T is for Tiger

Letter T storytime was Tuesday. We had a total of 19 in attendance which includes children and their caregivers. We have a new check-in process at our library- it's a kiosk where they can scan their library card. I tried to meet each child there with my Turtle puppet.
Next we went to the rug and sang. After our beginning song I introduced the letters T and U. Because I want to finish the alphabet before the end of summer I am doubling up (tripling the last week) on some letters.
Show and Tell was next where we had great participation. Among the items brought were unicorns, umbrellas, play toast, a teacup, a tomato, tiger and a truck. I am so proud of them when they get up and tell everyone what they brought!
On to Zoo Phonics where we went all the way through to U adding Timothy Tiger and Umber Umbrella Bird.
I read the first half of Chicka Chicka Boom Boom by Bill Martin Jr.

I made a Chicka Chicka Boom Boom tree a while back and it was time to pull it out and use it. I drew the tree freehand and cut it out and laminated it adding magnets to the back. I gave the kids every other letter. As we got to the letters in the book each child brought their letter up and placed it by the tree. A couple of kids were super shy and didn't want to come up to the board but I think most children enjoy this type of activity and I hope to do more of them.

Next we read Freight Train by Donald Crews- a storytime favorite. We made the choo choo train noises as we read it. I love interactive books because they keep the attention of the crowd!
I had a few other books on standby but since we were running short on time I skipped them. But for the letter U I highly recommend The Very Ugly Bug by Liz Pichon (for a slightly older crowd than what I have weekly).

A shorter book for U is Underground by Denise Fleming.

We moved on to fine motor work where we made a letter T tiger.

Next I passed out this printable from I Heart Crafty Things and some circle stickers with the alphabet written on them.

For the younger kids just adding the stickers was great fine motor work.

I printed out this printable from Totschooling and put them inside these dry erase pocket sleeves. This helped me avoid laminating 15 pages!

I should have done this activity first and read the letters off using the laminated alphabet cards that go along with the activity. But since I didn't and each child is at a different point by this time, I passed these out and told each child to say the alphabet erasing the letters as they went.
I totally forgot to give the kids Teddy Grahams that I got for them.

I sent the letter U Unicorn home for them to do along with worksheets for T and U.
Next week is V and W! and I am NOT ready! Better get to work......
Ms. Angel

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!

O is for Owl

This week at the library is our stress relief storytime. I do my storytimes on the odd Tuesdays. So, I am actually a week late posting about our Letter O storytime. Let's see if I can remember what we did.... (insert smiley face here since I have no idea how to do that.)
Of course we began with my ice breaker song. They think it's my favorite song. "If You're Happy and You Know It".
Everyone brought something for Show and Tell time! Among those items we had an orange, an Owl, an otoscope, orange marker and my grandson came up and pointed to me- his Oma (it's German for Grandma and what I go by).
I talked about opposites and read the book Octopus Opposites by Stella Blackstone.

Then we played a game where I gave each child a laminated card which they had to match to someone else's card as the opposite. This was a free printable I found at Playdough to Plato. Then we read Little Owl's Orange Scarf by Tatyana Feeney.

This is a favorite book of mine and I read it whenever I get the chance. It's just the right length and adorable.
We added to our Alphabet Zoo Phonics- Olive Octopus. It's taking us longer and longer to say these each week, but I think it's worth it. I even had one mom tell me her little guy has been going around the house chanting the zoo phonics. These comments make my day!
We moved on to the tables where we worked on our Letter O animal- an owl of course.

I put out some sequins and bottles of glue along with this octopus printable from "A Little Pinch of Perfect"

Then I got out the shaving cream and let the kids make the letter O in it. Some kids were not crazy about putting their fingers in shaving cream and others loved it!

That's all we did. I did send home some great worksheets. I know some people aren't crazy about worksheets, but I try to find super fun ones like mazes and color by numbers. Some of my moms homeschool so I started the worksheets to give them something to have at home to reinforce what we learn at storytime.
The book they took home was "The Other Side" by Jacqueline Woodson.

I'll be back next week with the letter "P"!
~Mrs. Angel

N is for Narwhal

Storytime was a blast this week with a great group of kids. There were thirteen altogether. Of course we started out with our opening song "If You're Happy & You Know It". Afterwards we had "Show & Tell". There were ninjas, a nail, nuts, necklaces and my personal favorite- NOTHING. I really think that "Show & Tell" is my favorite new thing that we started with the alphabet series.
On to our Alphabet Phonics. This week we added "Nigel Nightowl" to the list.
I shared the book "Too Much Noise" by Ann McGovern.

This was the first time I have used a flannel or magnet board to tell a story instead of reading it. Having recently attended an early literacy training led by Saroj Ghoting, I was inspired to share this book as she did. She was so nice to email me helpful tips on how to put it together.

I practiced for days.
This book was a little longer than my normal choices, but the kids seemed to enjoy it as they listened attentively and helped out with the animal noises when it was time.

I read part of "A Nest is Noisy" by Dianna Hutts Aston, but by this time the kids were ready to move on to activities so we did.
Our Alphabet Animal was a Narwhal.

After the Narwhal we did a printable I found online at Adventures in Tutoring and Special Education. I bought these cute little ink pads on Amazon and the kids used their fingers to put the correct number of eggs in the nest.

I usually have a mixed age group as there are a few homeschool families. I welcome the older brothers and sisters with their preschool sibling. For the older kids there was a printable in which they had to add the correct number of eggs. I hope to find more activities like this one. Great fine motor work!
We ended with a necktie that they could color. Here are a couple of my storytime kids wearing their ties.

Aren't they cute? The kids loved the ties which I added a piece of elastic to so they could actually wear them. I did cut the ties out beforehand to help save time. Thank you, East Coast Mommy, for this free printable.
Our giveaway book this week was Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge by Mem Fox. I didn't have a book with N in the title, but I figured this one would work since it was a "Name".
Looking forward to the next few weeks.
Blessings~
Mrs. Angel

M is for Mouse and Monsters

I was so very excited for the letter M. We had a lot to do in our hour!
I met the children at the door with one of my mouse puppets.

A puppet greeting is so much fun I have decided to do it every week if possible.

Today we started with our usual opening song- "If You're Happy & You Know It" and immediately followed that with "Show & Tell". Lots of creative thinking as we had a moose, magnet, milk jug, mug, monkey, McDonald's drink, My Little Pony and a picture of Mom (loved that!).
Each week I bring out a small box full of little items. This week my box held a mitten, monster and little gold mouse.

We did all of our Alphabet Phonics. Zoo Phonics letter M was Missy Mouse.
We talked about the weather.
And then we did our flannel board activity. It was difficult to choose activities as there are so many cool books, flannel board ideas, fingerplays and activities to choose from for this letter.
I finally decided on "The Polka Dot Monster" which I found at Storytime ABC's. I hand drew and cut out my own felt monster.
"Polka Dot Monster"
I'm a little monster friendly and bright.

I won't give anyone a fright.

I love polka dots but I have none.

So step right up and give me red ones.




I'm a little monster friendly and bright.

I won't give anyone a fright.

I love polka dots but I only have some.

So step right up and give me orange ones.




Continue until each color has been added.


then sing the last verse:
I'm a little monster friendly and bright.

I won't give anyone a fright.

I love polka dots and I have lots.

Thank you for my colorful spots.

Today's books were

Go Away Big Green Monster by Ed Emberly- If you aren't familiar with this book it is fun! The pages are diecut and as you turn the pages the monster's face appears and then disappears as you tell the features to go away. It's short and sweet. The kids love it.

Dining with Monsters was a backup and we didn't get time to read it, but the pages fold out of this counting book as you count how many bugs and things these monsters dine on. It's also short and fun.

Mice by Rose Fyleman is illustrated in Lois Ehlert's unique fashion and was a crowd pleaser. The moms especially loved it.

I Can Teach My Child came up with an adorable alphabet monster made from baby wipes. I found this idea a few years ago and immediately started collecting my milk and other bottle caps. A few weeks ago I started punching circles and cutting letters. I wanted each family to be able to take home a monster. I came up with several games to use with him.

Inside each monster is a set of 52 caps with upper case and lower case letters. I neglected to get a photo. Will have to add that later.
We used the alphabet monster for our first activity. I drew the caps out one by one and the kids colored in the letter to match the cap. I found this printable on ABC's of Literacy. I didn't use it for the intended purpose, but it worked.

Next we made our Alphabet Animal. This week was a mouse. The photo is a little dark. Sorry.

I found these monster stamps on Zulily and the printable on The Measured Mom.

With so much to do I ended up sending home the next printable along with a couple of snack size bags of M&Ms. I can't find the link at the moment...sorry.

Our free book was Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People's Ears which is A West African Tale written by Verna Aardema and illustrated by Leo and Diane Dillon.

That was all for today! M was magnificent!
See you for N!
~~Mrs. Angel