The lights went out without any spit hurrah!

But what about my toddler storytime?  Oh yes, I also facilitated my toddler storytime this week.  Because it's black history month I wanted my theme to tie in with that in some way.  At first I gathered a bunch of books loosely related to freedom, but I decided that was too tough a theme for toddlers to tackle.  Then I read a lot of picture books about diversity.  But I didn't really connect with any of those.  Plus diversity also seemed pretty heavy.  Finally, just a few days before storytime, I found two books that kinda worked and I picked the theme: love yourself, love others.  This storytime taught me to have a back up theme just in case my original theme doesn't work out.  For my next storytime I requested books about Valentine's Day (my preferred theme) and colors (backup theme).  No more scrambling to figure out a theme just a couple days before storytime!

I did have a wonderful time picking out my favorite version of the song, "This Little Light of Mine," and decided to go with Raffi.  I had to put a surprising amount of thought into my choice - nothing with religious overtones, not too cheesy, and the toughest part?  Finding a version that included the part where the kids get to "blow out their light," which is really the best part of the song.  Robert used to sing that song to Rose all the time (she loved it) and he would get so enthusiastic about singing it, he would sometimes spit on his audience when he blew the light out.

After picking the Raffi version of "This Little Light of Mine," I had lunch with Robert's mom, Audrey, who is a sign language interpreter.  We had a really great time and she was kind enough to help me out with incorporating sign language into the song.  After meeting with Audrey I spent every free moment learning the signs and thinking of ways to help parents learn the signs and teach them to their youngsters.  I finally decided I would talk to them about the signs before playing the song.  This went surprisingly well (although I forgot to teach them the sign for "world"), and everyone was engaged.  We had so much fun with this song I plan on playing it again next time, no matter the theme.

I also brought out the shaker eggs, and though we had a good time, it was tough to understand the words in the music (35 shaker eggs is pretty noisy).  When we use the shaker eggs again I am going to have two activities for them instead of just one, and I plan on having one activity that doesn't follow along to music if that makes sense.  I felt cheated out of my time spent with the beloved shaker egg and I'm an adult so I can't imagine how the kiddos felt. 

The two books I read weren't as well-received as my previous choices and I'm still a little flummoxed by this.  One was incredibly interactive, so perhaps they just weren't feeling it today.

At the end, right before we sang the goodbye song, I asked everyone to help me count all the people in the room.  This worked out splendidly!  The parents really got into it and I could almost see the gears spinning in their heads as the kiddos listened to us count.  They were mesmerized. 

Sadly the name tags are a bust.  There are just too many people (which is a great problem to have).  Next time I'm going to tell them we're forgoing the name tags but encourage them to come to the desk when they're in the library, and I will trade them a name for a sticker. 

The best part of storytime happened at the very end.  After dumping the toys out and chatting with a few people I began putting my stuff away.  While I was tidying up a toddler approached me and held out a toy truck.  When I asked her to roll it to me she plopped herself down on the floor.  So naturally I plopped myself down too.  We rolled it back and forth to each other for a moment before another toddler joined us with his toy truck.  Before I knew it, I was surrounded by toddlers and involved in half a dozen different conversations.  It was awesome. 

But it gets even better!  While I was hanging out with the crowd of toddlers a parent commented, "you're like a child whisperer or something."  I said thank you and she added, "it's so nice to just sit back and watch them interact and take a breather for a moment."

My happy heart nearly ballooned out of my chest and lifted me up.