I’m going to be honest–this is my third time writing this paragraph and WordPress keeps deleting this draft post. Essentially, this is my last baby storytime for a while, and this is a new book for me this week.
Early Literacy Tip: Sing to your babies! Your voice is better than a recording, and the quality of your voice doesn’t matter. Do you hear me singing on the Internet every day?
Surprise preschool storytime this week! This was a little more tossed together. I’ve also realized I focus so much on counting.
I’m working on bulking up the diverse titles in my home library to help with these and future storytimes. I’m still quarantining books I get from work for a while when I bring them home, so I’ve really been creating storytimes from my home collection a lot, and most of my books are animal focused. This is a part of my personality–I also beg for a lot of animal programs–but I need to expand, and I want to show that in my storytimes. This preschool storytime isn’t a great example, but it is on my mind.
I’m also working on really digging into the musicians I use in storytime and creating a collection of diverse artists to regularly pull from. This project has gotten sidelined more than I would like as I didn’t expect to be quite so exhausted and to lose quite so much time during my work in-building days.
10,000 years ago, in the days that were March, spring break week was supposed to end with an Elephant & Piggie Party. We had borrowed the full body costumes for some guest appearances, I had too many games and crafts planned to fit in our space, and we were expecting a decent crowd–last year’s Paw Patrol event, on the same day and time, had 300 people.
But before spring break, our library closed because COVID, etc., etc., etc., if you are reading this post in 2020 or soon after you don’t need me to rehash the details again. If you have no idea what COVID quarantining was…well I’m surprised this blog is still being used. Hopefully Google still exists too. Anyway, last weekend, I was able to bring part of the Elephant & Piggie Party online with Elephant & Piggie Storytime.
We had a smaller turnout than we would have had in person–just 51 online viewers during our Facebook Live event–but there were many familiar faces and the engagement in the comments was amazing.
To help continue the Elephant & Piggie Storytime fun at home, I curated a PDF packet that we shared with event participants. Download it here.
The general storytime layout is below. I wish I could share the whole video with you because some of the best parts just aren’t in the pre-made YouTube videos. I added a few screenshots for your enjoyment where I could.
Backdrop Setup: Pennant banners and book covers helped make my backdrop more on-theme to increase the Elephant & Piggie excitement:
Elephant & Piggie Intro: We got ready for storytime with my go-to storytime intro song: Shake Your Sillies Out by Rainbow Songs.
Fingerplay: I Have One, I Have Two, I Have Three Little Piggies!
First Book:Let’s Go for a Drive by Mo Willems
I used to perform this book as a puppet show back when I was a teen volunteer, so I’m very familiar with the content. I included some props and got quite energetic in sharing the book:
Song: Elephants Have Wrinkles by Rainbow Songs
Magnet: Piggie, Are You In a Book?
Magnet: Five Elephants in the Bathtub **This was the planned starting point for Pigeon takeover. I made a full video for YouTube, but this wasn’t part of the storytime beyond the introduction.
Pigeon Takeover: I’ve been trying to think of ways to use virtual storytimes to my advantage. In a room full of kids, I could never transform a storytime space like I’m able to by covering the camera for a minute and swapping out decor. Hence, Pigeon Takeover was born.
**Our storytimes are live. This would have been much easier pre-recorded, but it wouldn’t have been half as fun.
How This Worked:
While swapping out magnet pieces from Piggie, Are You in a Book? to start what I told viewers was our next activity, Five Elephants in the Bathtub, I really pressed play on the iPod Touch I use for music (connected via bluetooth to a speaker), starting a Spotify playlist. The playlist contained 7 door knocking sounds followed by the Hot Dog! song by They Might be Giants (Pigeon likes hot dogs!).
Once the knocking started, I pretended to ignore it while making an annoyed face before apologizing to viewers and telling them I needed to check on the door. I’d be right back!
As soon as I was off camera, stuffed Pigeon made an appearance, using a sign to make his opinions known:
I moved the Pigeon Storytime sign up against the camera before swapping it out with a black washcloth. The Hot Dog! song continued to play and my awesome coworker kept the shenanigans going in the comments while letting viewers know to keep watching.
In a minute, I swapped out as much of the decor as I could, focusing on: the books on the bookshelf, stuffed animals, and hanging up as many Pigeon book covers and pre-cut Pigeon images on top of the Elephant and Piggie decor as I could manage. These were all pre-taped and on a table off camera.
I positioned myself with the Pigeon headband and holding some of Pigeon’s signage. I made sure before I started that my chair was close enough to the camera to remove the wash cloth in a clean motion. I stopped the music, moved the wash cloth, threw in a “is there a bird on my head?” joke, and let my confusion show before accepting my fate that I was now in a different storytime:
Book: Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus by Mo Willems
Since this was now Pigeon storytime, we had to wrap things up with a Pigeon story.
Closing Song: If You’re an Elephant/Piggie/Pigeon and You Know It!
While we look at moving back into the library (I’m back in the library two days a week now–starting today!), virtual programs continue. We are discussing how to transition to filming in the library, especially since our building will most likely be opening to the public soon, any regular programming spaces are being used for quarantine of deliveries or returns, and an open-office staff space with no area for private filming. Returning to the library gives others staff members who don’t have the at-home tech an opportunity to film storytimes…but that also means restarting a learning curve about the technology and the differences between an in-person and virtual storytime, at a time when the patron expectation in program quality is higher (after all we’ve been doing this a while).
Early Literacy Tip: Babies understand more than they can say. Using gestures, including simple hand signs is a great way to communicate with your little one. More, Stop, and No are great words to practice.
Book:Leo Loves Baby Time by Anna McQuinn
Song: She’ll Be Comin’ Round the Mountain by Old Town School of Folk Music
Babies, babies, babies! I’m adding a couple new items this week I haven’t tried before–a new action rhyme and puppet activity. I’ve really enjoyed book retellings with toddlers and preschoolers, and I’m going to try to rethink some of my puppet activities to still include those animal noises that are so important for this age while theming them to stories instead of mostly rhymes. Not sure how that will actually work in person, but I think it works well virtually. This was the first time I used Everybunny Count as well–not for lack of trying, as I kept meaning to use it and then I would get sick or something like a pandemic would happen and my storytimes would be cancelled.
Early Literacy Tip: When playing, have fun making noises like animal sounds or truck sounds. Hearing different noises and experiencing different pitches and volumes helps baby’s language development.
Book:Everybunny Count! by Ellie Sandall
Song: What Shall We Do with the Sleeping Baby? by Rainbow Songs
Back to preschool! I’m not sure how many more of these I will get to do as we move back into the library in the next few weeks, so I’m excited to have another opportunity to program for preschoolers. I particularly like being able to retell books with flannels, puppets, and props, which just isn’t something I can do as much with babies, since everything is so action-oriented due to those short attention spans. I even broke out one of my personal flannel sets for the camera this week, since I’m filming from home anyway.
I’ve really enjoyed virtual programming–there is something freeing in not having a group of kids in front of me. I know many don’t feel this way, and it was an adjustment at first, but I am much less self-conscious without kids and adults staring at me. I’m not nervous beforehand the way I am for an in-person storytime. I also enjoy the YouTube videos–it is an interesting way to make what feels like a more permanent footprint with our services. I know we will be virtually programming for a while longer, but I hope we also continue some version of our YouTube presence after this is over. There are always people who can’t make it into the library, but some of those people can watch us on their devices. It’s a different way to reach our community.
I am bouncing with ages quite a bit in June, and while I will be presenting two more virtual preschool storytimes this month, I am also back to Baby Storytimes the whole month. I’m excited to be back with babies, though not so much to have to live up to my coworker’s adorable baby who made appearances throughout May.
As I expected, I am recycling some of my content here that I used in the first six weeks. Repetition is good for this age, and I also keep to a more strict routine with this age range week to week (though I am reordering my middle slightly). I have had more time than I may have had in the library, so I was able to do more research than usual, and I am planning to scatter a few new content pieces throughout, especially new body rhymes and puppet activities, which will mean a couple new videos a week.
Early Literacy Tip: Talk to your baby as you go about your day, even if they can’t respond with words yet. Encourage, listen, and respond to your baby’s babbling.
Book:Peek-a-Baby by Karen Katz
Song: Row, Row, Row Your Boat by Old Town School of Folk Music
This was a particularly interesting experience for me because in the past I’ve only really filled in for this age range, and I’ve used most of my go-to content for toddlers the last few months. I’m not against reusing the same content for toddlers and preschoolers (as is age appropriate), but part of my stretch into preschool storytimes includes building our YouTube content for preschoolers, and I don’t want to just make duplicate videos for this age range.
I’m not quite as swamped with virtual programs at the moment, so I used last week to dig into the child development and blogs for this age range. It’s been fun! I have a nice pile of new (to me) content that I’m excited to try out over the next month.
As usual, there are more videos here than content that actually fit in a 30 minute storytime. I like to give myself options, and I make videos often 3-4 days before I go live. Plus, more content for YouTube is just another way for our patrons to access storytimes.
My fourth (and final) virtual toddler storytime this week! Next week we are on to preschool!
I had quite a bit of fun with this age range. My baby storytimes tend to focus on the 12-24 month crowd because of their size and tendency to dominate the program, so this was just a small nudge up that allowed me to use slightly longer books and activities with more motions. I’m bouncing all over the place age-wise now that we are sticking with virtual programs for a bit, moving into semi-regular preschool storytimes and a return to baby storytime in June.
These virtual storytimes have been really helpful for my storytime repertoire–I came into libraries as the only youth librarian in a large department who wasn’t presenting a regular weekly storytime. I filled in and did outreach, but there is so much more to learn week-to-week. I was suddenly tossed into baby storytime knowing nothing other than that babies have large heads and don’t respond when asked a question, but I was able to get my footing with that age range and figure out a program structure that worked well for me and that the parents (and littles) enjoyed. Being able to dig into some of the older age ranges consistently is letting me explore and discover new (to me) content in a great way.
Background: While my library is closed during the COVID pandemic, we are hosting five virtual storytimes a week, livestreamed through our Facebook page. While those livestreams are deleted soon after they are complete, we are also making YouTube clips of select elements of our storytimes that our patrons can view anytime they would like–and that I can share with all of you!
Some new materials for me in this storytime–this is my first time reading Spunky Little Monkey in a storytime. I also decided to use some of the materials that I didn’t have time for last week–they fit a bit better than some of the new rhymes I was planning to try this week.
Weird question for the wide world of virtual storytime presenters: if you have a team presenting virtual storytimes, do you coordinate with them? Choose the same intro/closing songs? Talk about what you each have planned for a particular week?
For example, one of my coworkers did the scarf activity I was planning to do with toddlers this week–adapted for babies–at Baby Storytime last week. Generally, at in-person storytimes, I don’t know about or care about this kind of overlap, as we mostly have different audiences for each storytime. However, these virtual storytimes feel different. Yes, I’m preparing an activity for toddlers–and that activity can really work for babies and preschoolers too–but a decent portion of our audience is the same at every storytime. Is it weird to do the same larger activity–not talking about opening/closing songs and more intentional week-to-week repetition–at two storytimes in the same week when the audience is the same? Am I overthinking this? (Answer: yes.)
Background: While my library is closed during the COVID pandemic, we are hosting five virtual storytimes a week, livestreamed through our Facebook page. While those livestreams are deleted soon after they are complete, we are also making YouTube clips of select elements of our storytimes that our patrons can view anytime they would like–and that I can share with all of you!
