Saturday Open

Boy, this was a young crowd! Now, I'll need training for two's though I guess that's coming up. Dead silence for helping to sing or any refrains. I tried to do Jennie's hat but had prop problems. The hat at the end turned out cute though and I had children try it on and gave them baby bird kisses. The bravest was about a 1 1/2 year old. She tried on the hat, got baby bird kisses numerous times and a sticker! I think I'll try it out on the 3 year olds next Friday but act it out after reading the story. That's all folks! See you in April!

Babies

OMG! What a baptism by fire this morning. We had 30 tots and 30 adults (& probably more). I did my previous storytime for ones but just read the read-along because I didn't think there would be enough copies to go round. It sure helped to have done it twice before but I still need to do rhymes twice because the time flew! I did mention that I was nervous and needed their enthusiastic support which they gave. Lots of participation on the grown-ups part. I think I did O.K No surveys though, I didn't know where to find them. Thanks to Rory, Heather and everybody for their time and good comments.

Behbehs!

Mad props to Rory for all her time and energy working with Jenny and I on the baby/1s storytimes, not to mention how well she's trained these parents - they're all attentive and love to participate. Sometimes they don't even need me - on our read along of Bow Wow Hears Something this week, two of my pages stuck together and they didn't even notice! They just kept reading aloud without me. I love it.

Rory had some excellent tips, such as splitting up a longer book I found (What Do We Do With the Baby, by Rick Walton) into two, doing half each week. It's a sweet book, very easily divided, and they seemed to enjoy the continuity. That's Not My Puppy was such a hit that I got asked by two caregivers who the author was so they could get their own copies.

At the end, a dad asked me about CDs for babies with more traditional songs, "You know, like the Noble Duke of York that you tried to do." Tried? Nolan's Dad, you're looking a lot less adorable to me right now.

I think both weeks went really well, no parents cried or begged for Miss Rory's return, so I think the next session is going to be great. :) I really need to up my repertoire of rhymes and songs, though - I'd love to hear everyone's favorites.

Duck, Pig, Cow and Mouse FTW

With a one year break in between storytimes, I was a little nervous for Monday's family open. It went well, though - fun books, enthusiastic kids. My favorite to read was Jan Thomas's The Doghouse, which I had come across while doing a clean-up the week before, and the kids got into it. Lots of kids wanted to share lots of stories, which meant I did lots of redirecting during and then listening after the storytime, but they were pretty cute about it.

Saturday's storytime opened with a child running in and stopping short with a horrified look on his face. "Oh, no, where's Mr. Andy??" Thanks, kid; I think you're awesome, too. I did a very similar program for the open storytime, minus The Doghouse - Leslie had also tried to read it the week before, but Andy had done it the week before that. Book stealer. It skewed pretty young - mainly two-year-olds with a smattering of three and four year olds. Rory's Three Little Penguins was definitely the hit of the morning.

Salmontimes

I just wanted to give a shout-out to my special "storytime interns," Jenny and Shelley. They've both improved, like, 1,000% (and that's after starting off strong!), especially in the fields of confidence, presence and planning power. Observing them both this morning--what a treat to watch my storytimes instead of doing them!--made me proud as a mama bear watching her cubs catch their first salmon. Or something.

I'll let them blog about the actual storytimes ....

More Like Tanka Tanka Skunk!

Can anyone suggest more books like Tanka Tanka Skunk! that would work well with playing the bongos or rhythm sticks? I have used the sticks with Tikki Tikki Tembo in the past, but need some new ideas.

Rough going

It's been quite a while since I had a ST as rough as this morning's 9:30 1 year old group. It wasn't that the kids were loud and psychotic, or that the parents were loud and inattentive. The kids were kinda squirrely and rather unresponsive, but I've certainly seen much worse. No, the trouble was that I was lacking any kind of spark. I was not having fun, and kept thinking, is this thing over yet? Ouch. I know I've talked to most of you before about putting on my "game face" when I'm not really feeling it, but I felt like this was the first time that the face/mask kept slipping. At this point I thoroughly agree with Heather about 8 weeks being the longest period of time a ST session should run, with 6 weeks being preferable - this current 10 week session is really burning me out.
Thankfully, I drank some more coffee, made a couple of changes (including the insertion of more jokes directed at the parents), and the 10:30 ST went much better: much more fun for kids, caregivers, and me.

Game Stretchers

I really want this blog to survive and even thrive, but I've done very little lately to contribute to it--apologies! Maybe if we all try to post at least once or twice more before this session and re-evaluate whether we wanna keep it for the spring schedule?

Anyway, I thought I could share a couple of things that always work for me, especially in a mixed-age grou. First is "The Rhyming Game" (fancy name, huh?). I usually read the kids a rhyming book (this time it was the excellent and relatively new "Rhyming Dust Bunnies") and ask them if they know how to rhyme. When they inevitably insist that YES THEY DO! I ask them to stand up and repeat after me...

Me: Say 'red'...
Them: RED!
Me: And touch your...head! Now, say 'jelly'...
Them: BELLY!
Me: And touch your...belly! Wow, you really are good rhymers!

Of course, I'm always pointing to the body party I'm asking them to guess while I say the first word. Even then, it takes a few rounds for kids to use the hints. But it's the sort of stretcher you can make as long as you want (they don't seem to lose interest) and just make up as you go along. I always end by asking them to say "belbow," which gets a laugh, because even 3-year-olds know that's not a real word.

Another game I like to use as a stretcher is "Librarian [instead of Simon] Says"--the Pajama Storytime kids dig this. I try to make it library-relevant by asking them to "read a book" or "point to your grown-up" or "wave at the librarian" or whatever. Younger children don't really get the elimination aspect of the game, nor do older kids like the elimination aspect, so I...yeah, generally ignore it. Right at the end I'll shake my head NO emphatically and tell the kids to do something without first saying "Librarian says..." and cheerfully ask them all to sit down. Because they're all out at that point.