My second to last preschool storytime! I’m trying to keep to the same routine, but I also feel like I want to just squeeze as much content in as I can. Starting in the fall, I’m rotating between baby and toddler programs, so I don’t know when I will see this age range again outside of themed Saturday specials (Pinkalicious, I’m coming for you!).
Generally, I ended up with too many pieces this week that were a touch too long when all put in the same program (longer book, longer song, longer retelling). Virtual attention spans are still short, even with my preschool friends.
Encourage your child to choose books they are excited about, even if you think the story is too long for their attention span or bedtime. Try a “picture walk” if you really think the book is too dense, but consider trying to read it–their patience may surprise you when they are genuinely interested.
Another week, another storytime. Lots of first time selections for me this week–actually all of this is first time activities except for the opening and closing song. Yay new stuff!
Talk about print awareness. Start reading a book upside down and let your child figure out what is wrong. Locate the cover, title, and author’s names. Talk about reading from left to right.
Paw Patrol and I have a bit of a history. During spring break 2019, I planned a program featuring one of the most popular kids TV shows of the time. It was scheduled for a Friday morning, and while we could tell from patron questions that there was some excitement, I didn’t really know what to expect. I had been planning for a storytime followed by eight hands-on games, crafts, and activities where you earned badges, and ending with an obstacle course where you earned your Paw Patrol “uniform” (hat and necklace).
Before the program started, I debated dropping the storytime portion because my overzealous planning had led to very little room for attendees to sit down before completing their activities. I believe I left the room to get extra supplies about 30 minutes before the program and was extremely surprised to realize that there were over 100 patrons in the hallway. Waiting for a program that started in 30 minutes. A program that was supposed to take place in meeting rooms that have a firecode of around 200 when the room isn’t filled with tables and activities. The storytime portion was dropped, and by the end of the program over 300 people stopped by.
I have never written about that program on this blog because it didn’t go the way I had hoped (high attendance or not), and I didn’t actually have that many resources to share. Pre-COVID, I had been planning to try this program again this summer with quite a few modifications. Post-COVID, this program turned into another online special storytime, following the path of the recent Baby Shark Storytime and Elephant & Piggie Storytime.
To help continue the fun at home, I curated a PDF packet that we shared with event participants. Download it here and view it below:
The general storytime layout is below, with videos where applicable.
Backdrop Setup: Pennant banners and Paw Patrol shields helped make my backdrop more on-theme to increase the Paw Patrol excitement:
Paw Patrol Intro: We got ready for storytime with the Paw Patrol theme song and explained our mission: to complete training activities to earn six Paw Patrol badges and become junior Paw Patrol members.
Book: Pit Crew Pups from Five Puptacular Tales
Badge #1: Flying Badge with Skye:Airplane Song by Laurie Berkner
Whenever it was time to earn a new badge, we received pup mail. We had to guess which pup’s badge we were going to earn based on the front of our mail and then read about our challenge.
Our first challenge was to practice our flying skills with Skye!
Badge #2: Water Safety Badge with Zuma: Zuma Are You In a Boat?
Badge #3: Safety Badge with Chase: Crazy Traffic Light
Badge #4: Fire Safety Badge with Marshall: Hurry, Hurry Drive the Firetruck
Badge #5: Construction Badge with Rubble: Tip Tip Dig Dig by Emma Garcia This was supposed to be just a read of the book, but I couldn’t get a copy of the book in time, so it turned into a last minute magnet. I’m sure I’ll reuse this set at some point in a toddler storytime.
Badge #6: Handyman Badge with Rocky: Our Friend Rocky Had Some Tools
Graduation: Now that we had earned all six Paw Patrol badges, as shown in our Paw Patrol Badge Zone:
We recited the Paw Patrol Pledge:
And danced the morning away as Junior Paw Patrol members!
I managed to incorporate shapes this week! I feel like I cover colors frequently and wow we have counted a lot in past weeks, but shapes always slip through. I haven’t put in the time to find enough great shape rhymes, but I’m going to work on that.
I’m preparing for a Saturday special storytime this week–Paw Patrol!, so a lot of storytime favorites appeared this week to make this preschool storytime a bit easier on my brain.
Playing is so important developmentally—and a ton of fun! On the go, I Spy in the car can help build vocabulary. At home, act out a story or play dress up–maybe recreate a story like today’s book!
Book:What the Dinosaurs Did Last Night by Refe and Susan Tuma
Due to last week’s surprise preschool storytime, I have a bit of time with this age range–6 weeks in a row. I’m passing babies back to a coworker for a few weeks as I dig into the preschool age range. Lots of fingerplays, direction-practicing, and letter and number skills!
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!
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.
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.
This has been a crazy past week of storytimes, but I kicked off May family storytime Saturdays with Baby Shark Storytime!
I ran this program in person back in January to a whopping 185 people! While that was just a few months ago, it feels closer to three years, and it was also something easy enough for me to replicate virtually that has a strong following.
We had a 30 minute storytime followed by about 10 minutes of Baby Shark bubbles and dancing. Videos of most content can be found below–as usual, there are a few more videos than I actually had time for during the storytime.
I also made a PDF for families filled with Baby Shark activities to do at home. See and download below:
We had about 63 live viewers, with 100 one-minute views by the end of the live recording. Not a bad turnout for one of our slowest virtual storytime days of the week.
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!
