Sleep, Big Bear, Sleep! - EF Wright
Down by the Cool of the Pool - EP Mitton
Llama Llama Red Pajama - EF Dewdney
There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly - EP Taback

Sleep, Big Bear arrived in January and it sat on my desk for awhile.  I was concerned that the key elements in the illustrations were too small to be seen during storytime.  My trial run with this book was at Head Start earlier in week and it went well so I decided to run it here.  Essentially, Big Bear is hard of hearing and acts upon words that rhyme with what Old Man Winter actually says.  Instead of “sleep,” Bear hears Jeep, steep, sweep, and deep.  In addition to the silliness, the whole book is written in rhyme so there is a double dose of phonological awareness.

Cool of the Pool is a nice book that combines many of the 6 by 6 skills.  It’s fun to read aloud and almost begs for audience participation with all the wiggle and “Wheee.”  Cool in the Pool segues nicely into Five Little Speckled Frogs which I did as a flannelboard story/song.

Many, many people have told me they love Llama Llama but I had never used it before.  It’s fantastic and a little bit of a tongue twister!  Who knew there were so many words that rhymed with llama?  My favorite is “llama drama.”  :-)  A fun game to play after reading this book is to rhyme different words with animal names.  Start with llamas in pajamas and see where it goes… cat is fat, dog takes a jog, duck in a truck.  There are also some opportunities for dialogic reading throughout… Why is Baby Llama getting upset?  What could Mama Llama be doing?  When was the last time you were afraid of something?  During one-on-one sharing, you can ask these questions and encourage your child to tell you a story.

I had Simms Taback’s version of There Was An Old Lady available, but I chose to use our Old Lady puppet to sing this story.  It’s always a big hit and includes lots of rhyming words.

Far too many Time To Rhyme books to list, but here are some of my favorites:

Oh My Gosh, Mrs. McNosh - EP Weeks
Move Over Rover - EF Beaumont
Ain’t Gonna Paint No More - EF Beaumont
Picky Mrs. Pickle - EF Schneider
Bear Snores On - EF Wilson
Sixteen Cows - EF Wheeler
Bubble Gum, Bubble Gum - EF Wheeler
Dinosailors - EF Lund
I Got Two Dogs - EF Lithgow

Ogres! Ogres! Ogres! - EP Heller
Max’s ABC - EP Wells
Chicka Chicka Boom Boom - EP Martin
Chicka Chicka Boom Boom (music CD) - CD YOUTH Archambault

In addition to the alphabet, you also get a healthy dose of vocabulary in Ogres.  One word after another describes how these creatures eat. Ogres made a fine storytime book, but it would be an even better lap book.  There are a lot of details in the illustrations that you miss reading it to a large group. 

One challenge of pulling together an alphabet storytime is finding books that are suitable for read-aloud that also include alphabet skills.  Max’s ABC is perfect.  First of all, most every kid knows Max & Ruby.  Then you put in the adorable story of Max’s ant farm escapees and Ruby’s reactions (overreactions?) and it’s a great book.  I like how the featured letters are present on every page, but are not intrusive.  In fact, in some illustrations, the letter is actually used by the characters as if it was supposed to be there.  Very nice.

You all know that I like including music in storytime and the audio version of Chicka Chickaby John Archambault & Bill Martin is fantastic.  So much so, that I cannot simply read this book anymore… I have to sing parts of it.  :-)  For today’s storytime, I played the CD and just turned pages in the book pointing at the letters and some of the words.  A different way for kids to experience a classic picture book.

There are tons of alphabet books.  Most of them at the Johnson County Library have a red ABC sticker on the spine.   Here are some other excellent choices:

Dog’s ABC - EF Dodd
Old Black Fly - EP Aylesworth
A is for Salad - EP Lester
Miss Spider’s ABC - EP Kirk
The Awful Aardvarks Go To School - EP Lindbergh
ABC T-Rex - EP Most
Alphabet Under Construction - EP Fleming

Henry Hikes to Fitchburg - EF Johnson
Old Bear - EF Henkes
My Friend Rabbit - EF Rohmann

Fitchburg actually has two parallel stories happening at the same time.  At the beginning of the story, Henry and his friend decide to take two very different routes to Fitchburg.  You can decide for yourself which route was the better one.  These books (there are five Henry books) are based on Henry David Thoreau, his contemporaries, and his love for the outdoors.

Stories like Old Bear I call “circular” stories.  (That’s not an official Library term so don’t report me to the Library Police!)  Everything comes full circle.  The bear falls asleep in early winter and dreams through the seasons and wakes up in spring.  The story here is that Old Bear dreams through the sequence of the year and that sequence is always the same. 

Wordless books are a great way to Tell Stories About Everything.  While Rabbit has some words, many of the pages are wordless and give kids the opportunity to describe what is happening and predict what will happen next.

In addition to the books today, I also used a flannelboard story based on a South African folktale called Uwungalema.  It’s a participation story with a distinctive beginning (famine), middle (trips to the king), and end (food for all).

A few other titles I considered for this theme:

Carl’s Afternoon in the Park - EP Day
The Odd Egg - EP Gravett
Grandpa Takes Me to the Moon - EF Gaffney
The Great Gracie Chase - EF Rylant
The Funny Little Woman - E398 Mosel
On the Day You Were Born - E 508 Frasier

Please Don’t Tease Tootsie - EP Chamberlain
The Napping House - EP Wood
Love, Splat - EF Scotton
The Very Lonely Firefly - EP Carle

Tootsie and Firefly both demonstrate that there are many ways to say the same thing.  Tootsie Cat gets teased while other animals are pestered, provoked, disturbed, and bullied.  Choosing different words for common things or tasks develops a richer, deeper vocabulary for your child.  Same thing with Firefly: flickering, shining, glowing, sparkling.  Aren’t those words so much better than just saying “lit up?”

When I’m asked to do early literacy presentations, Napping House has long been my choice to demonstrate the excellent use of vocabulary.  Words like cozy, slumbering, and wakeful perfectly describe the feelings in this picture book.  I rarely ever dilute the text of a book by substituting easier or more familiar words. I will occasionally stop to define an unfamiliar words after I read it, but it’s a rare instance when I substitute words.

With Valentine’s Day coming, I wanted to read a favorite VDay book, Love, Splat.  There is a trilogy of Splat books and they are all fun to read.  While there is some vocabulary to be learned in this title, I really tossed it in because of the upcoming holiday.  And because of the Valentine’s necktie I am wearing today. 

Find lots of vocabulary in these books, too:

Rub-A-Dub-Sub - EF Ashman
Chicken Cheeks - EP Black
A Monkey Among Us - EP Horowitz
Max’s Words - EF Banks
Eek! Creak! Snicker, Sneak - EF Greene
Duck and Cover - EF Urbanovic
Scaredy Squirrel - EF WattÂ
That’s Not Funny! - EF Johnson

Click, Clack, Moo: Cows that type - EF Cronin
Round Like A Ball!- EP Ernst
Don’t Let the Pigeon Stay Up Late!- EF Willems

Once you explain to your kid what a typewriter is, Click Clack Moo and is a fun read-aloud.  In this particular title, the cows type letters to Farmer Brown making certain demands about their living conditions.  The notes the cows type (and the stern letter Farmer Brown sends in return) are presented in a different font and are set off from the narrative text.  Seeing that this text is part of the story but is different from other words on the page, helps increase you child’s awareness of print in general.

Kansas City author Lisa Campbell Ernst has several fantastic books that fit our 6 By 6 skills.  The one I used today, Round Like A Ball, is a guessing game filled with round things.  What makes this an exceptional title for Notice Print Everywhere is that every other page has circular text around a die-cut hole in the page.  Follow this a few times with your finger so your child gets the idea that even though those letters aren’t in straight lines, they still make up words.

All of Mo Willems’ Pigeon books are great for today’s skill.  Stay Up Late just happened to be the one on the shelf when I planned this storytime.  My favorite pages are the ones when the Pigeon has a temper tantrum.  The text fills the page and is often written in a jagged, angry font.  Rarely do two pages in a Pigeon book have the same word placement which makes it ideal for noticing print in different ways.

We also sang “Wheels on the Bus” today (because we talked about round things) and we acted out an alphabet poem I wrote a few years back:

“Making the Alphabet” by Bradley Debrick

Stretch up high, like a capital I
Nod your head like an M.
Wiggle your body like a wiggly S
And do it all over again!

Use one arm and one leg to make a big R
Use both arms to make a large K
Curve your whole body into a C
I could play this game all day!

Arms in the air to make a tall Y
Then make a huge circle for O
I’d try to make X, but it’s very complex
And that’s all the letters I know.

Here are a few other great books for noticing print:

Potato Joe - EP Baker
Good Night Pillow Fight - EP Cook
Beetle Bop - EP Fleming
Grump Groan Growl - EP Hooks
Chugga-Chugga Choo Choo - EP Lewis
There Are Cats In This Book - EF Schwarz
Duck for President - EF Cronin
Jazz Baby - EP Wheeler

Bark, George - EF Feiffer
Barnyard Banter - EP Fleming
I Ain’t Gonna Paint No More! - EF Beaumont
A Birthday For Cow! - EP Thomas

It makes sense that kids who enjoy books and have fun with them naturally want to learn to read. Studies have also shown that kids whose parents emphasize the entertainment value of books rather than just the skills-building value develop a more positive attitude about reading. The books I chose today are pretty good examples of the hundreds (thousands?) of “fun” books to read together.

George is a semi-predictable story with a twist at the end.  There are several things going on here that make this story fun: the obvious fact that George doesn’t speak his own language; the absurdity that all of those other animals are inside George; the increasingly exasperated look of George’s mother; and the last page.  The illustrations aren’t cluttered so your eyes really focus on the story and the fun.

There isn’t much of a story in Barnyard Banter but the rhymes, silly sounds, and search-for-the-goose component make this a fun read-aloud.  I used the Big Book version for storytime today for two reasons.  One, the goose is a little hard to find when you use the regular book with a group.  And two, I wanted to use its pages as the basis for singing Old MacDonald.  With a Big Book, the pages would stay open by themselves and I could hold my autoharp and still interact with the kids.  I couldn’t do that with a regular sized copy.

What’s not to love about Ain’t Gonna Paint?  Perfect just the way it is.  After storytime, one of my little friends told me she has that book at home but her mommy doesn’t “sing it” the way I do.  :-)  Birthday For Cow was a last-minute addition when I realized I was going to be a little short on time.  I like Jan Thomas’ illustrations - they remind me a little bit of Sandra Boynton’s except there is more mischief in their eyes!  The duck in this book has a hang-up on turnips.  In my opinion, the word “turnip” is second only to “rutabaga” in the list of funny vegetable names.  Okra comes in third.

Other titles that make it easy to Have Fun…

I Got Two Dogs - EF Lithgow
Good Thing You’re Not An Octopus - EP Markes
What Will Fat Cat Sit On? - EP Thomas
There Are Cats In This Book - EF Schwarz
Millie Waits For the Mail - EF Steffensmeier
Duck on a Bike - EF Shannon

The Enormous Carrot - E398.2 Vagin
Murphy Meets the Treadmill - EF Ziefert
Wiggle - EP Cronin

Since Wiggle is about moving and being active, I tried to create a storytime that was about being healthy. There are several books available about eating good foods - especially vegetables - but I like Enormous Carrot for a number of reasons. It is a very old folktale and is often told with a turnip instead of a carrot. I like Vagin’s illustrations, the animals he chose to use, the rare words (enormous, lugged, towed, heaved), and the refrain that happens on nearly every page. This story can be told as creative dramatics, simple call & response, or a combination of the two like I did today.

Murphy is fun to read because it’s from the dog’s point-of-view. I also like that the story isn’t pushy, but clearly extols the benefits of exercise and better eating. Although the last page bothers me… the silly dog is eating junk food again. WHY??? Did we not learn anything from the hours Murphy spent on the treadmill?

I was very happy that Kristin Hansen of the Johnson County Library Board was willing to be our guest reader for this storytime!  Ms. Hansen did a great job reading Wiggle and am grateful she took time away from her own job to be part of our event. What made this a great choice for KS Reads to Preschoolers is that it’s nearly impossible to read Wiggle without wanting to wiggle yourself! At some points, the book actually asks you to wiggle different parts of your body. You’ve gotta love a book with built-in gross motor movements.  I read this book five times at Shawnee Mission Head Start earlier this week and it was a big hit every time.

To round out the fitness & movement theme, I used some of my old standbys… “My hands up on my head I place” and “Shake Your Sillies Out.”  I thought about using “Heads and Shoulders, Knees and Toes” but I just did that back at Halloween and didn’t want to repeat so soon.

Other titles that I considered or have used in the past:
Good for Me and You - EF Mayer
Vegetable Garden - EP Florian
Toddlerobics - EP Newcome
Giraffes Can’t Dance - EF Andreae
Tessa’s Tip Tappin’ Toes - EF Crimi
Scoot - EP Falwell

The Perfect Thanksgiving - EF Spinelli
Turk and Runt - EF Wheeler
One is a Feast For Mouse - EF Cox

Perfect Thanksgiving is a great book for rhyme, telling stories, and compare/contrast.  A rhythmic profile of two families that celebrate the same holiday in very different ways.  The illustrations are large enough for group presentation but detailed enough (and quite funny) to captivate a young one sitting in your lap.

I have loved Turk and Runt from the minute I saw it.  It’s a little long for young preschoolers, but our Saturday kids were a little older and I think it worked well.  There is humor in this book for kids and grown-ups which makes it a fantastic read aloud.

Published in 2008 but brand new to me, One is a Feast for Mouse is a cumulative tale that kind of, sort ties into Thanksgiving.  It doesn’t take long for kids to begin predicting what will happen next and reciting the words with you.  It also doesn’t take long to know that this story of a greedy little mouse is going to end badly!  :-)  I think there is a natural craft project or activity that could enhance the story.

Had to do a couple of songs.  Just had to!  “Turkey Lurkey” is Hokey Pokey but with turkey parts.  Put your right wing in… Put your left drumstick in… Put your wattle in…  You get the idea.  And I found “Albuquerque Turkey” from thebestkidsbooksite.com.  Sing it to the tune of Clementine:

Albuquerque, he’s my turkey,
and he’s feathered and he’s fine
and he wobbles and he gobbles
and I’m awfully glad he’s mine.

He’s the best pet you could ever get
Better than a dog or cat
Albuquerque, he’s my turkey
And I’m awfully glad of that.

Albuquerque, he’s my turkey
he’s so cozy in his bed
Because for our Thanksgiving dinner
We had scrambled eggs instead!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Monster Trap - EF Morrissey
Go Away, Big Green Monster! - EP Emberley
Haunted Party - EF Trapani

Although Monster Trap isn’t really a Halloween story, it sure works well for a not-so-spooky session to show the playfulness of monsters. I think there’s a lot you can do as you read this book to create tension & drama that is all resolved with the fun picture on the last page. There’s also a great sequence of events that unfolds that makes the story easy to re-tell once it’s over.

Big Green Monster has been around a long time, but has recently become one of my favorites.  It has been a success with every age group I’ve tried.  I like the use of color, die-cuts, and descriptions.  Make your own Big Green Monster (mine is made with felt and velcro) and let the fun continue!  Wonder what a Big Green Monster would wear to a Halloween party???

Haunted Party is a new title and this is the first time I’ve used it in storytime.  It’s a counting story so it makes a great lap book, but it’s also a good book to hear rhymes, rhythms, and new vocabulary.  When you get to 10 and the kids at the door, use that opportunity to predict what will happen next. It might not be what you expect!

Toss in some construction paper spiders (while singing Spider On The Floor) and a short fingerplay/song (Itty Bitty Monsters by Dino O’Dell) and you’ve got yourself a Not-So-Spooky storytime!

This was our last regular preschool storytime until February 4.  Please check our online calendar for early literacy events in November, December, and January.

Other Halloween books you may enjoy:

The Spider and the Fly - E821.8 Howitt
Skeleton Hiccups - EF Cuyler
The Hallo-Weiner - EF Pilkey
Halloween Night - EP Druce
Sheep Trick or Treat - EP Shaw
Runaway Pumpkin - EF Lewis
The Scariest Monster in the Whole Wide World - EF Mayer
Monster Mischief - EF Jane
Frank Was a Monster Who Wanted To Dance - EF Graves
Plumply, Dumply Pumpkin - ER Serfozo

Leaf Man - EP Ehlert
Ska-tat! - EP Knutson
“Autumn’s Beginning” from Good Rhymes, Good Times - E811 Hopkins
“To Each His Own” from Pieces: A year in poems & quilts - E811 Hines

Leaf Man is a little abstract but I still like it for its use of color, collage, and die-cut pages.  The story is what you make of it and it can be used with small groups to talk about what else the Leaf Man sees as the wind blows him hither and yon.  I’m not a crafty person, but there is an undeniable opportunity to go leaf gathering and make your own Leaf Man (Leaf Woman?) and then write a story about all he or she sees.

Ska-tat! has been one of my favorite fall books since I started doing storytime many years ago.  I think what I like is the mix of real words, made-up words, alliteration, and onomatopoeia.  “Smells like spicy toast” gets me every time!  If you read this book one-on-one, let your child try to sound out the made-up works.  It improves letter recognition and the ability to combine letter sounds.

I had planned to conclude storytime with The Very Busy Squirrel by Nancy Tafuri but I was running long and decided to end sooner than expected. The best word to describe Nancy Tafuri’s picture books is “gentle.”  Nice, simple story with soft illustrations that fill the page.  This book has a nice refrain that I usually have the kids repeat with me.  The story ends suddenly, but squirrel’s work ethic finally makes sense on the very last page.

I tossed in a couple of poems into this storytime.  The books where these specific poems can be found are listed above.  Finding kid poems that match a theme is sometimes difficult, but I do enjoy sitting in the E 811s and looking at the poetry books.

Two gross motor movement activities today - Shake Your Sillies Out was first followed by Autumn Leaves Are Falling Down.  For Autumn Leaves, I asked each child to stand and gave them red, orange, brown, green, or yellow die-cut leaf.  We then started to sing (ala London Bridge is Falling Down):

Orange leaves are falling down
Falling down
Falling down
Orange leaves are falling down
To the ground.

In theory, I planned to repeat with the other colors until everyone is seated. In practice, most kids wanted to stand up and fall down for each color. Worked out great and it gave us all a little extra workout!

There’s more fall fun to be had:

When Will the Snow Trees Grow - EP Shecter
When Summer Ends - EP Fowler
Pumpkin Pumpkin - EP Titherington
The Cinnamon Hen’s Autumn Day - EF Dutton
Harvest - EP Waldherr
Peepers - EF Bunting
The Busy Little Squirrel - EP Tafuri