Bath Time Fun

January is National Bath Safety Month and contains "Rubber Duckie Day" (1/13) and "Bubble Bath Day" (1/8) so it follows that my January 14 story time theme would be Bath Time Fun.  I already had a powerpoint of songs and rhymes so there wasn't much preparation required.  I did look at a number of different books, and I tried something new: downloading a book onto my iPad and reading it - in that format - at story time. It worked well, almost TOO well.  Maybe it was just the novelty of a new format, but when I looked out over my audience, there was a focus that I don't usually see!  It was a group of nine kids, so everyone could see the pictures, I would have had to run it through my projector for a significantly larger group.

Here are the books we read:

Big Smelly Bear by Britta Teckentrup
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
My story time audience loved big smelly bear - who is cute - once you get past the cloud of flies that surround him because he never washes or brushes.  Perhaps the kids could identify with him not wanting to get cleaned up…or perhaps it was just the humorous illustrations but my audience giggled as we moved through the story.  Bear eventually meets a girl bear and after a bit of arguing, agrees to clean up his act, and there is a happy ending. This is a board book, so it wouldn't work for a large group.


Clean Enough by Kevin Henkes
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This is a charming book with sweet illustrations all about a young boy and the bath.The text is simple and voices all of the fears, joys and frustrations of taking a bath.  Our young hero leaves the door open...just a little whenever he takes a bath and has to struggle to get the water just right.  He spends his time in the bath daydreaming, playing and remembering how things were when he was really little.  There is also a cat that moves in and out of the pictures - the kids at storytime loved finding the cat - and sharing some of their own bath tub memories.  The book is small and the pictures very detailed, so this book would be difficult to read to a large group, but this book was very appealing to my young audience, probably because as the book jacket states the author-artist "catches a mood and an experience that are universal and makes them unforgettable."  So true!


Five Little Monkeys Jump in the Bath by Eileen Christelow
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
It is the illustrations that make this book.  Eileen Christelow's crazy, energetic five little monkeys are back - eating ice cream and jumping in mud and five "icky , sticky, yucky, mucky monkeys" are just happy as clams about being dirty.  They splash through a tub, slip and slide through the drying process and then head off to dinner…this is the first time that I read an ebook at story time, and it worked well, as the kids seemed to pay extra attention to my iPad, which I was using much like a book.  


Love-a-Duck by Alan James Brown
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Big, bold illustrations  and text sprinkled with words like "squidge, squoo, and squark" the reader follows a little rubber duckie on a giant adventure.  My story time audience lingered over the illustrations, and seemed generally concerned for our duck hero when he falls out of the bathroom window and has an adventure of a lifetime.  At every page turn we wondered out loud if he would ever make it home….he does, of course, and everyone breathed a sigh of relief.  Great story time read aloud and the favorite with today's story time audience.


Little Bunny's Bathtime! by Jane  Johnson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Mrs. Rabbit bathes all her children, except her youngest, who wants to keep on playing….and then feels left out when he refuses to participate in the nightly bath routine.  The illustrations held my story time audience's interest - they are soft and cute and guaranteed to make you fall in love with Little Bunny.  The simple, easy, read aloud text works well with the illustrations to convey the depths of a mother's love and frustrations felt by the youngest competing for Mom's attention in a large family.  My story time audience loved this one.


For our craft, we colored a rubber duckie, who could float in a bathtub:

 This was a fun story time for all of us - one of those story times where everything works!