"WOW" worthy bulletin boards!

With my job I get the opportunity to travel between five different preschools. Love seeing all the bulletin boards and displays around the schools. Check out these displays created by the wonderful, Rebecca Chapman. Not only is she an amazingly creative person she is also very sweet! It is always a treat to see what she comes up with. When I saw her on Tuesday she was working on Dr. Seuss displays.

This board was inspired by the book,We Belong Together by Joyce Wan

The perfect vegetable soup color was created by covering red bulletin board paper with yellow tissue paper. 

She placed pictures of the children as the faces of Thing 1 and Thing 2. 

The two displays above were created for Parent Appreciation Week. 

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Last Minute Valentine Activities

More snow?! I like snow, but it is getting out of hand. Brrr! Here are a few last minute activities to help ease cabin fever.

Red Heart, Red Heart, What Do You See?

  

I found this activity on Miss Tracey's Youtube channel called LittleStoryBug. She is my secret weapon for finding fun songs and activities for storytime. Her channel is a gold mind and always my first stop when looking for a song.

Check her out! 

LittleStorybug Youtube Channel 

LittleStorybug Website

LittleStorybug On iTunes

I created my board using a small chalkboard that I found. The hearts are made out of construction paper and felt. When doing this activity I just attached the hearts to the board with tape. 

Valentines on a Stick

There is just something wonderful about things on sticks. Lollipops, corndogs,and popsicles are some of my favorites! Seriously the kids loved the sticks. Who knew?!

The hearts are made simply from cardstock. I attached the large craft stick to the heart using a mailing labels. Of course you could always use tape. Using the labels helped speed up the process as I created over 80 of these each day this week. 

  

The kids decorated their valentine's on a stick using tissue paper,party streamers,yarn,pom poms,felt,and other pretty little things. You wouldn't believe how much time the kids spent looking through all the little bits and pieces to find just the perfect ones.  

Sweet Tart Candy Heart Counting and Sorting

 Each child was given ten SweetTarts Hearts. I chose this particular brand because they are not processed in a facility that processes peanuts and tree nuts. All of my schools are nut free.The SweetTart Hearts taste really good. You could use regular candy hearts if you have those around,but I highly recommend the SweetTarts brand.

The kids sorted the hearts on the sheet by color. Next they colored in the heart underneath. The final step was enjoying some of the candy.

Click on the link below to find the sheet that I created. 

SweetTart Candy Heart Counting Sheet

Hope that you and your family found these activities fun! Remember, spring will come soon!  

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6 Kid-Tested Books for Valentine's Day

Max's Valentine by Rosemary Wells

This small little book is perfect for your little ones 

18 months-3 years old. In one of my classes, a 20 month old yelled out "bunny" every time I turned the page. 

Elmo Loves You by Sarah Albee

Another really cute one for your 18 month to 3 year old. I am usually not a fan of licensed character books, but this one is very good. Toddlers are obsessed with Elmo, this one was a huge hit. Lots of requests to read it again. 

The Night Before Valentine's Day by Natasha Wing

This book is perfect for children 3.5 years through 2nd grade. Part of the series of books by Natasha Wing based on the poem,The Night Before Christmas.

The children will be able to relate to getting ready for a Valentine's Day classroom party.

There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed A Rose by Lucille Colandro

The "Old Lady Books" as they are known at my schools are very popular. There is a version for almost every holiday.

This book is perfect for 3.5 years through 2nd grade.

Froggy's First Kiss by Jonathan London

This is my favorite "Froggy" book. Froggy is a slightly awkward but endearing character. In this book he falls in love with the new girl at school. Very funny! Sure to get your kids giggling! 

This book is perfect for children 4 through 2nd grade.

The Ballad of Valentine by Alison Jackson

Based on the traditional song, Oh My Darling,Clementine. It is impossible to read this book and not sing the words. It's even more fun to throw in a little southern twang! 

This book is appropriate for children 4.5 years through 3rd grade. 

Right Now

This winter has been pretty brutal for us here in Cincytucky! We actually have a considerable amount of snow on the ground. Temperatures have been unbelievably below average. It has been below freezing for most of January and February. Having grown up in Vermont I should be accustomed to below zero temps, but I'm not. I blame it on my summer living in California. 

  

Pretty much in hibernation mode right now. I haven't had any motivation to do much of anything.  The "winter blues" are hitting me hard this year. The fog has slowly been lifting the past few days,it is slow going. Getting restful sleep has been EXTREMELY helpful. 

We joined the church that we have been attending for the past year. After six years of looking for a church home it is good to finally have a place to call home. I have begun volunteering in the children's ministry. This was my first week of actually teaching the lesson. I was a little rusty. I am more in practice of working with the under 5 set. It will take some time to get back into practice being with older kids. It will come. 


A wonderful teacher from one of my schools surprised me with a church cookbook. I had mentioned that I collect church and community cook books. It was such a sweet surprise. One of the recipes in the book is for a Swedish Nut Cake. It was super sweet and super delicious. Not exactly Weight Watcher friendly, but a nice treat. 

At work I have been trying to come up with crafts to go through my large collection of paper plates. One week the kids made winter hats out of paper plates. Another week we made paper plate cupcakes to celebrate the birthday of my storytime puppet. 

I am getting ready to put together a post about the books I am currently reading and books I plan to read in 2014. That post should be up tomorrow! 

What are some of your helpful hints to beat the winter blahs?

S'More Camping Fun: A Camping Hat

Our theme this week was "S'More Camping Fun". I did a little write up about what we did last year. You can find it here. This year we added in a way cute camping hat. We originally found the craft at Education.com created by Brooke Williams. You can find that post here. 

We changed the hat a little bit. We used pipe cleaners instead of real sticks. I would have loved to use real sticks, but the idea of finding sticks for over 300 children was overwhelming. We also used min marshmallows instead of regular size ones. I think the regular sized marshmallows would have caused the pipe cleaners to bend. 

The kids worked on putting the triangles together biggest to smallest. 

The kids also put the marshmallows onto the pipe cleaners. We talked about gently  holding the marshmallow so that they wouldn't get squished. 

Many of the teachers loved the hats so much that they made one for themselves. 

The kids attached the pipe cleaners to the brown band using masking tape. 

The craft was enjoyed by everyone. There were only a few cases of the kids eating the marshmallows off of the hats. One kid was even seen eating the marshmallows off of his friend's hat during storytime. I can't blame them. Marshmallows are yummy! 

Happy Birthday USA: Preschool Theme

Our summer program is in full swing. I have teamed up yet again with my partner in crime, Ms. Steffanie. We have pretty much the best job in the world. During the summer, we travel between five different preschool centers bringing literature based fun! Each day we are at a different location. At each location we do our activities with three preschool classes. I can't believe how much fun our job is. 

This past week our theme was, "Happy Birthday USA!" 

I donned a cap and an apron to transform into Betsy Ross. With a little research online, I was able to find a little bit of information about her. I read the book, Betsy Ross by Becky White to the children. We had a good conversation about the first flag, our flag today, and the 4th of July. 

Talking Points

A. We talked about the first flag 

1. It had thirteen stripes

2. It had 13 stars

3. The stars were in a circle

B. We talked about our flag now

1. Our flag still has 13 stripes 

2. Our flag has 50 stars now

3. Each star is for a state

a. I pointed out that one star is for Ohio and that another star is for Kentucky.

C. We compared the two flags

1. The children noticed that on the old flag there were less stars

2. They were able to recognize that on the old flag the stars were in the shape of a circle

D. We talked about the 4th of July

1. The 4th of July is a holiday. The children named other holidays

2. The children learned that the 4th of July is America's birthday

3. We talked about what we do to celebrate the 4th of July

a. parades

b. fireworks

c. picnics

d. decorating with red, white, and blue

After our little discussion, the children headed to the tables to make an American Flag.

We taught the children a few simple songs that we sang later during our parade. 

Wave Your Flag

(If your happy and you know it)

Wave your flag way up high, way up high.

Wave your flag way up high, way up high.

Wave your flag way up high, like a banner in the sky.

Wave your flag way up high, way up high,

Happy Birthday America

( Happy Birthday)

Happy Birthday to America

Happy Birthday to America

Happy Birthday, Dear America

Happy Birthday to America. 

We set out some decorating materials for the children to decorate their teachers. We had streamers, toilet paper,and paper stars. The children decorated their teachers just like a 4th of July float. This is really my favorite part. The teachers are usually a little self-conscious at first, but warm up pretty quickly. The kids get a kick out 

of being able to stick stuff all over their teachers. 

                            

After the children finish decorating their teachers we parade around the center. The children waved their flags and sang to the front desk staff and the cook . The kids loved waving to the students in the other classrooms. 

After our parade around the center, we headed back to enjoy another story. We ended our time by reading the book, Happy 4th of July Jenny Sweeney! by Leslie Kimmelman.

This week our theme is "S'More Camping Fun." Can't wait to show you the adorable hats that the kids made!

Check out "S'More Camping Fun" week last year.

Ahoy Matey

This week has been my favorite so far this summer. It was a huge hit,especially with the boys!

We started off our time by gathering the children in the reading area. This is where we set up the back story for the scavenger hunt that we took a little bit later.

This is my side-kick Pirate Taco! As you may have guessed her favorite food is Tacos. We told the children that the night before our pirate ship had run out of tacos, not even a crumb was leftover. We took a journey to Taco Bell, where we met two mean pirates named, Harry and Larry. Harry and Larry took our treasure and ran away. We were unable to chase them because we were wearing roller skates. Oh the luck!  We cried a bit over our luck and then transitioned to a book.

We read:

Pirate Nap: A Book of Colors

by Danna Smith

With the older children we read a different book.

We read:

The No-Good Do-Good Pirates

by Jim Kraft

For the next activity we had the children create an eye patch. They colored tiny pictures of pirates, parrots,or a treasure to glue to their eye patch.

I excused myself out of the room to grab the message-in-a-bottle that we had set outside the classroom earlier. The bottle had a CD with our first clue, as well as a written note saying to, "Listen to This."

Here I am goofing around by listening to the bottle. Most of the classes caught on that we should listen to the CD and not the bottle.

Here is a video with the audio clues that sent us around the school.We placed Cds of the clues around the school and took along a portable radio to listen to them.  When I do this again next year, I think I will make the voice a little less scary. A few of the younger children were a bit frightened. (Yes, I am a 32 year old woman! You might not figure that out from the audio)

The hunt took us about 15 minutes and ended with finding the treasure at the front desk. The directors were extremely helpful in playing along with our theme. We have the best directors around!

Back to the classroom we went with the treasure chest. One of our extremely talented teachers made it for me last summer. Inside the chest we had shark shaped gummy snacks, play gold, and a book! Books are always treasure of course!  Everyone received some gummy snacks and a piece of pirate gold! 

The books inside the treasure chest was Port Side Pirate by Oscar Seaworthy and Debbie Harter.

The book comes along with a delightful CD that sings the story! Be warned! The song will get stuck in your head. You will find yourself singing it at random moments during the rest of the day!

We ended our time by singing the "Baby Shark" song.

This video is pretty similar to the song we sing. We don't have the whole losing a leg and a head thing. The person swims faster and faster and makes it to shore.

Next week, we have Mini Olympics for the Preschool and Ooey-Gooey Olympics for the School-Age summer campers!  It should be a fun and messy week!

S'Mores and More

I have an amazing job! I am a Storytime lady! My days are filled with books,crafts, games, and songs. I work for a childcare company with five locations within a twenty mile radius. Each day I visit a different center for storytime. During the school year, I have storytimes for children ages 18 months to 5 years. During the summer, I work mainly with the 3 to 5 year-olds. It is a great gig! I am able to combine my joy of working with children and my love for children's literature.

This past week our theme was, "S'More Camping Adventure." 

We started out our time gathering the children together on the story carpet. I brought out my large hiking backpack. Inside the bag I placed items that we might take a long on a camping trip!

The children were then invited to the tables to make an indoor S'more!

The children spread chocolate frosting and marshmallow fluff onto graham crackers for a delicious treat!

Here I am wearing my "camping hat" that I have had for over twelve years!

We spread blankets around the story area. The children enjoyed an indoor picnic while listening to a story!

Here is my parter-in-crime, Steffanie reading the children a book. We chose, "Curious George Goes Camping" by Margret & H.A Rey's.

I created a few animal footprint cards using pictures I found on online. One side had a picture of the animal tracks.The other side had a picture of the animal that made the track. We asked the children what animal they thought made each track. The bear track was the most identifiable to the children. You wouldn't believe how many children thought the raccoon track was made by a dinosaur.  

Next, we went outside to the playground. We had set up some bulletin board paper on the ground. The children used their feet to create tracks of their own!

The children used a kiddie pool to clean the paint off of their feet.

This week was extremely hot. It was 102 degrees on this day, so back inside to cool off. We sang our own version of, "Going on a Bear Hunt!"

Going On A Bear Hunt

(A repeat after me song)

We're going on a bear hunt

I'm not afraid.

Got a real good friend, by my side.

Oh no! What can it be?

A field full of grass!

We can't go over it!

We can't go under it!

We can't go around it!

Guess we have to go through it.

(Pretend to walk through a field)

Repeat first part and then add in other things you might see...

A field full of mud

A strawberry patch

A rickety bridge

An ice cream shop

A very tall tree

Last verse

Oh no! What can it be?

A deep dark cave!

We can't go over it!

We can't go under it!

We can't go around it!
Guess we have to go in it!

I see to big yellow eyes!

Two furry ear!

A big furry body!

IT'S A BEAR

Run!

Said Really Fast

Climb up the tree

Climb down the tree

Into the ice cream shop

Out of the ice cream shop

Over the bridge

Through the strawberry patch

Through the mud

Through the grass

Open up your door.

Close the door.

Lock the door.

Sit down!

I'm not afraid!

We ended our time by reading,"Scare a Bear" by Kathy-Jo Wargin. This is a great rhyming book! A huge hit with the children.

This coming week our theme will be, "Ahoy Matey."  We have some great stories, a scavengar hunt, and a fun craft planned! Can't wait to share it with you!