Sunday, October 31, 2010

Please and thank you: I can be polite

It's official, I'll be doing a storytime on November 18!  It's a week before Thanksgiving, so I definitely want to hit on the topic, but some preschools where we do storytimes are funny about holidays so I want to make it more about gratitude.  Since that is sort of limiting (and in reality a pretty esoteric topic for little ones), I'm making it on the broader topic of "Please and Thank You!  I can be polite."  Not sure on the capitalization there, obviously.

These are the books, in order:


Mind Your Manners, B.B. Wolf written by Judy Sierra, illustrated by J. Otto Seibold



Gracias/Thank You written by Pat Mora, illustrated by John Parra


Thanksgiving is Here! written and illustrated by Diane Goode


How Do Dinosaurs Eat Their Food? written by Jane Yolen and illustrated by Mark Teague

My thought is, do the wolf book first which is about all sorts of manners (saying "excuse me," not burping!), then the Spanish/English book which focuses on being thankful, which is an obvious segue into talking about the Thanksgiving holiday.  This book is just about the meal without going into any of the historical accounts (true or not), then finishing off with table manners with the dinosaur book.  I think it's a good program, though I need to figure out which book I could do without if the kids are more wiggly and need to do more fingerplays than stories.


In between, we'll do a little rhyme about manners to the tune of "I'm a Little Teapot" and then sing about three nice mice (to the tune, obviously, of "Three Blind Mice").  On my printout, I've included a poem I found in The 20th Century Children's Poetry Treasury, edited by Jack Prelutsky.  The poem is called Thanksgiving and is by Ivy Eastwick.  Not sure I'll be able to share this with preschoolers - it's three stanzas, eight short lines each; maybe it's too much?  I would like to put traditional poetry into all of my storytimes, though, and not just in the written sheet.  I'm going to check on what sort of flannelboards we have, too.  Maybe there's one I could use already made up.

I don't know yet if I'll do this at one of the branches or not.  If I do, there's tons of Thanksgiving books I've pulled for display and I could bring some of those along.  Come to the library and see for yourself!




5 comments:

  1. Howdy! Welcome to blogging! For me, its a way of explaining the ins and outs of our "great year" that we always talk about in our Christmas Card. Here, you get the rest of the story about what's going on in our nutso family.

    Many congrats on starting, and even more for having an awesome site. Looks fantastic! I wish I could come to your story time....

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  2. Thanks for stopping by, Katrina! Hopefully this one will be more about library stuff. I figure this is a pretty handy way to keep track of what I do at story times.

    Even if you aren't at my library, I'd love to hear of fun things that you've seen done at your library. We don't do crafts, but I've been practicing my finger plays and that sort of thing!

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  3. I love it. Your strategy is flexible, fun and well thought out. Do the poem first with exagerated hand movements and facial expressions. Maybe one stanza at each story time. If you have to cut a book I'd cut the dinosaur one. You are going to be great. You're staying flexible and realistic. Wished I lived closer.

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  4. Congrats on your first story time and welcome to blogging!!! You'll find it's fairly addicting!! Can't wait to keep up with your story times and read your posts!!

    Great story time - love the theme and the flexibility you've "planned" into it! That will definitely come in handy! Ha!

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  5. I wish I could do storytime once a week but there's several of us doing storytimes (at Head Starts around town) so I won't get to update as much as you, Real Librarian. But I have lots of things to talk about, right Bri?!

    I really like your idea of breaking up the poem, Bri. I think I will do that! (Ooops, there I go with the exclamation points . . . )

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