waddle your whole self in

This week was the first week of fall storytimes, and though a couple patrons were frustrated because we're now ticketing, the storytimes themselves went smoothly.  In addition to ticketing for storytimes, we are using a smaller room in our library.  The room we used for spring and summer had a capacity of 50.  This smaller room has a capacity of 24.  We are using the smaller room in the hopes of creating a better storytime experience for our patrons.  There were moments during spring and family storytime that, no matter how loud I shouted, I could barely be heard above the roar of 30 toddlers.  I was also struggling to build relationships and my early literacy tips were being swallowed up in the din and chaos.  Don't get me wrong.  I would do it all again.  I've discovered I have a certain fondness for toddler chaos.  But we definitely needed to re-evaluate and that's what we're doing this fall.  Because of the smaller room and the popularity of our storytimes, we are also offering back-to-back storytimes.  This means we do the exact same storytime twice, with a 30-minute break in-between. 

We have four different storytimes at my branch - baby, toddler, preschool, and family and four youth librarians.  We each chose a storytime based on scheduling rather than preference.  I am thrilled toddler storytimes work best for my schedule because I had such a great time doing them last spring.

The first fall toddler storytime was amazing.  It was my favorite storytime yet.

For this season I'm going to share the different activities and resources I used for each storytime and highlight what worked and what didn't.

I chose interactive books as my first theme.  The two books I read aloud were Eric Carle's From Head to Toe and Christie Matheson's Tap the Magic Tree. 

After our hello song, we sang Raffi's version of If You're Happy and You Know It.  It's simple yet unique.  The first and last verses are the standard "if you're happy and you know it clap your hands," but the second verse is, "If you're bananas and you know it let it ring," and the third verse is "If you're beautiful and you know it shout hooray."  My first group liked it.  My second group loved it.  The second group really did go bananas and let out some glorious and obnoxious ringing noises.  Because of the second group's reaction, the song will be a part of my next storytime.

Christie Matheson's book, Tap the Magic Tree, was the biggest hit in both storytimes.  Basically through a series of tapping, rubbing, wiggling fingers, and so on, a tree goes through its yearly cycle.  It begins with a bare brown tree and with one tap, a single green leaf appears.  Four more taps bring four new leaves.  Every time I turned the page I asked a different toddler to tap or rub the tree.  A few toddlers were shy, but this provided a great opportunity to encourage their adults to tap the tree.  Once the adults started tapping, the toddlers would jump right in and tap too.  It did take longer to read the book than I had planned.  It was tough to calculate how long the participation part of it would take.  I had to skip a song in both storytimes.  In my opinion it was more than worth it.  Toddlers were jumping up and down in the hopes that they could tap the tree, and it dissolved the barrier between us.  Most of the toddlers no longer acted shy towards me after we read that book.  If anything, I was simply swamped with eagerness.  I will love this book forever because of this storytime.

After this book I passed out scarves and we did a few basic exercises first - high, low, left, right, jumping, waving, etc.  During family storytime this summer I tried this with not only scarves, but also musical instruments and shaker eggs too.  I always chose 3-4 activities for whatever thing it was we flung around that storytime, and the basic exercises was usually the favorite.  Though they enjoyed the basic exercises this time, there was only time for two scarf activities.  I felt like this wasn't enough.  For the next storytime I think I'm going to pick another activity over the basic exercises if there isn't enough time for both.  The other activity we did was "Here is a Green Leaf," which I learned about from a librarian friend.  I did this activity during family storytime this summer and everyone loved it. 


Surprise surprise, it was a hit this time too.  My second storytime especially loved it and my favorite moment happened during this activity.  Because it's a short activity (and also incredibly fun to do), I always do it twice.  The first time there's a lot of oohs and aahs.  The second time everyone usually gets the hang of it.  During my second storytime I made the scarf flower and started to do it again.  That's when I noticed that most of the adults were earnestly helping the toddlers make the flowers.  It was like a flower scarf breakout session.  For about a minute no one was paying attention to me at all.  I was so ecstatic I could hardly breathe.  You could have knocked me over with a scarf.  It was storytime magic.

The second book we read, From Head to Toe by Eric Carle, was well-received.  I read it during a yoga storytime last spring and it is definitely a winner.  We turn our heads like penguins, arch our backs like cats, kick like donkeys, etc.  Just like yoga, there's a move every toddler excels at.  That's one of the things I love about this book.  I also love how we can make sounds if we feel like it.  A lady in the second storytime had an amazing elephant sound.

After the second book, we had time for another song, "Walking" by Sara Hickman.  It's three movements - walking, hopping, and running in place.  There's a melodic 'lalala' part at the end that can be either soothing or weird.  It definitely fell into the weird category for this storytime.  Nobody wanted to do the 'lalala' part with me so I was just up there singing to myself while 17 toddlers quietly passed judgement on me.  It may be awhile before I do this song again.

A week before the fall storytime season began, a coworker and storytime expert listened to my hokey pokey woes (I can't stand the song but every kid at our storytimes loves it and expects it).  This coworker suggested that I modify hokey pokey to fit the storytime theme.  I was intrigued but how was I going to do this for my first storytime?  Were we all going to pretend to be trees?  "You put your branches/roots/leaves/wood sap/pine cones in and you shake it all about?  Maybe someday, but not the first storytime.  So I went with the first animal in Carle's book, a penguin, and we did the penguin hokey pokey.  Another coworker came up with the idea of waddling our whole selves in, which I can't stop doing, even though storytime is over.  The penguin hokey pokey is addictive.  Once you put your tail/wings/beak in and you shake it all about, you can't stop.  I'm not sure the toddlers cared that I changed up the hokey pokey.  They just wanted the hokey pokey, and were happy to have it in whatever form they could get it.  And thankfully I don't have to start a hokey pokey support group yet. 

Next storytime is all about dinosaurs, including another attempt at doing a flannel board activity!