the wombats on the bus sit down on their bottoms

Storytime was a blast last week.

The theme was animals and we moved around a lot! It felt like storytime aerobics.

We sang the ABCs.  Sigh.  I wasn't able to find an ABC song that anyone really liked this season.  I've got a few ideas to research for next season, but the ABCs just haven't charmed them this time around.  

After our ABC song, we sang, "I Had a Little Turtle," and it was just as big a hit as it was last spring. The first storytime was bananas about it.


I don't think I used my first quieting down fingerplay in either storytime.  Everyone was ready for a story, and so I just skipped it.  We read Hello, Hello! and had a great time pretending to say hello the way different animals do.  Both storytimes loved this book.

After Hello, Hello! I asked the grown-ups to help get everyone into a circle for the parachute (this is my current favorite way to do this), and then I radically changed things up a bit.  I found these amazing bean bags that are different shapes and couldn't help myself.  It turns out it was a super smart purchase.  I went around the room and asked each child to choose a shape.  I didn't realize what a big deal this was!  Each child thoroughly enjoyed picking out a shape. After they picked out a shape, everyone tossed them onto the parachute and we popped them for a few seconds. In the past, we've always played popcorn after whatever parachute activity we do. I don't know why I changed it at the last second, but I'm glad I did because everyone enjoyed keeping the bean bags on the parachute while we sang, "Animals on the Bus."

"Animals on the Bus" was another big hit. It wasn't my first choice, however.  I practiced singing Pop Goes the Weasel and Ring Around the Rosy, but I just couldn't get into the lyrics.  A few days before storytime I went over my parachute notes from past storytimes and came to the realization that "The Wheels on the Bus" was a hit the last time we sang it while we used the parachute.  But there was one big problem with this song.  This was a storytime about animals, not vehicles.  Llama Llama storytime drama!

I'm sure there are lots of versions of "Animals on the Bus" out there.  Perhaps I was blinded by the panic of needing to find a new song to learn in two days, but I just ended up writing out my own "Animals on the Bus" song.  

It goes like this:

The fish on the bus swim round and roundX3
The fish on the bus swim round and round
All through the town.

The birds on the bus go flap, flap, flap…
The seals on the bus slide back and forth…
The giraffes on the bus stand tall and high…
The kangaroos on the bus all jump, jump, jump…
The wombats on the bus sit down on their bottoms…
The lions on the bus go swish with their tails…
The mice on the bus go run and hide…

The order of the animals is important.  I wanted everyone to sit on their bottoms so they could be ready to be pretend mice and scurry under the parachute.  I was certain I would need to encourage the little ones to run under the parachute at the end, but I was most pleasantly surprised. It was as if they had heard the song before. As soon as we got to the mice line, the adults, who had been looking at the screen and following the lyrics, lifted the parachute and all the little ones scurried underneath.  Both storytimes executed this perfectly. It was about as beautiful as life gets. Also, everyone enjoyed having the bean bags on the parachute. Thankfully, bean bags don't actually move a lot, so while the kids are always in suspense, the adults figure out pretty quickly that there's not going to be things bouncing around all over the place.

After our parachute success, we did the always-popular finger fiddle, and I had to wonder if part of the success is the joy I get from watching the parents help the kids choose the right fingers and do the exercise together.  But no matter - we all love the finger fiddle.  We then read a yoga book Zoo Zen.  Everyone loved it, especially the first storytime.  The parents helped their kids get into the poses, and my book stand allowed me do the poses along with the kids.  

We sang the hokey pokey, and then I squeezed in one more book at the very end.  Why the very end, you ask?  I recognize it's an awful time to read a book, but this was a goodbye book with flaps.  Everyone enjoyed guessing the animal behind the flaps.  The adults did a great job helping me introduce the trickier animals, and one child had a grand time shrieking the word, baboon every so often.

I thought that was about as good a storytime can get, but while I was eating lunch that day, a coworker told me I had a phone call.  A mom from my second storytime couldn't remember the name of the last book I read, and her daughter had been asking about it since they left storytime.  How cool is that?

It was one of the best storytimes yet!