you put your motion stability sensors in and you shake them all about

This week's storytime was all about one my favorite things - food!  After our hello song, we did the five little hot dogs rhyme.



The first group enjoyed it, but a little girl in the second group loved it.  Every time we came to the BAM part of the fingerplay she giggled loudly.  After one of our quieting-down fingerplays we read...The Very Hungry Caterpillar!  And not just any copy of The Very Hungry Caterpilllar, but a gigantic copy of it that my library system just happened to have in their big books collection.  The Very Hungry Caterpillar was the first group's favorite thing.  Two toddlers even correctly guessed a few foods the caterpillar was going to eat next!

We had a lot of fun guessing colors and counting, and though no one was quite sure about the sequence of the days of the week, we still talked about that a little too.  After The Very Hungry Caterpillar I passed out not one, but two scarves to each toddler and we pretended to be butterflies.  We also did a cute song - Popcorn Kernels:



and I changed up their favorite song last week to fit the scarf theme:

Everyone can shake shake shake X3
Everyone can shake shake shake
And now it’s time to stop

Everyone can flap flap flap X3
Everyone can flap flap flap
And now it’s time to stop

Everyone can twirl twirl twirl X3
Everyone can twirl twirl twirl
And now it’s time to stop

Everyone can wave wave wave X3
Everyone can wave wave wave
And now it’s time to stop

Each time we stopped I wadded up the scarves in my fists really fast, but everyone had different ways of stopping, which was really cool.

After we packed away the scarves, we read Every Color Soup by Jorey Hurley and made pretend soup together.  We went over both colors and types of fruits and vegetables in the first storytime, which was a little too much.  So in the second storytime I mixed it up and let them guess one of the two things so they didn't get completely overwhelmed.  The first group was losing focus by the time we got to Every Color Soup, but the second group loved Every Color Soup as much as The Very Hungry Caterpillar.

We finished the food theme with Laurie Berkner's song, "I Feel Crazy So I Jump In the Soup."



This wasn't the first group's favorite, but a mom in the second group enthusiastically shouted, "That is such a great song" once the song was over.  We finished with a butterfly version of the hokey pokey and our goodbye song.  This week I asked everyone to help me think of different parts of the butterfly.  They guessed wings, antennae, feet, and my favorite, ears.  At the time I wasn't sure whether or not butterflies have ears so we went with it.  I looked it up just now and it turns out butterflies have something called "motion stability sensors​," which are on the wings, sooooo my apologies to all the butterflies out there for misrepresenting your anatomy in the name of Hokey Pokey.  I'm rather glad we didn't know about "motion stability sensors" at the time, because that would have been a mouthful.  But no matter, the most important thing is that everyone got their hokey pokey fix for the day.

Interestingly enough, I feel like there are two favorites from this week - "Five Little Hot Dogs" and "I Feel Crazy So I Jump In the Soup."  Which one shall I pick for next week?

I know you're wondering which one fits next week's theme the best.  Neither one!  Next week we are going to zoom and vroom and read books about vehicles.  But no matter.  There's always room for soup diving or greasy hot dogs.