Hey Cupcake!

While scanning a list of holidays searching for some story time theme ideas (Brownielocks' Holidays) I read that February 24 was National Cupcake Day.  I didn't look carefully enough to note that it was a Canadian holiday only…although my audience didn't care.   After all, who doesn't like cupcakes? I found plenty of songs and rhymes that I could easily adapt to cupcake.  For craft, I did provide a coloring sheet…but the kids were more interested in eating the real cupcakes that I handed out than coloring one.

First, the books we read:

Pinkalicious by Victoria Kann

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

One rainy day, a girl and her mom make cupcakes…pink cupcakes.  When the girl eats one too many, she discovers she has turned pink…which is ok for awhile, because pink is her favorite color.  My story time audience giggled in all the right places and loved the nicknames our pink heroine gave herself, "Pinkerbelle" and "Pinkerella."  Her doctor prescribes a diet of green foods to cure the "pinkititis, which she follows after an encounter with birds and bees in a park.  We had a lively discussion about green foods, and laughed at the twist in the end.   Fun read-aloud.

If You Give a Cat a Cupcake by Laura Joffe Numeroff

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

One lovable cat, a simple cupcake and some sprinkles start a typical chain of events in this Laura Numeroff story.  Cat demands to be taken to the beach. the gym, and rowing in a canoe.  My story time audience laughed at all of the antics and drank up the wonderfully detailed, humor filled illustrations.

Little Mouse and the Big Cupcake by Thomas Taylor

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Sweet book about how difficult it is to share.  When mouse finds an enormous cupcake he is thrilled - until he realizes that he can't carry it home!  One by one he enlists all his friends to try and help him.  Of course, Mouse allows each to take a bit...but then hungry mouse begins to fear that there may not be any left for him...

Maisy Cleans Up by Lucy Cousins

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

With simple large text and simple, colorful large illustrations the reader is introduced to Maisy, an industrious mouse who is cleaning house.  Her friend Charley comes to visit and he helps her clean while waiting for the kitchen floor to dry in order to get to some freshly baked cupcakes.  My story time audience loved this one as well - the adults agreeing that we all need a friend like Charley (he even does windows!) and the kids rejoicing in the friendship and the cupcake reward at the end. 

Glove set for "Five Little Cupcakes" Fingerplay:

Five Little Cupcakes (or Cookies)

Five Little cupcakes with frosting galore

Mother ate one and then there were four

Four little cupcakes, two and two, you see

Father ate one and then there were three.

          Three little cupcakes, but before I knew,

                                         Sister ate one, and then there were two.

                                       Two little cupcakes, yum - yum-yum

                                            Brother ate one, and that left one.

                                         One little cupcake, here I come

                                          I ate it and now there are none! 

All in all a very successful story time.  Kids and adults laughed in all the right places, participated and were engaged in the stories.

For Book Lovers!

In addition to hosting Valentine's Day, did you know that February is also Book Lover's Month?  So, this week my story time theme was "Wild About Books" and the stories we read and all of the songs and rhymes were devoted to book lovers.  Our last song was about making books - the author writes the book…the illustrator drawers the pictures….and for the craft, the kids got to write and illustrate their very own four page book.

Here's what I read:

I Love My Little Storybook by Anita Jeram
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This is a magical book about a rabbit, a storybook and all the wonderful places they go.  The illustrations are beautiful and the text captures the true joy of reading.


Maybe A Bear Ate It! by Robie H. Harris
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Sweet tale of a book lover!  A cat-like figure crawls into bed with all sorts of stuffed animals and falls asleep while reading a book.  In the morning he stretches and knocks the book under the bed…and then panics because he can't find his book.  Panic stricken, his imagination runs away with him as he imagines all of the things that may have happened to his beloved book - maybe a bear ate it, or a stegosaurus stomped on it, or a rhino ran away with it.  He looks high and low…the illustrations are great…and eventually, with great joy, he finds his book, and falls asleep reading it.


Carlo Likes Reading by Jessica Spanyol
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Carlo is a giraffe who reads every chance he gets.  Many of the rooms in his house have labels on items, and he reads in his room, in the bathroom getting ready for bed, in the kitchen as he has breakfast.  He reads with family members, friends and to ducks and his cat, Crackers.  The bright, child like illustrations charmed my story time audience and there were many opportunities to interact with my story time audience and have them count items…and identify items, which was a nice supplement to the simple text.  A big hit with my audience.


Book! Book! Book! by Deborah Bruss
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This was my favorite book at Storytime.  This illustrations are sweet and there are animals and a library...and animal sounds.  What more could you ask for in a read aloud?  When the kids go back to school the farm animals are sad and bored and wander off to town in search of something fun to do.  They see happy people coming out of the library and so, one by one, they go in and ask the librarian for help.  The problem is that she can't understand them, until finally the chicken goes in and clucks, "Book, book, book." Finally, the librarian understands and the happy animals return to the farm to read their books. The kids helped me make all the animal sounds and giggled in all the right places.

Olympic Groundhogs!

OK, so here we have the first Storytime Mashup.  On February 4, with Groundhog Day happening a few days earlier and the start of the Winter Olympics happening just a few days later, I was torn for a theme…so I mashed both of those concepts together.  The kids loved it.  I suppose the only thing I missed including  was the Superbowl - maybe I should have gone with "Olympic Groundhogs that Play Football."  Hmmm.  Maybe next year.

Here are the books we read:

Snow Happy! by Patricia Hubbell
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
All of the joy of a snow day are captured in lively rhyming text and soft, brightly colored illustrations.  Waking up to snow, the kids in the story are "silly-willy laugh, feeling slightly daffy" as they leap and run through the snow.  It didn't take long for my audience to join in the repeated chorus of "snow happy!"  and engage in counting kids, spotting animals in the illustrations, and counting snow angels.  Fun read-aloud.


Olympics by B.G. Hennessy
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
The winter olympics are coming and so I wanted to devote a story time to the olympics and various winter sports.  This book gives a great overview of the olympic games, using simple appealing text and brightly colored detailed illustrations.  All of the preparations, training, and the games themselves are explained in a way that even the youngest members of my story time audience enjoyed.  There is a page on the history of the games as well.


Tacky and the Winter Games by Helen Lester
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Tacky the penguin has always marched to a different drummer.  In this book he encounters all of his friends training for the winter games.  Not to be left out, Tacky joins the team, even though he was not "the fittest of birds."  The reader sees that while Tacky is well meaning, he trains a little differently, and he even participates a little differently in the winter games. There is a happy ending for our hero.  Easy to read aloud text and wonderful, fun filled illustrations made this a winner with my story time audience.


Grumpy Groundhog by Maureen Wright
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
It's Groundhog Day and the entire town is waiting for Mr. Groundhog to appear…but he decides he is going to spend the day in his cozy bed.  The rhyming text flows and the soft, detailed illustrations are filled with fun and humor.  My story time audience loved this one, it captured their attention even though it was the last book I read.


For the craft, we made Pop-up Groundhogs:

Hugs and Kisses 2014

It is February and love is in the air…even if you are only two or three years old. So, of course it is time for the annual hugs and kisses story time.  All the kids in my story time audience were gearing up for the big day and they talked excitedly about the Valentines they were preparing to give out and talked dreamily about all of the Valentines they hoped they would get.  At today's story time we had a class visit, so there were more than 25 kids in the audience.   We all had great fun, the kids interacted with the stories, were engaged and participated.

First, here are the "hugs and kisses" books we read:

Pete the Cat: Valentine's Day Is Cool by James Dean
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Pete the cat, the very definition of cool, believes that Valentine's Day is not…that is until his friend Callie convinces him otherwise.  With a little help from his mom he learns how to make the perfect Valentine to celebrate the cool in every cat and to express to everyone how much they are appreciated.  Wonderful, brightly colored illustrations complete this Valentine book with a slightly different message.  Fun read-aloud (although not as much fun as being able to play a sung version of a Pete book) and my story time audience loved it.


A Kiss Like This by Mary Murphy
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
My story time audience loved this one.  With brightly colored illustrations and rhyming text we see all sorts of animals exchange kisses, "A giraffe kiss is gentle and tall….a mouse kiss is quick and small."  There are half pages to turn to display the actual kiss which my audience loved.


Love, Splat by Rob Scotton
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Beware - open a Splat book and it will be love at first sight.  Splat the cat has a universal appeal.  He is good, but slightly goofy, looking and he has an innocence, honesty and openness that kids and adults can identify with.  In this book, it's Valentine's Day and he is getting ready for school, to give Kitten an extra special Valentine.  Splat has a major crush on Kitten.  Unfortunately, Spike the class bully, also likes Kitten.  In spite of Splat's insecurities everything works out in the end!  My story time audience loved this one, hanging on each detailed illustration and cheering Splat on.


Then we read a "just for fun" book:

Tap the Magic Tree by Christie Matheson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Great fun book which requires reader involvement.  We follow a tree through the seasons, and the reader is asked to tap, rub, knock, jiggle, and shake the tree to effect changes…growing leaves, budding flowers, picking apples, making snow fall.  Even though I read this to a fairly large group, everyone could be involved with a tap or knock and it didn't take my audience long to anticipate the changes on the next page.  One of the instructions is to blow the tree a tiny kiss…so that is my justification for including this in a Valentine story time.


There were rhymes and songs…and even this flannel:

Colored Heart

(Tune: "London Bridge")

Here's a heart that's colored red

Colored red, colored red

Here's a heart that's colored red

I made it just for you.

Our Craft today was a Magic Heart, which could be worn as a hat (if one is crazy enough!).The kids folded a paper plate in half and cut some swirls. Unfold the plate and up pops a heart!

I was told that the class really only wanted a book or two and then the kids really wanted time on the computers.  I am very pleased to say that all of the kids really seemed to enjoy all of the books, and many of the classroom kids wanted to make the craft.  Isn't it nice when the magic of books and simple crafts takes hold?

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!

Winter Fun 2014

OK, so here in San Diego our winters are very mild.  While most of the rest of the country is currently in a "Polar Vortex" creating record cold, we are sunny and in the 70's.  That doesn't stop me from presenting my annual Winter fun story time featuring all sorts of winter/snow books, songs and rhymes.   Since I presented this story time at the Base, most of the kids in my story time audience had seen and played in snow before, as this is a very transient population.

Here are the books we read:

The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
The reader follows Peter on a snow day.  Peter wakes up to find snow has fallen overnight.  He puts on his snowsuit and makes funny tracks in the snow, shakes snow from a tree, takes part in a snowball fight, etc.  I like that Peter is African-American (uncommon enough to note that this is special)  The illustrations are as soft as newly fallen snow and the text is simple and flowing.  Nice, gentle read-aloud.  Caldecott award winner - and it shows.

All You Need for a Snowman by Alice Schertle
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
The colorful illustrations in this book are great fun as a group of kids (not very ethnically diverse) build a giant snowman. The text playfully lists everything one needs to build a snowman, "one small snowflake fluttering down - that's all you need for a snowman….EXCEPT" turn the page and there's more.  My story time audience loved this device... This book captures all the joy of building a snowman in a colorful, playful way.


Winter White by Christianne C. Jones
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This winter book definitely invites the reader to become aware of color.  The end pages have crayons and stylized color wheels and there is a note about color…and then the reader is taken through the land of winter white.  The illustrations are big and bold and there are plenty of white things for a story time audience to spot, count, etc. to encourage engagement.  The simple rhyming text flows.  Great winter themed read aloud.


Oh! by Kevin Henkes
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
When snowfalls everyone wants to play in it - gray squirrels, shy rabbits, cats and dogs…oh, and children, too.  When the sky grows dark, everyone goes home.  Simple, charming book with lovely soft illustrations, Which give a slightly different slant to a winter story.  Great addition for a winter story time, but the book is physically small, so probably wouldn't work for a very large audience.

For today's craft we colored, cut, and glued together all the parts of a snowman.  Good Pre-K skill building.

We did a number of songs and rhymes, but here was our favorite (which we did three times):

Sledding 

(tune: "Row, Row, Row, Your Boat")

Crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch (walk fingers slowly up your arm)

Up the hill so slow

Sliding, sliding, sliding, sliding (slide fingers down arm from shoulder to wrist)

Down the hill we go.

Hats!

This theme was easy to put together, there are great hat books, great hat rhymes, and great hat crafts.  I had a rather large - for the base library - audience and they were wonderfully engaged and interactive.  We had a great story time!  Our craft was a simple coloring sheet which I crafted with three different kinds of hats, having lost the matching sheet I wanted to use.  I know I saw it somewhere on the web…oh, why didn't I pin it on Pinterest?

Here are the books we read and the rhymes:

Stormy's Hat: Just Right for a Railroad Man by Eric A. Kimmel
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This wonderful book is based on the true story of George "Stormy" Kromer and his wife Ida who created the original railroad engineer's cap in 1903 - the same cap worn today, over one hundred years later, by railroad workers everywhere.  My story time audience loved all of Stormy's attempts to find a hat that was just right for a railroad man…fedora, pressman's hat, cowboy hat, firefighter's helmet…nothing worked.  With each failed hat, Ida tries to make a suggestion, to which Stormy replies, "don't worry your pretty little head.'  When he finally listens, Ida creates the perfect hat based on his description.  The illustrations are lovely and the text, a little longer than my usual story time books, held my audience's interest.  There are wonderful author's notes at the end as well.

Then we did the action rhyme, "Tall Hat, Small Hat":
          Tall hat (Arms overhead)
          Small hat (hands close to head)
          Big hat (arms spread out)
          Cap (hands on head)
          Let's take them off again (repeat rhyme with motions in reverse).
          And put them in my lap (fold hands in lap)

Whose Hat Is This?: A Look at Hats Workers Wear--Hard, Tall, and Shiny by Sharon Katz Cooper
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I love 'guessing game" books for story time - they encourage audience involvement and engagement, which encourages fun and enjoyment.  This one shows a portion of a hat/helmet and a one sentence question/hint and then, when the reader turns the page, there is the answer and information about the specific hat/helmet.  Some of the hats are quite esoteric - like a beekeeper's hat.  My young audience correctly guessed more than half, and really enjoyed the process.  The illustrations are bright and bold, and alternate well between men and women wearers.

This was followed by a hats flannel:

The kids had great fun identifying the various hats and we counted and identified the hat by color.  The green construction hat threw them a bit, since in the two prior books the construction hats had both been yellow!

Then we read:

Martin's Hats by Joan W. Blos

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is an older book (c 1984) with very detailed illustrations and imaginative text about Martin, who puts on a hat and has adventure after adventure…from spelunking under the bed to crashing a party to being a train engineer.  He also directs traffic, delivers mail, and puts out a fire in Chicago.  When he gets home, he finds a special hat waiting: a nightcap and he falls asleep.  This is a charing little book.

Do You Have a Hat? by Eileen Spinelli

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

With wonderfully bright illustrations, the text "name drops" depicting famous people and the hats they wore.  The end notes provide information about all of the people and their accomplishments.  The rhyming text is fun to read aloud and the kids love the refrain of, "Do you have a hat?"  There was much discussion of the types of hats my audience owns and wears.  Great, fun read-aloud.

There were lots of laughs and lots of participation.  We did our wiggle break, "Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes" twice and followed that by putting on our magic hats:

Put on your magic hat (put hands on head)

You can do anything in your magic hat!

You can hop and hop…

You can make a face….

You can flap and flap…

The kids really had fun hopping and flapping!  All in all this was one magical story time.