Program: Daycare Storytime

Our last daycare visits of the fall were scheduled in November and, with the Thanksgiving holiday, we had to move things around a bit. What this meant for me was that I combined my daycare storytime with a colleague's and we did something a little extra special for them. Here's what we did!

Opening: We Clap and Sing Hello - pretty standard opening song. We clap, stomp, and wave to sing hello at storytime.

Rhyme/Song: Sticky Bubblegum - my coworker had been doing this rhyme (song? not sure which is the more apt descriptor) with her weekly storytime group all fall and so we included it for our daycares. It's a very popular song, and very simple. It goes like this:

Sticky, sticky, sticky bubblegum

Bubblegum, bubblegum

Sticky, sticky, sticky bubblegum

Sticking your hands to your _____

Ready? Un-stick!

You choose a different body part to stick your bubblegum to with each repetition. We limited it to 5, I think, but the kids probably would have kept going.

Book: One Potato, Two Potato by Todd H. Doodler - we chose our storytime theme to be friends at least partly because we wanted to include this book. It is so darn silly and adorable. The kids really liked it, particularly when the potatoes all get mashed.

Song: Head and Shoulders - another typical storytime song, though our version gets faster with each repetition for added fun.

Performance: A Big Guy Took My Ball by Mo Willems - our storytime attendees are always clamoring for a puppet show, so when we decided to make this a special daycare storytime, we planned on doing just that. However, we couldn't find a puppet show we really wanted to do and we both love Elephant and Piggie, so we decided to do a performance of one of their books instead. It wasn't a full-scale skit; we showed the illustrations on our projector while I voiced Gerald and my coworker voiced Piggie. We did bring out a whale puppet to be the big guy, who I also voiced. This was a huge hit with the kids.

Song: Shake My Sillies Out by Raffi - one final chance to get up and move around before our last special surprise. 

Movies: Red and Yellow by Josh Selig - so, everyone I work with is obsessed with this little video of Red and Yellow and their noisy night. It's from Josh Selig, one of the creators of the Wonderpets, and is part of a series of shorts that aim at promoting peaceful conflict resolution. We showed three of these short videos to close out our storytime. The kids were absolutely enthralled.

Goodbye: Tickle the Clouds - another of my coworker's traditional bits of storytime, this was how we said goodbye to everyone.

Tickle the clouds
Tickle your toes
Turn around
Tickle your nose
Reach down low
Reach up high
The stories are over,
Wave goodbye!

And that was our special daycare storytime to end our fall visits!