Last week’s storytime was a little bit disastrous, a little bit awesome.
The first storytime was a train wreck. Since last summer, I’ve been connecting my laptop to the tv with an HDMI cable and haven’t had a single problem with it. Until last week, that is. I use the slideshow for lyrics, music, and literacy skills only. For whatever reason, my laptop connected to the tv just fine, and then, with one minute to go before storytime, it disconnected. Thankfully, restarting the computer solved the problem. Unfortunately, by the time it restarted, I was three minutes behind, and three minutes is a big deal when it comes to storytimes. While I was restarting the computer and welcoming everyone, a mom approached me and asked she could leave her kid in the room while she worked on the computers. I gave her a very firm no and explained why. First, kids cannot be unattended if they are seven and younger. Second, storytime is just as much for the adults as it is for the children.
As you can imagine, I was a tiny bit frazzled as I began storytime. The one, positive moment came when I read, Where the Wild Things Are. Everyone was absolutely, utterly entranced. It was magical.
We also sang the preschool hello song, which is different than my hello song and “If You’re a Monster and You Know It,” which was just ok.
After the first book, I got out the parachute and did a quick scan of the crowd. I like to make sure every kid and adult are working together to form a circle and grab the parachute. That’s when I noticed that the mom I spoke with earlier had indeed, left her child in the room. I stopped storytime, went looking for mom, who was right outside the room, and made a motion for her to come inside. I couldn’t do much more because there was parachute chaos going on.
Mom never came inside. I made a very quick decision to continue storytime and have another conversation with the parent afterwards. Needless to say I was pretty darn frustrated and even more frazzled, but I managed to get through the rest of the storytime and only messed up Pete the Cat: Five Pumpkins, which is a book you sing. I couldn’t sing the melody to save my life even though I had it memorized.
Sadly, I didn’t enjoy the first storytime much. After the parachute was folded up into a “popcorn sandwich,” a little girl was still absolutely devastated that it was being put away. So while she intermittently cried, I fumbled my way through the rest of the books and songs. It was a mess.
After the first storytime I collected myself, and then very sweetly had the same conversation with the mom who didn’t participate in storytime with her child. She not only apologized, but found me a couple hours later and apologized again.
The second storytime went much better and everyone, including myself, enjoyed it immensely. Because it was my coworker’s storytime, I asked her which elements she would like me to keep. I sang “If You Want to Hear a Story,” which is her hello song. I also did the crazy clap fingerplay, and a flannel board goodbye rhyme, which is so stinking adorable, it’s on my radar for next spring. Basically you say, "See you later..." and wait for everyone to say alligator. Then, "After a while..." Crocodile! They loved it. I loved it.
My coworker also said that the kids can sit there and listen to several stories before growing bored and that she would occasionally ask if they wanted to keep reading or stop for a song. Such an interesting, organic approach! So I brought four books to read and fully expected to only read three. Both groups of kids surprised me by picking the book over the song. In addition to the two books I mentioned earlier, I also brought Happy Pumpkin Day, Mouse, and Hush, Little Monster. The second storytime’s favorite was “Happy Pumpkin Day, Mouse.”
Overall, there is much positivity to glean from both storytimes. Next time I will keep a better eye out for disappearing adults and also prepare a list of talking points in case it comes up again. I think I said all the right things and even checked with a manager before having the second conversation with the patron. However, going over the talking points for why we have smaller, ticketed storytimes prior to a desk shift during coworkers’ storytimes has been very helpful.
Oh my goodness, I almost forgot the hokey pokey. We pretended to be monsters, and the kids loved it. They chose fangs and claws and feet. Next week it's back to toddler storytime and we're reading books about counting together!
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