Five Enormous Dinosaurs Felt Board and Rhyme

Dinosaur storytimes are always a hit.  I jazzed mine up this past week with a felt board story and action rhyme.  I read two stories that required the kids to ROAR!! Those little ones can make terrifying dinosaur sounds.  :-)

For this storytime  I read:

Dinosaur ROAR! by Paul & Henrietta Stickland

Dinosaur Stomp! by Paul Stickland

After the stories we used the felt board: Five Enormous Dinosaurs

I made a printout for the kids to color and take home.  You can print it out for your use here.

Enjoy!

Science Storytime: Liquids/Solids and Of Course, SLIME!

I'm preparing for my Science Storytimes for our Summer Reading Program.  I love this year's theme: Fizz Boom READ!  There are so many fun science things to do at the library.  I've created an hour long program of six sessions for kids in grades 1-3.  Each little scientist will explore different aspects of science through stories, experiments and projects to take home.

The first session will be Liquids/Solids::
Book: Bartholomew and the Oobleck by Dr. Seuss

Book: The Secret Science Project that Almost Ate the School by Judy Sierra

Activity: Have a variety of objects that are solids and liquids.  Observe the each object.  Make a list describing the objects as a group.

Experiment 1: Make Gloop!
Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup Cornstarch
• 1/4 cup water
• food coloring

Combine the cornstarch, water, and a couple drops of food coloring in a small container or bowl.

Poke, prod, pour, shake the gloop and observe how it changes between being a liquid and solid.

This recipe was used from the 2014 CSLP Children's Manual.

Experiment 2: Make Slime (this will be made to take home)

Here are some pictures of our trial run with making slime.  

 Ingredients:

• 4-5oz of Elmer's School Glue
• 1/3 cup Sta-Flo liquid starch
• Liquid water color or food coloring-a few squirts

Recipe adapted from Stephanie.

 Mix the glue and water color together until fully combined.

 Add your 1/3 cup of liquid starch in small amounts.  Stirring till it is completely mixed in each time.

 It will start to look like this....Kinda gross and SLIMY.

 As you can tell by this picture Mikayla found the slime very appealing. 

 Here we have slime.  You will really want to get in there with your hands to mix it together.  Start kneading the lime like dough to help mix in the starch.  

 It will start to form into a nice blob like this.

 Now it's time to play with the slime.

 If you add another splash of liquid starch to your slime it will thicken up to the consistency of GAK.  

With the thicker consistency, you can create bubbles using large straws and have lots of fun with it.

I stored my slime in a zip-lock plastic bag and it is holding up just fine.  I can't wait to make this slime with the kids in storytime. 

Enjoy!  

Beach Storytime and Felt Board

For my evening Storytime this week I decided to do a beach theme.  The kids loved it.  I pulled out my coconut and pineapple bowling set for the beginning play time and the kids couldn't get enough of it!  I had a hard time narrowing my book selection for this one but I got it down to three books and a poem.  

The books:

 

I found the poem Five Little Seashells  and made a printout for the kids to color and take home.  You can print your own copy here.

I turned it into a felt board as well.  Below is my quick attempt at an ocean wave.  

I found pictures of shells on the internet to trace onto felt.  

For our craft we made a seashell wreath.  I cut out paper plates and tied a ribbon to the top.  The kids used glue sticks to add squares of tissue paper to the plates.  I had the kids pick out 6 small seashells and used glue dots to attach them to their wreaths.  The glue dots were perfect for this craft.  I didn't want to pull out the hot glue gun for this project and school glue takes to long to dry.  If you don't have glue dots go get them.  They are wonderful for crafting!

Here is my sample wreath.

Enjoy!

Paper Bag Notebook

While prowling through Pinterest I came across this neat post about 5 minute book binding by Brittany Watson Jepsen.  It took me a little more than 5 minutes to make mine, but with a little practice I can see how a person could easily whip one of the bad boys up in that short amount of time.  I decided to use this in my Teen Art Club.  The best part about these little notebooks is that there's NO GLUE!  I swear my teens make a bigger mess with glue than the preschoolers.  :-)    

I followed Brittany's tutorial.  She has great step by step picture instructions.  I had brown paper lunch bags in my supplies closet to use for the covers.  She forgoes scissors and tears her paper using the edge of the ruler.  My skill with that technique is not quite up to par yet, so I resorted to using scissors.  

The sewing part for the binding is easy to figure out.  The teens should not have a problem with this task. 

Using colored pencils I added some fun Aztec designs to me cover.  Now I have this cute little notebook to doodle in or take notes.

Enjoy!

Umbrella/Rain Felt Board

I decided to do a rain Storytime this spring and came across some adorable felt board stories in my search. I will be using 10 Little Raindrops by Storytime Katie and 5 Umbrellas by Christine at Felt Board Ideas.  There are so many cute flannel board ideas for rain!

Here are my pieces.  I couldn't resist adding a little glitter to the raindrops.  I think I might have a problem with glitter.  I want to put it on EVERYTHING.

I also made a sheet for kids to color and take home.  You can print it out and use it.

I plan to read some of these books.  I haven't quite decided which ones yet.  They're all good!

The Thingamabob by Il Sung Na

 Rain by Manya Stojic

This Is the Rain by Lola M. Shaefer

 The Water Hole by Graeme Base

Confetti Bird Story and Craft

I'm working on my Spring Evening Storytimes and came across the Confetti books.  I will be using Roly-Poly Egg  Snack Time for Confetti by Kali Stileman. 

What you will need:

• Blue yarn
• Blue pipe cleaners
• Brightly colored paper
• Scissors
• Hole punches in different sizes
• Wiggly eyes
• Liquid glue

I found a fun and easy way to make Confetti out of yarn and a pipe cleaner. One of my oh-so willing Pages made large pompoms out of blue yarn.  My first attempt I used a large store bought pompom, but it didn't look fluffy enough.  I folded a blue pipe cleaner in half and then fold the ends to create feet and glued it to the bottom of the pompom.  Using two different sized hole punches I punched circles out of  brightly colored scrap paper.  I made the beak by cutting a diamond shape out of orange card stock and folding it in half.  Then I glued the eyes (I used two different sizes), paper dots, and beak to the pompom to create Confetti!  Isn't he cute?  The kids will have fun making this little bird and the stories are adorable.

Here's a closer look at Confetti:

Enjoy!

Five Green Shamrocks

I found some really cute poems and stories to do the next two weeks for St.Patrick's Day in Storytime.
This week I will be doing a green theme using the books Green by Laura Vaccaro Seeger and Where Is Green Sheep? by Mem Fox.

I will be using the felt board for the rhyme: 5 Green Shamrocks.  This rhyme can be found on narrating tales of preschool storytime.  I decided to make coloring sheet with the rhyme on it for kids to take home.   

 You can print it here. 

The other flannel board story that I will be using next week is called Leprechaun, Leprechaun, What Do You See? It is based off of  Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?

You can find the whole story here at Storytime ABC's

Here's my felt creations for the story, minus the sun.  I will just use a sun from another story.  I mixed felt and clip art for my leprechaun.  He looks pretty cute to me!

Enjoy!