you put your wipers in

Storytime was a giant success this week.  A friend of mine brought her eleven-month old to the first storytime, which was his first storytime, and he smiled the entire time.

After our hello song, we sang Raffi's Shake My Sillies Out, which is a huge hit at my branch.  It was a permanent fixture of the preschool storytime last spring.  Both the storytimes were thrilled to hear it again.



After Raffi's song and one of my good ol' regular fingerplays, we read/sang Old MacDonald Had a Truck, which was hands down, the favorite thing in both storytimes.  Both groups sang the entire book with me, and it was such a beautiful, fun experience.  I was really surprised when they persisted through the sounds of each vehicle, even though the words were smaller and sometimes tongue twisters.  In my second storytime there was a dad who looked just like a farmer.  He was wearing a red and black plaid shirt with jeans.  He also sang with a low, lovely voice that was just as clear as could be.

After our first book, I pointed to the giant circle I had taped on the floor earlier that morning and asked if anyone knew why it was there.  There were lots of excited murmurs, which completely exploded into shrieks of joy when I unfurled the parachute.  We did a few exercises with the parachute - lifting, holding it in different hands, and shaking it like wild people.  This was followed by Wheels on the Bus and London Bridge is Falling Down.  In the London Bridge song, I had all the toddlers go underneath the parachute while the adults stood on the outside to lift, lower, and wave the parachute over the toddlers' heads.  I used a recording of this song, and it had a few long musical parts where there wasn't any instruction.  The toddlers just stared at us with confused faces while we waited for the next instruction.  Because of these awkward moments, next time we'll just sing it without music.  The last song we did with the parachute was the popcorn song by Barenaked Ladies.  In the first storytime I tossed "popcorn," aka beanbags, on the parachute and everyone popped the popcorn, aka shaking the crap out of the parachute.  In the second storytime, I let eveyone toss a piece of "popcorn," which was a lot more fun.  The last time I used the parachute and we did the popcorn thing, I used beach balls.  Though they didn't stay on for long, they were much more enjoyable than the bean bags, which just clumped in the middle and vibrated like sad, heavy popcorn.  When we folded up the parachute, I told everyone to "help me make a popcorn sandwich." Before they knew what was happening, the parachute was tucked away like a good sandwich, and no tears were shed about the sudden loss of the beloved parachute. Overall, it was total, complete, parachute success, and I'm looking forward to the next time I bring the parachute out.  

 
After we put the parachute away in the first storytime, we did another fingerplay to calm everyone down, and when that didn't quite work, I asked everyone to take a few deep breaths.  The first breath we took was a little boring.  We all took a big breath in.  Then we let it out.  For our second breath I asked everyone to breathe in, and then blow it out like a ferocious lion.  This was much more fun.  And it worked!  Everyone quieted down for the next story.

We read Where Do Freight Trains Sleep at Night, and due to time and restlessness, I omitted a few pages in both storytimes, which nobody noticed.  This was followed by...Five Little Hot Dogs!  They really love Five Little Hot Dogs.  We will definitely be doing it again next week.  Who knew it would become a permanent fixture?  Or that I would be hearing it every night as I'm trying to fall asleep?



For our hokey pokey this week we pretended we were school buses, which was quite the stretch of imagination.  I asked everyone to name parts of the bus and then what part of the body they would like to represent that part of the bus.  We did wheels (feet), people (fingers for the first storytime, the whole body for the second), wipers (arms), and doors (also arms).  They were definitely more excited about naming parts of a bus than they were about naming parts of a butterfly.

Next week's storytime is all about loving yourself and others.  And also hot dogs.  Five greasy hot dogs since you are curious and not at all tired of hearing about them.