Iron Fey series by Julie Kagawa

For those who have not read the Iron Fey series by Julie Kagawa, please do! Right now!

It all started with a suggestion from Barnes & Noble and an obsession was born.

Here is a description from Barnes and Noble: 

“Meghan Chase has a secret destiny—one she could never have imagined… 

Something has always felt slightly off in Meghan's life, ever since her father disappeared before her eyes when she was six. She has never quite fit in at school…or at home.

When a dark stranger begins watching her from afar, and her prankster best friend becomes strangely protective of her, Meghan senses that everything she's known is about to change.

But she could never have guessed the truth—that she is the daughter of a mythical faery king and is a pawn in a deadly war. Now Meghan will learn just how far she'll go to save someone she cares about, to stop a mysterious evil no faery creature dare face…and to find love with a young prince who might rather see her dead than let her touch his icy heart."

Lambs and Sheep

Spring comes in like a lion and out like a lamb, and the tornadoes we went through this week is proof of that. I decided to have a lamb storytime as an alternative to eggs or rabbits for Easter, and ended up using books that had nothing to do with the holiday. The kids thought Sneaky Sheep was hilarious and had a great time reading with me on the more simple books. It was a good storytime!

                                

 

 We used two flannel boards this week that I made from the book Best of Totline Flannelboards by Cubley. They are "Mary's Lamb and Peter's Lamb" and "Baby Animals." The kids also made a more labor intensive craft this week: a bookmark that is a lion on one side and a lamb on the other. It came from Seasonal Storytime Crafts by Totten. They did a great job!

                             

I Love Chocolate!

My love for chocolate has now spilled over into storytime! This week I read books about chocolate cake, chocolate ice cream, and a chocolate factory.

I also used two flannel board rhymes "Birthday Cake Candles" and "Ice Cream Scoops." I like to make the kids count forwards and backwards using the tune of "Ten Little Indians" but changing it to whatever I am doing that day; in this case candles. For the first I sang the following rhyme and adapted the same rhyme for the second flannel board:

Birthday Candle Colors

If you have the red one, the red one, the red one

If you have the red one, put it on the cake.

Continue with:

Blue, Pink, Orange, Yellow, Brown, Black, Green, Gray, Purple

 

The craft for this storytime was a chocolate ice cream cone with glitter "sprinkles."

St. Patrick's Day

I kicked this storytime off by asking the kids if they knew anything about St. Patrick’s Day. Two kids in a room of seventeen knew what it was and knew what a clover was. That was it! Are they not teaching this in school anymore? Are the kids in my storytime really shy and hesitant to speak up? Possibly. Either way, I told them what St. Patrick’s Day was all about and then we read the following books:

I used two flannel boards: Five Shamrocks and Leprechaun, Leprechaun What Do You See? (I used this flannel board idea and made pieces based on the pictures: http://librarystorytimeabcs.blogspot.com/2012/03/not-flannel-friday-leprechaun.html)

To end storytime we made a green lace fan for our craft.

  

Poetry

I wasn't sure how this one would go, since a lot of the books I found were very short poems and there is no true storyline. However, the kids were more than happy to listen to some funny poems from Dirt on my Shirt by Jeff Foxworthy and we read aloud together A Giraffe and a Half by Shel Silverstein. I also read Sheep in a Shop by Nancy Shaw and Me I Am! by Jack Prelutsky.

The kids helped me tell the rhymes "Hey Diddle Diddle" and "Humpty Dumpty" using flannel board pieces. I mixed Humpty Dumpty up and asked if he was put together correctly; they kept yelling at me that I was wrong every time I changed him around! I finally had a volunteer help put him together the right way.

For our craft, we recreated the poem Bear in There by Shel Silverstein, by making a fridge that folds (fridge door on the front and poem on the back) and gluing a polar bear inside. For fun I gave them stickers to put on the front like they were fridge magnets. When you get to the place in the poem where the polar bear roars, you open the "fridge" and roar. Here is a picture and the poem:

Bear in There
by Shel Silverstein

There's a polar bear
In our Frigidaire—
He likes it 'cause it's cold in there.
With his seat in the meat
And his face in the fish
And his big hairy paws
In the buttery dish,
He's nibbling the noodles,
He's munching the rice,
He's slurping the soda,
He's licking the ice.
And he lets out a roar
If you open the door.
And it gives me a scare
To know he's in there—
That polary bear
In our Fridgitydaire.

African Folk Tales

I was excited this week to tell a few African Folk Tales in celebration of Black History Month. I explained to the kids in storytime that many parents tell stories to their children that teach lessons in fun ways. I challenged them to tell me the moral of each story when we finished the following books:

 

 

I told the story of "Head Body Legs" using the flannel board, where children had to put the pieces together as they are read in the story, and then rearrange them correctly in the end. We moved around to this song from http://www.trlib.org/BirthTo5/Pages/StoriesRhymes.aspx

If You're a (  ) & You Know It
If you’re an elephant & you know it, stomp your feet,
If you’re an elephant & you know it, stomp your feet,
If you’re an elephant & you know it, then you really ought to show it,
If you’re an elephant & you know it, stomp your feet.
Repeat:
Parrot…flap your wings
Crocodile…snap your jaws
Monkey…turn around
Lion…roar out loud

For our craft, we made the little red mouse from Mabela the Clever using the instructions from the DLTK website.

Groundhog Day

Yesterday was Groundhog Day, hooray! Centering a storytime around groundhogs at first seemed daunting, but I was able to find some good choices that both told a story and helped the children learn what Groundhog Day is all about.

I read three books in this storytime:

 

I created a flannel board called "Five Groundhogs" using a rhyme from the DLTK Groundhog resource page. I used clip art as a model for the groundhogs, then drew each one and cut it out of tan foam. My craft was a groundhog cup puppet. Children cut out pre-made groundhog shapes and taped them to a popsicle stick, that you poke through the bottom of a cup. I added gift basket paper shreds for visual appeal. Viola!