A Storytime Sneak Peek

Before registering for storytimes, parents and caregivers often ask me what a typical storytime is like, so I thought that we would share with you a Preschool storytime that we had this past week to give you a special sneak peek at our weekly storytimes.

Every week has a theme that we choose our books and craft on.  For this week, the theme was "Ready for Fall!".  Books are chosen based on age-appropriateness, length and quality of the story, illustrations, and how well we think the kids will respond and interact with the story.  Our books this week were:

Let it Fall!  By Maryann Cocca-Leffler

Apple Farmer Annie.  By Monica Wellington








A New House for Mouse.  By Petr Horacek

Mouse's First Halloween.  By Lauren Thompson











Before stortyime starts we have a playtime with puzzles, books, and toys.  Coming to a storytime is not only a great oppurtunity for kids to socialize with each other, but for parents/caregivers as well!  A few minutes before storytime starts, we clean up our toys together and select what color floor cushion we each want to sit on. We start every storytime with the same song, so children get into the routine of knowing of what to expect and settling into a storytime setting. 

Welcome Song:
Wiggle your fingers, wiggle them so
Wiggle them high
Wiggle them low
Wiggle them left
Wiggle them right
Now wiggle them, wiggle them out of sight.

We then look at the covers of my books and see if we can guess what our theme for the week is about from talking about the titles and pictures from the covers.

Our first book was "Let it Fall", by Maryann Cocca-Leffler.  This is a great book with colorful illustrations that talks about the different things there are to do in the fall, and the children made a lot of personal connections to it since they had also gone apple picking or to a harvest fair as well.

After reading a book we then transistion into a song, fingerplay, movement activity, or flannelboard activity.  For this week, we did a flannelboard activity called "Little Mouse" where a little gray flannel mouse is hidden behind a different colored house every week.  Using a flannelboard is a creative way to visually engage the children, hold their attention, and have them participate with you.  They love it!

My Little Mouse flannelboard

Little Mouse Flannelboard
Little Mouse, little mouse, are you in the blue house?
(repeat the rhyme with the children for each color house until you find the mouse) 


 After our flannelboard, we read "A New House for Mouse" by Petr Horacek.  This story is about a little mouse, a big apple, and finding just the right home for the both of them.  We used a flannel apple for this story as well.  Every time mouse took a nibble from his apple in the story, we took away a piece of our flannel apple too!

Flannelboard for "A New House for Mouse"

Then it was time for a movement activity so we did "Slow and Fast".  This is a great activity for getting the wiggles and giggles out in between a story, and the kids have a blast seeing how fast and slow they can do the movements




Slow and Fast
Clap, clap, clap your hands as sloooowly as you can
Now clap, clap, clap your hands as quickly as you can!

Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle your fingers as sloooowly as you can
Now wiggle, wiggle your fingers as quickly as you can!
(repeat with different motions until you feel like the group is all wiggled out and ready for the next story!)

We then read Apple Farmer Annie by Monica Wellington, followed by a movement song about colors called "If You're Wearing Red Today", sung to the tune of "Do You Know the Muffin Man?".  Before starting the song we all look at the different colors we're wearing so that we are ready to stand up when a color that we are wearing is named.

If You're Wearing Red Today!
If  you're wearing red today, red today, red today
If you're wearing red today, please STAND UP!
(we then talk about where the color is on their clothing before having a seat for the next color)

If you're wearing blue today, blue today, blue today
If you're wearing blue today, please STAND UP!
(repeat for all the different colors that children might be wearing that day)

A piece of art ready for the fridge!

Finally, we read "Mouse's First Halloween" before then moving on to our craft for the day, which was making our own Jack-O-Lanterns with different colored foam shapes and googly eyes!