Tuesday, January 23, 2018

Feelings 2018

Storytime this week is about emotions.  It turns out kids want to express themselves and love connecting words and emotions.  This was a fun week & we'll surely put this lesson in the repertoire.

WELCOME SONG

RULES OF THE LIBRARY

WORD OF THE WEEK:  feelings/sentimientos

SIGN OF THE WEEK:  We learned the signs for 6 different emotions: happy, sad, angry, scared, safe, sorry.  Students loved this!  (We had great timing, too: adults and older kids walking by got emotion fashion shows as the kids showed off their new word signs.)

BOOK #1: How Are You Peeling by Saxton Freymann (Scholastic, 2004.)
While the story is more of a vehicle for the pictures, the pictures are themselves entrancing.

MOVEMENT ACTIVITY: Emotion Statues: We "freeze" in different emotional states (worried, scared, excited, tired, funny, happy, angry, frustrated... you name it!)  It's a good chance to move around and express yourself.

BOOK #2:  Reading Makes You Feel Good by Todd Parr. (Little, Brown 2005.)  There are so many books you can read about emotions:  The Feelings Book (also by Todd Parr) Enemy Pie, Recess Queen, Today I Feel Silly, In My Heart and many more.. I chose Reading Makes You Feel Good because we talk about character's emotions so often.

VIDEO:  Mummenshanz on the Muppet Show!!!  Two great Mummenshanz videos from over 40 years ago that every group responded well to...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3eazq_8jCOg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xe95sn0cN3k

CRAFT:  We colored blank faces with the emotion we were feeling... granted, it's always nice when that emotion is HAPPY in the library!

Thursday, January 11, 2018

India 2018

Venturing into new territory: we're trying a country/culture story time!


WELCOME SONG


4-FINGER RULES OF THE LIBRARY


MYSTERY BAG: a plastic tiger (the national animal of india)


WORD of the WEEK:  

NAMASTE/HELLO in Hindi (also taught HELLO in sign language)
Alternative: TIGER/TIGRE (www.lifeprint.com/asl101/pages-signs/t/tiger.htm)


INTRODUCTORY ARTICLE: PebbleGo's "India" shows some good background information.  Discovery Streaming's "5: India" is more friendly for the youngest learners.

ME ON THE MAP: We used a globe and a map to show where Texas is in relation to India.


* Clothes from India:  Many people in India wear Western clothes -- what we consider "normal."  Traditional clothes include a turban in some parts of India for men, and the sari and salwar kameez.  We have pictures and even some real life examples.


* Animals from India:  We watched a video of the top 10 animals of India.  There's also a great Jeff Corwin video on Discovery Streaming, if you have access, about the Big Cats of India.

* Music From India: Oh my goodness, I am a Bollywood lover now!  We danced to this awesome instructional video from Dance Doo Daa, but there are more! The Bollywood hits on Pandora station is a great choice for choosing-book time...


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYX8e8l55zs


BOOKS: Mama's Saris is my personal favorite -- the cultural context of the book can be "translated" to any child's desire to grow up and delight at being given more adult responsibilities and privileges.


Other selections include Finders Keepers, Rikki-Tikki-Tavi (both too complex for kindergarten but may be good for your kids),and there are lots of blog posts about good Indian books https://kidworldcitizen.org/learning-about-india-through-childrens-literature/.  We also had  Younguncle Comes to Town, Once A Mouse and One Grain of Rice close at hand.


CRAFT:Originally, we like "Henna" markers hand tattoos but decided to go with some clip-art black and white images of tigers, elephants, the Indian Flag, elephants, the country shape and some Indian clothing and let kids choose and color.



GAME:  While cricket might be the national sport, we chose Denner/Chain from this website 
https://www.thebetterindia.com/53779/old-childhood-verge-of-extinction-indian-games/ as a fun outdoor break.  However, the thermometer was rapidly falling on story time day, and we staying inside!  It would be fund for a spring day or if you had a large indoor space like a gym.



OTHER IDEAS: The movie of Rikki-Tikki-Tavi might be a good choice if you have lots of time to use it!

Links I used to create the story time:


PebbleGo India: https://www.pebblego.com/modules/5/articles/8636

http://www.oocities.org/teacherkab/countries/india.htm