Circles Storytime!

Circles Storytime!

Books:
Round by Joyce Sidman
Birds Make Nests by Michael Garland
Circles by Teddy Borth
1 Big Salad by Juana Medina

Parent Welcome: Thank you for joining us in Storytime today! Every child, like adults, has a bad day, so if your child is needing a break during Storytime, please feel free to step outside the room with them and rejoin us when your child is ready. Also, please pretend there is an invisible circle around my easel. This is where I have lots of our props. If your child goes inside this circle, please gently pull them back to you.  Let’s get started!

Welcome Song: If you are ready for a story, clap your hands!

Early Literacy Tip: Shapes can be found anywhere, and they are an essential part of making almost every letter in the alphabet. Identifying circles in books, and in objects around them, will help your child when they begin to learn how to read and write letters.

Movement Activity:
This playful bunch needed a physical activity to link the concept, circles, with the books! I asked them to make a round circle with their hands, their fingers, their feet…basically anything I could think of. Then, I kept calling the different circles faster and faster, and the kids kept trying to make them, and ended up laughing a lot!

Introduce Topic:
Today, I had lots of playful kids who were not in the mood for a quiet storytime! I have found that the best thing I can do when I get a group of kids like this is to make every book as interactive as I can. I picked up my first book, Round, and asked all the kids to find the circle on the cover. I thought they would point to the moon, and they did, but they also pointed to the New sticker and the “o” in the word Round!

Read: Round by Joyce Sidman
This is a very sweet book with gentle illustrations showing a child looking, and finding, round things. A seed, the sun, a rock, a raindrop and a hug are all discovered! The kids did not have the patience to sit through this one the whole way through, so I only read through half of it. This lead to a great aside where I was able to tell parents, “Never feel you have to finish a book if your child is not interested in sitting through it. Try reading something else, and come back to that book again another time.”

Shaker Songs:
If you are happy and you know it, give a shake!
We wiggle and wiggle and wiggle…and stop!
Can you shake along with me?

Read: Birds Make Nests by Michael Garland
I feel that this one reads like an early child information book on all different kinds of nests that birds make. I asked the kids to keep pointing out the nests and describing them as I turned each page. Again, the kids did not have the patience to sit through the whole book, so when I came to a page that felt like a nice conclusion, I stopped.

Scarf Songs:
Put your Puppet on Your Heart (We did this song with a scarf)
Here is a Green Leaf
Little Bo Peep Has Lost her Sheep
Popcorn Kernels
One, Two, Shake it On your Shoe

Read: Circles by Teddy Borth
We did not get to this one, but I wish we had! It is such a fun book showing different circles that are in our lives every day! I did draw a circle on the whiteboard, though. I asked the kids to tell me what shape it was. I then drew the center of the circle, and had them repeat the word, “Center” for me, and then I showed them the edge of the circle, and asked them to repeat the word, “Edge.” Two good vocabulary words!

Read: 1 Big Salad by Juana Medina
Creative illustrations show the vegetables as animals before they go into a large, colorful salad! I asked the kids to repeated the numbers with me as we read this book, so we were essentially counting. I asked the kids if they thought the salad would be tasty when we got to the end, but they said no. Oh well!

Closing Song:
Tickle the Clouds (Credit: Storytime Katie)