I made my own.

I made up 3 different sets of alphabet printables leaving 8 blanks on each one so they could use the stamps I gave them to fill that space. This allowed me to have 3 trays out (actually 6 since I also borrowed a stamp set from a mom). The trays are a new acquisition as well and I am so excited to have them.
Finally we made our rockets or SPACESHIPS since we are now on S, but these were the rockets that went missing when we were on letter "R". This was another Pinterest activity that I am incredibly thankful for the printable. It was shared by Buggy and Buddy.

I cut them all out ahead of time to save time and just had the kids color their rocket and we added the pipette and straw to the back.

These were a hit. And I couldn't be happier.
I sent home some Letter S printables for the kids as well as a Space Stamp. I also sent home this printable from The Kindergarten Connection. This printable will work with a magnetic alphabet but it will also work with our Alphabet Monster caps.
Our kids also took home a free book today- "The First Strawberries" by Bruchac.
That's all for "S". See you in a few weeks for "T"!
~Mrs. Angel

Q is for Quail and R is for Rabbit

We are already at "R"! Well, we are needing to speed things up a little to get all of the alphabet in this summer so we kinda combined Q and R.
At the rug and after singing "If You're Happy and You Know It", and talking about the weather, we had "Show and Tell". A Question mark, Queen, quarter, rabbit, rubber band and red key chain were among what was brought. We did do Alphabet Phonics today and so we added "Queenie Quail" and "Robby Rabbit". We read 2 books today. One of which is a new favorite for me "RRRalph" by Lois Ehlert which is a book about a "talking" dog. It is so cute!

We also read "Roaring Rockets" by Milton a book about space travel written in rhyme.

I had a flannelboard activity today-
"Four Little Rockets".
Four Little Rockets
Four little rockets winking at me.
One shot off and then there were three!
Three little rockets with nothing to do.
One shot off, and then there were two!
Two little rockets afraid of the sun.
One shot off, and then there was one!
One little rocket alone is no fun.
It shot off, and then there was none!
I found this one at Storytime Katie a few years ago and made it out of scrap paper scraps. It's one of my favorites. But, I will need to add that picture later.
Things didn't go quite as planned today. I planned on sending home the quail Q, but we ended up making it since I misplaced the rockets we were going to make. I guess those will be space shuttles for S!
Instead we made both the Quail and the Rabbit. And I will add the Rabbit picture later although you can see it in one of the photos.

After that I passed around a couple of tubs of rice. One tub had foam letters buried in it and a couple of pairs of kids tweezers for them to pull them out with. The idea was for them to unbury the letters and put them back into the foam puzzle.

The other tub contained a set of magnetic letters and some magnet wands for them to pull them out with. For this one I printed the Magnetic Alphabet Match printable from Letters of Literacy and taped it onto a magnetic sheet.The kids unburied the letters and put them onto the sheet. These were both highly popular with the kids.
An assortment of Q and R worksheets and puzzles went home along with a copy of "My Rotten Redheaded Older Brother" by Polacco.

I will be back for S in a few weeks as we have a change of our regular lineup for summer programming!
Happy Reading~
Mrs. Angel

P is for Pig

Letter P Storytime day was a couple of weeks ago. It was a great time. I told the families to come in their pajamas for a party as we kicked our summer off! I felt a little funny in my pajamas at work, but it was fun!
We started off at the rug with...you guessed it- "If You're Happy & You Know It".
There were some cool things for "Show & Tell" (which I can't recall right now).
We read "Polar Bear, Polar Bear What do You Hear?" by Bill Martin.

I brought out the small parachute today and a couple of stuffed animals. We "rocked" them to sleep by bouncing them slowly. We went a little bit faster as they started to snore and finally we woke them up by bouncing them fast! The kids loved the parachute as they usually do. I really need to pull that out more often!
Next we did a "Pocket Alphabet" Activity. I made some pockets with my Cricut and printed and cut out some fun library cards I found at Sweetly Scrapped. I cut the upper case letter on the pocket and the lower case letter on the card and gave each child a couple of cards. We went through the alphabet and each child out their card in the pocket. I wish I would have had the time to laminate them beforehand so they would have been easier to stick in the pocket, but it was a great fine motor activity.

We forgot to go through our Animal Phonics today but we would have added "PeeWee Penguin" had we done it.
Lastly at the rug we read Pete the Cat, I love My White Shoes" by Eric Litwin and James Dean.

I wish more books were like this one. Pete the Cat really engages the children.
Off to the tables for fine motor work. We made a pig from the letter P.

Then I pulled out the playdough and these so cool alphabet playdough mats from This Reading Mama. I made 3 batches of playdough months ago (red, blue and yellow) and I was so happy when I pulled it out and it was still soft! This is a great recipe from I Heart Naptime!
Here are 2 of the mats that my granddaughter used.

We had Pirate Booty for a snack.

And I sent them home with some fun worksheets and a copy of "The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs" By Scieszka.

This storytime was one of my favorites so far!