At the first storytime last week everyone was eerily quiet and zombie-like, including myself. Sadly last week's theme was "Be Who You Are" and not the Boo-tiful Books theme I'm doing next week.
Because we couldn't pretend to be zombies the entire thirty minutes, I decided to be louder and weirder in the hopes the zombies would turn into toddlers. It worked a little too well. By the time we began reading the second book everyone was so wound up, they struggled to pay attention. But no matter, we still had a wonderful time. The toddlers in my second storytime started out a little shy but warmed up to me by the end of it.
I began storytime with our hello song, Raffi's Shake My Sillies Out, and Five Little Hot Dogs. In the first storytime, one little boy despised the BAM part of the hot dog rhyme and put his hands over his ears each time we came to the word.
After the first songs and rhyme, we did a quieting-down fingerplay and read Be Who You Are by Todd Parr, which both storytimes liked.
After Be Who You Are, I brought out the shaker eggs and encouraged everyone to take two this time. There's a reason we have two hands, right? We did a few shaker egg warm-ups - high and low, soft and loud etc.), followed by the songs, Roly Poly and one of my standbys - Everyone Can Shake/Tap/Clap/Wave. I've done the Roly Poly song before but not with shaker eggs and this song is the reason I encouraged everyone to take two eggs. While moving our hands up and down, out and in, we shook also shook the eggs. I think it went well. While we were doing the roly poly song in the second storytime, one toddler put her eggs on her ears. I decided to go with it and everyone chose funny places to put their eggs (nose, knees etc.). The next time I use shaker eggs I'm definitely going to include this in some way.
After we put the eggs away and did a quieting-down fingerplay, I read Little Humans by Brandon Stanton. By this point, the first storytime had gone from zombies to kangaroos, and were a little too wound up to fully engage with the story. The second storytime loved this book. They had fun shouting out what the kids were doing or wearing. One toddler kept saying "Lola" while I was reading both books, and early on her mom told me that "Lola" was her daughter's way of saying "dog," since they had a dog named Lola.
Before we sang our goodbye song, we sang If You're Happy and You Know It chicken style. I found an absolutely hilarious version of this song in one of my coworker's music files and cannot find it anywhere else. Basically it sounds like a bunch of chickens singing this song. You flap your wings, fluff your feathers, and squawk real loud. Sadly, I'm the only who loved this song. The first storytime, as restless as they were, grew silent and looked at me like I was crazy when I played the song. I didn't play it during the second storytime. But the singing chickens will return someday. There's just gotta be a group of toddlers who love them as much as I do.
We also sang a quick counting song called Ten Little Bubbles.
It goes like this:
One little, two little, three little bubbles.
Four little, five little, six little bubbles.
Seven little, eight little, nine little bubbles.
Ten little bubbles go pop pop pop.
You clap each time you sing the word pop. It's a lot of fun. In my first storytime a grandma loved it so much she wrote down the name of it to look up. Sadly, I couldn't find it when I searched for it. It was such a hit in my second storytime that a little girl sang it all the way out the room and for about an hour afterwards while she played in our 6 by 6 space.
Because our theme was about celebrating who we are, I asked the toddlers which parts of our body we were going to hokey pokey with. I was hopeful for silly answers - elbows, noses, knees, that sort of thing. Instead they were puzzled by this, which puzzles me because it seems simpler than the last few weeks of storytime. In the second storytime a little girl decided to take control of the situation and help everyone decide what to do next. This was funny because she was very bossy and serious about it, and she stayed 100% true to the original hokey pokey (arms, legs, head, whole self).
Overall, it was a fun storytime. Next week the theme is boo-tiful books, which all have something to do with a major holiday that's around the corner but none of the books directly say so. I'm also swapping storytimes with a coworker next week. She's doing my toddler storytime and I'm doing her preschool storytime. We'll have a terror-ific time I'm sure!
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