virtual folklore storytime

A couple weeks ago I gave my first virtual storytime and it was incredibly different than an in-person storytime and definitely tougher. My library has been using Facebook live as its online platform for storytimes, and each storytime has a facilitator and moderator. I've been moderating a coworker's bilingual storytime for several weeks now so I understood how tough it was going to be to facilitate it. Moderators offer tech support but primarily encourage patron interactions through the chat feature. Helping my coworker figure out lighting and video sticky wickets for her bilingual storytime was an eye-opener for me.

While we were figuring out summer reading I offered to help in whatever way I could for our summer reading folklore storytimes. And because of how much I love plays (I would rank seeing a play somewhere near getting a cavity filled) I thought, why not make a cardboard theater? So I spent hours and hours writing a script, memorizing it, talking to myself, gluing things together, and playing with paper dolls. I also read an actual book in addition to retelling a folktale so there was much practice learning how to hold a book for a virtual storytime.

The hardest part of the whole experience wasn't making a theater or practicing though, it was giving a storytime to an empty room and pretending it was filled with kids. I thought I had quite a bit of imagination prior to this experience, but I definitely don't have enough to pretend an empty room is full of children.

Here's my super brief first virtual folklore storytime plan:

Hello song: 

We clap hello like this X3
We clap hello for all our friends
We clap hello like this

Smile
Wave

Humpty Dumpty rhyme and Dan Santat's After the Fall (one of my most favorite books)

Silly song about body parts. I asked everyone to find something silly to sing with. I chose a dog toy (a broccoli squeaky thing). Basically you sing this:

The broccoli's on my head X
Hi-ho the derry-o the broccoli's on my head

and you put the silly thing on whatever body part you're singing about.

I asked everyone to tell their grown-up what their favorite body part was and send it in the chat. It's a hoot.

Retelling of The Talking Eggs, which was the theater bit.

Another silly song courtesy of Jbrary:

You put your hands up high
you put your hands down low
you put your hands in the middle and shake them just so
you put your elbows out front
you put your elbows in the back
you put your elbows to the side and you quack quack quack

Goodbye song that's the same as the hello song but with the word, 'goodbye' instead.

Here are a few pictures from my experience, which I think will help explain the experience better:

I took over Robert's office, and he did all the tech things for me (lighting, homemade teleprompter, filming). Robert has a couch in his office, which I use for napping. We flipped up the couch to make more room, and I forfeited my lunch naps for a couple weeks. I also auditioned Margo, who is calmer, to be my cohost, but she was cut immediately due to her insatiable love of army crawling across a room (surprisingly not a good fit with a rickety, homemade theater). Josie, surprisingly, rose to the challenge, and made an excellent cohost.

Rachel painted three of the seven scenes and constructed the cardboard dolls. She also made the chicken boxes for the chicken coop and painted twine for the hay.

I was originally going to sew clothing for the clothes, but I ended up sewing this thick paper I had instead. I had original plans of moving the people around a lot more, but we had some space/theater limitations.

Here are a few videos I combined showing a bit of the process. I really enjoyed making the flaps and pieces that moved. I had seven backdrops and six of them had magical elements. So much fun! Rachel came up with the idea for how the trees could move. I didn't paste them but sewed them to the paper instead, and just at the bottoms. You can also see my office, and my many stations I have set up. It's been mostly a disaster zone since working from home. Currently I have two collage stations, a journal station, writing station, work station, making things for work station, making tiny things for my collage station, and my Sizzix machine station. I learned pretty quickly that I can make the storytime pieces while doing other things like training, meetings, and telephone reference when it gets slow. Yes, I've also been doing telephone reference for the library at home. Mostly awesome, but occasionally slow so cutting out pieces for storytimes is a nice thing to do when no one is calling and I'm tethered to the laptop.

I have two more folklore storytimes but will be using a magnetic board to retell the stories. I'll still get to make all the fun little pieces, and Josie will still be the star of the storytime, but there will be no  more theater. It was a lot of fun, but I learned my lesson!