Big Kids Storytime: Wild Animals

To tie into our Winter Reading Club (Reading is Wild!) which started last week, I thought it would be fun to do a wild animals theme this week. Plus it was a good opportunity to use some songs and/or stories which are more familiar to kids- I like to do that for the first week or so, just to get kids used to me and being in the storytime routine. Here's what we were up to-

Bread and Butter

Bread and butter, marmalade and jam

Let’s say hello as [loud, quiet, fast, slow, etc.] as we can- hello!

ABCs

Letter of the Week: T

Words we thought of: Tanner, toes, tiger, tornado, ten

Count to 10 and Back

My Rhinoceros by Jon Agee

Hippopotamus on a Bus

A hip, a hip, a hippopotamus

Got on, got on, got on a city bus

And all, and all, and all the people said

You're squishing us!

A cow, a cow, a cow got on the bus

And all, and all, and all the people said

Moooove over!

A sheep, a sheep, a sheep got on the bus

And all, and all, and all the people said

Move baaaack!

From Jbrary

(we tapped our knees instead of bouncing)

Actual Size by Steve Jenkins

* We didn't read this entire book, but I picked out some of the animals I thought the kids would like most. We had fun guessing things like what anteaters and Goliath Bird-Eating spiders eat.

Elephant Guessing Game

*We have a set of felt elephants in a bunch of different colors. Each kid got two elephants and I asked who had colors that sounded like bed (red), shoe (blue), mean (green), etc. I have some 5 year olds and some pretty new 4 year olds, so some kids had an easier time than others. It was still fun and the kids even started to help each other out.

Storytime Challenge

Today we flipped a giant cardboard "coin" with a lion on one side and an elephant on the other and made a bar graph with the results. Two kids remembered the unicorn vs. dragon bar graph we made last session, so they were very excited and got the new faces excited as well. Everyone got a few chances to flip the coin until the winner (lion) reached the top of the bar graph. Throughout the challenge we talked about who was winning and how we could tell, then at the end we counted how many flips the elephant would have needed to win.

Goodbye Song

(to the tune of “Wheels on the Bus”)

The library doors go open and shut, open and shut, open and shut

The library doors go open and shut at the library

We check our books in and out, in and out, in and out

We check our books in and out at the library

Our time is up but we’ll see you next week, see you next week, see you next week

Our time is up but we’ll see you next week at the library