trapped in a crowd of hokey pokey enthusiasts

Storytime was a success last week!  We read books about families and did a bit of singing and dancing too.  Both storytimes were full and I only had a few rambunctious toddlers. 

We sang our hello song and the same Baa Baa Black Sheep/ABC song as last time.  We're all ready to move on to the next exciting ABC song. 

After our hellos and ABCs we did a fingerplay called, "Grandma's Spectacles."  I cannot find a video of precisely how I did the movements, because my version was a combination of several videos I saw. 

This is how it goes:

Here are Grandma's spectacles
And here is Grandma's hat
And here's the way she folds her hands
And puts them in her lap
Here are Grandpa's spectacles
And here is Grandpa's hat
And here's the way he folds his arms
And takes a little nap

I spoke in a booming voice for grandpa in addition to giving grandma and grandpa different spectacles to wear.  I also changed how grandpa folded his arms.

This was a hit in the second storytime.  As soon as I began speaking in a booming voice, so did everyone else!  Plus a grandpa guffawed loudly about the nap part.  We will definitely do this fingerplay again next week.

After this fingerplay and our quieting down fingerplay, we read our first book, Hip, Hip, Hooray! It's Family Day!  This book includes ASL signs for each member of the family.  It was A LOT of signs to throw at them - family, mom, dad, grandma, grandpa, brother, sister, baby, cousin, aunt, uncle, dog, and cat WHEW.  We already learned the signs for dog and cat at other storytimes this season, but they are still quite puzzled about the sign for dog.  After reading this book, the signs I saw everyone repeating were "cat," "family," and "mom" so I will call that success.



It wasn't a particularly exciting book, so everyone was quite restless after we read it in the first storytime.  Only one child was up and moving around in the second storytime (rattling the locked cabinets, which is surprisingly an almost pleasant sound) so we read another book, The Grandma Book. 

After we read together, I brought out rhythm sticks (weapons of destruction muahaha).  Thankfully everyone was super well-behaved and respectful of each other and we had no rhythm stick issues.  I am still dancing a jig about this.  We did some warm-up activities with the rhythm sticks (tapping on the floor, up high, softly, and loudly plus scraping, counting, and tracing letters).  The second storytime was so excited about tracing letters we barely had time to sing the next rhythm stick song!  Most of the kids knew the first letter of their names and so that's what we did.  We traced the first letters of each other's names. After this, we sang a song to the tune of Frère Jacques.

This is how it goes:

After putting the rhythm sticks away, we read one more book, Love Makes a Family.  This was, hands down, the favorite book of both storytimes.  We had so much fun talking about all the beautiful illustrations and sharing the ASL signs we've learned so far.



Because we skipped a book in the first storytime, we had time to sing a very silly song, Gifts for Mommy, sung by Carol Hammett and  Elaine Bueffel, which is on a CD called Toddlers on Parade.  Sadly, I cannot find the audio.  

Here are the lyrics:

I'm bringing home a baby bumblebee
Won't my mommy be so proud of me
Oh I'm bringing home a baby bumblebee
Buzz buzz buzz buzz buzz!

*this first verse is followed by other scary things we brought home:

I'm bringing home a baby... Dinosaur...won't my Mommy hide behind the door? 
Clomp clomp clomp...
Crocodile...won't my Mommy wear a great big smile? 
Chomp chomp chomp...
Grizzly bear...won't my Mommy pull out all her hair? 
Rawrr Rawrr Rawrr…

Finding this version of the baby bumblebee song was such a relief!  Other versions have gruesome lyrics like getting stung (yipes!), squishing the bee, and then licking the bee guts off your fingers.  Nope, nope, and nope is how I feel about all that.  

We finished with the hokey pokey where I was totally danced into a corner by 16 excited toddlers in my second storytime.  Yep, they kept getting closer and closer as we sang the song.  By the time we got to the part where we put our whole selves in, I just stood there, trapped in a crowd of hokey pokey enthusiasts, unable to move even a pinky.

After we sang our goodbye song, I gave everyone stamps and then something wonderful happened.  While I was giving everyone stamps, two families started reading the books I brought to share with everyone.  I tiptoed out of the room quietly and waited a bit to put everything away.  It was some pretty adorable stuff.