Tag Archives: spring storytime

Sprouting Up: A Storytime About Growing Things

Posted in Storytime themes by

Today was the first Outdoor Musical Storytime I’ve been able to hold in a month, because it’s been so stormy every Tuesday for the past three weeks. So, in honor of the first day that actually LOOKED like spring anyway, we did a storytime about flowers, plants, and gardening.

Here’s what we did:

Books:

Plant the Tiny Seed by Christie Mathiesen

Like Tap the Magic Tree by the same author, this colorful picture book provides interactive motions for kids to do: counting to three to plant the seeds, tapping the cloud to make it rain (I just have them pretend, rather than actually touching the book), clapping to bring the sun, etc. The kids were thoroughly engaged.

First the Egg by Laura Vaccaro Seeger

Sweet, simple book with colorful cut-outs showing how different living things transform: an egg hatches into a chicken, a seed grows into a flower, a tadpole turns into a frog, etc. The kids enjoyed calling what each one was going to turn into on the next page.

My Garden by Kevin Henkes

This is a little longer than the books I typically read for this storytime audience, but it’s such an imaginative, whimsical book, and kids always seem to enjoy it. It describes a little girl’s dreams of having her own garden, where the rabbits are made of chocolate, jelly beans grow into jelly bean bushes, and flowers always bloom.

Songs:

Ring Around the Rosy

This traditional nursery rhyme usually has kids hold hands and walk in a circle, but I just had them spin around in place. We did the song three times, and the kids loved it! I can’t remember who taught me the second verse years ago, but it’s nice for getting everyone back on their feet again. Here’s a video from Little Baby Bum with the tune:

Ring around the Rosy, (spin around in place)

A pocket full of posies, (spin around in place)

Ashes, Ashes,

We all fall DOWN! (drop to the ground).

Fishes in the water,

Fishes in the sea,

We all jump up with a

One, Two, Three! (jump up)

Oh, Mister Sun

A great song for welcoming the sun after all the rain we’ve been having. I do the Raffi version, which is shown here with the motions:

Oh, [C] Mister Sun, Sun, [F] Mister Golden Sun,

[C] Please shine [G7] down on [C] me!

Oh, [C] Mister Sun, Sun, [F] Mister Golden Sun,

[G7] Hiding behind a tree.

[C] These little children are [G7] asking you,

[C] To please come out so we can [G7] play with you,

Oh, [C] Mister Sun, Sun, [F] Mister Golden Sun,

C] Please shine [G7] down on [C] me!

Butterfly Song

My coworker Angela taught me this one. We handed out play scarves before we sang it, and had the kids bundle them up to be chrysalises and wave them in the air to be butterflies. My coworker Claire also showed the different stages of the butterfly lifecycle with this cool puppet. The song is to the tune of Up on the Housetop. Here’s a video by Colleen Niedermeyer:

First comes a butterfly (Wave scarf)

Who lays an egg. (Make a circle with your thumb and index finger).

Out comes a caterpillar (Wiggle your finger like a caterpillar)

With lots of legs.

Now see the caterpillar spin and spin (Spin the scarf),

A little chrysalis to sleep in (Bundle scarf up in a ball).

Oh, oh, oh, wait and see…

Oh, oh, oh, wait and see…

Out of the chrysalis, my, oh, my!

Out comes a beautiful butterfly! (Wave scarf).

Shoo Fly

One of the first songs I learned when I started out as a children’s librarian was this variation on the traditional Shoo Fly, Don’t Bother Me song, originally by Thomas Bishop. I had the kids wave their scarves for the “Shoo Fly” parts, and took suggestions for what animal the kids would like to be for the other verses. We ended up purring like a cat, and flying like a butterfly.

Here’s a recording of this version of this song, by Greg & Steve, who I think may have written it:

Shoo, Fly, don’t bother me! (Wave hands or scarf as if shooing a fly)

Shoo, Fly, don’t bother me!

Shoo, Fly, don’t bother me,

I’ll tell you what I want to be.

I wiggle, I wiggle,

I wiggle like a wiggling worm.

I wiggle, I wiggle,

I wiggle like a wiggling worm.

Oh, Shoo, Fly, don’t bother me…


The Lollipop Tree by Burl Ives

This song fit perfectly as a follow-up to My Garden, so we did it as our instrument play-along at the end. Here’s the recording by Burl Ives:

[C] One fine [G] day in
[C] early [G] Spring, I [C] played a [G] funny [C] trick.
[C] Right in the [G] yard
[C] behind our [G] house I [C] planted a [G] lollipop [C] stick.
[F] Then every day I watered it well,
And watched it [G] careful-[C]ly.
I [G] hoped one day that [C] stick would [C] grow
[F] To be a [G] lollipop [C] tree.

[C] Ha, Ha, Ha, [F] Ho, Ho, Ho!
[C] What a place to [G7] be!
[C] Under my lollipop, [F] lollipop, lollipop,
[C] Lolli-lolli-[G] lollipop [C] tree.
[C] Under my lollipop, [F] lollipop, lollipop,
[C] Lolli-lolli-[G] lollipop [C] tree!

[C] Then one [G] day I [C] woke to
[G] Find a [C] very [G] lovely [C] sight:
A tree all [G] full of [C] lollipops
Had [G] grown in the [C] dark of the night.
[F] I sat beneath that wonderful tree,
And looked up [G] with a [C] grin.
[C] And when I [G] opened up [Am] my [C] mouth,
[G] A pop would drop right [C] in!

[C] Ha, Ha, Ha, [F] Ho, Ho, Ho!
[C] What a place to [G7] be!
[C] Under my lollipop, [F] lollipop, lollipop,
[C] Lolli-lolli-[G] lollipop [C] tree.
Under my lollipop, [F] lollipop, lollipop,
[C] Lolli-lolli-[G] lollipop [C] tree!

[C]Winter came and days grew cold,
As Winter [G] days will [C] do.
On my tree, my [Am] lovely [C] tree,
Not [G] one little lollipop [C] grew.
[F] From every [C] branch an [F] icicle hung,
The twigs were bare as [C] bones.
But when I [G] broke the [Am] icicles [C] off,
They [F] turned to [G] ice cream [C] cones!

[C] Ha, Ha, Ha, [F] Ho, Ho, Ho!
[C] How I laughed with [G7] glee!
[C] Under my lollipop, [F] lollipop, lollipop,
[C] Lolli-lolli-[G] lollipop [C] tree.
Under my lollipop, [F] lollipop, lollipop,
[C] Lolli-lolli-[G] lollipop [C] tree!

Stay & Play: Flower Painting

I’ve posted about flower painting before, but it’s one of my favorite process art activities. This morning before storytime, I picked a bunch of flowers from my yard. I tried to stick to edible flowers, just in case anyone tried to sample one, so I had nasturtiums, geraniums, borage, oxalis (sour grass), lavender, and oregano leaves. For the Stay & Play, we just put the flowers out on the tables with some blank paper, and the kids smashed them to explore the different colors that they made. Always a hit, and so simple. There’s not even very much to clean up at the end.

Happy Spring! What are your favorite books about plants and growing things? Please share them in the comments below.

Hopping into Spring

Posted in Storytime themes by

photo (84)

It’s officially Spring, although, unlike the rest of the country, the San Francisco Bay Area hasn’t had much of a Winter.  Still, you can see some blossoms appearing on some of the fruit trees, and hear frog songs in the creeks and bushes.  I hadn’t ever really thought about frogs as a harbinger, until I noticed that several picture books made that connection.  So I made them the focus of my Spring storytime as well.  Here’s what we read:

magic

Tap the Magic Tree by Christie Matheson (Amazon.com link)

I’m in love with this book.  It reminds me a lot of Press Here by Herve Tullet, because each page asks the reader to interact with the book in a different way.  The first page asks you to tap a bare tree, making a green leaf appear on the next page.  Tap the tree again, and more leaves appear.  Then buds appear, and turn to flowers, which transform into apples.  The leaves change color and fall off, and the whole thing begins again.  I read this book to three different groups this week: one preschool, one toddler, and one mix of ages.  They all loved following the directions on each page and seeing what came next.  A great book for units on trees or the seasons.

frog

The Wide-Mouthed Frog by Keith Faulkner and Jonathan Lambert (Amazon.com link)

I read this in honor of my coworker, Gwen Miller, who is retiring this month.  This is one of her favorite read-alouds.  It’s a pop-up version of the old joke about the wide-mouthed frog, who goes around asking other animals what they like to eat, until he meets an alligator who eats wide-mouthed frogs!  Sadly, our copy doesn’t circulate, so no one could check it out, but the kids all asked to have a chance to look through it before they went home.

tadpoles

999 Tadpoles by Ken Kimura and Yasunari Murakami (Amazon.com link)

I prefaced this book by asking the kids if they knew what frogs started out as.  Surprisingly, only one of them knew about tadpoles, so I think if I do a frog theme in the future, I will be sure to share a book that describes that process in more detail.  This book was a hit anyway.  When 999 tadpoles become 999 frogs, their parents have to seek out a larger place to live.  On the way, their father is taken by a hungry hawk, and they all join together to save him.  The illustrations of the 999 frogs dangling in a huge chain from the hawk’s claws made all the kids laugh, and there was a mini-squabble over who would get to check it out at the end.

spy

I Spy With My Little Eye by Edward Gibbs (Amazon.com link)

I had originally planned to read City Dog, Country Frog by Mo Willems for my last book, but I had this one in my stack and the kids begged to hear it.  It’s an I Spy game using very simple clues to help kids to guess different animals: a blue whale, a gray elephant, a green frog.  What sets it apart are the large, colorful illustrations, and the hole in each page showing the color of the next animal.  The kids easily guessed all the animals, even the orangutan.  A great book for color or animal themes.

SONGS:

Five Green and Speckled Frogs  

I sang this with a crazy frog puppet I found in our animal bin, which makes burping noises or buzzing sounds when you put your hand in his mouth.  The kids all clambered around me for a turn.

INSTRUMENT PLAY WITH A CD:

Red Red Robin by Rosie Flores from Sing Along with Putumayo (Amazon.com link)

CRAFT: Paper Frog

Paper Frog by Lily

Paper Frog by Lily

There are lots of different versions of this craft online, mostly involving paper plates (here’s an example from Drexel Paper Cuts).  For mine, I cut out circles, and front and back feet from green construction paper.  I folded each circle in half, and cut a narrow piece out of the middle. I had some foam craft sticks in different colors for the tongue, and wiggly eyes (if I had had more time, it would have been fun to make eyes that stuck out on the top).

All of the frogs turned out differently.  Several kids put the eyes inside the folded piece of paper, so they looked like the one below.  They all loved the foam craft sticks, and some kids even made their own crafts (stick people and airplanes) by taping several of them together.

Paper frog by Olivia

Paper frog by Sara

OTHER BOOKS:

Spring is Here by Will Hillenbrand (Amazon.com link)

An adorable book about a mole who tries to wake up his friend Bear in time for Spring.  Large, colorful illustrations and simple, repetitive text would make it perfect for toddlers.  My daughter loved it.

City Dog, Country Frog by Mo Willems; illustrated by Jon J. Muth (Amazon.com link)

This is a sweet, somewhat sad, story, far different from most of Mo Willems’ other picture books.  It even has a different illustrator, and features large, expressive paintings of the animals in the countryside.  A city dog visits the country throughout the year, playing games with his friend Frog, until the Winter comes and Frog is nowhere to be found.  The following spring, the dog returns and makes a new friend.  A lovely, subtle book about the cycle of the seasons and the cycle of life.

Everything Spring by Jill Esbaum (Amazon.com link)

A lovely book of large photographs featuring different things you might see in the Spring: baby birds, frogs, fawns, flowers, etc.  I didn’t get this one in time to share at storytime, but it would have worked well because of the photographs of tadpoles turning into frogs.

What are your favorite picture books about frogs or Springtime?