you put your porcine snout in and you shake it all about

Last week's storytime was a success.  I had only two kids in the first storytime, but it went much better than I thought it would.  I had a much bigger turnout in the second storytime.  

We sang our hello song and then did an exercise from Breathe Like a Bear, which is a book filled with "mindfulness exercises designed to teach kids techniques for managing their bodies, breath, and emotions."  I took the blurb straight from Amazon because it's exactly true.  I've used this book before and it's always a success.  We did the 1-2-3 clap exercise.  You stretch your arms wide, count to three, give a big clap, rub your hands together, place them on your tummy, take a deep breath in, and blow it out.  You repeat these movements but place your hands on your heart the second time.  Everyone enjoyed it today.  



Last week I was super fortunate to attend the Kansas Library Association's yearly conference.  It was two and half days of amazing, inspirational, enlightening sessions, where I did enough learning and connecting to last me several months.  Seriously.  I'm going to be wading through my notes for quite awhile. 

But back to storytime.  While I was there, I went to a handful of storytime sessions and even had an opportunity to shadow the superstar Saroj Ghoting.  She had a very quiet, easygoing, organic approach to storytime.  Like me, she uses a slideshow.  Unlike me, she doesn't cram her early literacy skills into another slide though.  Each skill gets its own slide.  She also worded the skills in a comfortable, conversational style, which is so simple I know, but I didn't get it until I saw her do it if you know what I mean.

This week I did the same thing for my storytimes and it worked beautifully.  I didn't sound preachy and everyone seemed interested.  



The first book we read, Ten Pigs - Epic Bath Adventure, was the clear winner of the day.  Both groups loved it and were so quiet while I read it, I actually felt a bit self-conscious.  They were utterly engrossed in the story.  I'm definitely adding the book to my favorite storytime books list.



After the first book, both storytimes were sitting so quietly I read another book.  Back-to-back stories in both storytimes HOLLER!  We read Count With Little Fish, and they liked it well enough.  The second storytime began to get restless about halfway through.  It was almost as if they realized they'd been tricked, which is sort of what happened.  We will read all the books in the library today muahahaha!  



After the first two books, I passed out shaker eggs and we did our normal shaker egg exercises, but then I changed things up a bit with a new song:



They loved this new song!  We also used the shaker eggs to act out the movements in Wheels on the Bus, and this also went smoothly.  Between storytimes I took a break, which means I read a few books from my stack of books waiting to be read.  I read The Wheels on the Tuk Tuk, which is a Wheels on the Bus spinoff, and it was excellent.  You will hear more about this book later.  One of the actions in this book goes like this.  "The people on the tuk tuk go bobble, bobble, bobble..."  So, naturally we sang this in the second storytime.  They loved it.  If you are having a bad day or need a smile, sing this out loud.  It's a guaranteed 30 seconds of happiness.

We put the eggs away, did a fingerplay to quiet down, and read One Little Blueberry, which they liked well enough.  



We finished with the Counting Bubbles song and a Little Piggie version of hokey pokey.  Both were big hits!  

I am pleased as can be with how smoothly everything went.  Next week we're reading books about bugs (a spider, a butterfly, and various bug poems specifically).