Here are the books that I read:
Green by Laura Vacarro Seeger
This books is sparse on text, but the illustrations are full of great things to talk about. Each two-page spread shows a different shade of green, as well as die-cut shapes that take new form as you turn the page. As a group we had so much fun looking at and talking about the illustrations that this sparse 36-word book was easily our longest read of the day.
The Story of the Leprechaun by Katherine TegenA miserly leprechaun shoemaker is captured and must therefore grant a man three wishes. Of course, one of these wishes is to know the location of the leprechaun's pot of gold. The leprechaun tells him, but of course is able to pull off a sneaky trick to keep his gold well hidden. Many St. Patrick's Day or leprechaun books out there are a bit too long for my storytime crowd, but this book was a good fit for my preschoolers. Just enough mischief to keep things interesting, and the kids' giggles when she saw the leprechaun's trick made it more than worth the effort.
Good Luck Bear by Greg Foley
One day Bear finds a clover. His friend Mouse tells him that if he can find a four-leaf clover, then he will have good luck. Bear spends all day searching with no luck and his other friends are not very encouraging. Just as Bear fears that he will be unlucky forever, Mouse returns with a surprise for his friend. I chose this particular book because it does a good job of introducing the shamrock symbol in simple terms. It's also a fairly quick read, which was welcome by the end of this storytime since our first two books took so long to get through.
Duckie's Rainbow by Frances Berry
Duckie walks home and sees many colors. Soon purple clouds roll in and it begins to rain. But the curved pages of this book reveal a beautiful rainbow. I did not end up needing to read this story and instead talked about rainbows using the flannelboard discussed below, but it would be a great choice for younger or more fidgety groups if you need to substitute a shorter, more simple story.
I also incorporated a few fun rhymes into this storytime. The first was the action song, "Dance, Leprechaun, Dance." I didn't come up with this myself, but sadly can't remember what my source for this song was.
Dance, Dance, Leprechaun DanceTune: “Skip to My Lou”Dance, dance, leprechaun dance,Dance, dance, leprechaun dance,Dance, dance, leprechaun dance,Do a dance for me!Bow...Clap...Jump…Search for gold…Sit...Suit actions to words
This song was a lot of fun, and I was amused to see that none of the kids really had any idea how a leprechaun should dance without prompting. I just did the first easy arm-flailing, knee-wiggling dance I could come up with the and kids more or less copied what I did.
We also got out my "Rainbow in a Pot" flannelboard, which was a great way for us to talk about rainbows in a bit more detail after seeing one briefly in The Story of the Leprechaun. I discuss the flannelboard and the song that goes with it in more detail in this post.
To conclude this storytime we did a very simple art project that was surprisingly full of early learning opportunities. I cut out lots of dark green hearts using our die-cut machine and gave four to each child. They were able to glue them onto a lighter green sheet of paper to make a shamrock. Since the paper was so big I also gave them crayons and let them draw whatever they wanted in the margins. Many kids chose to draw other symbols of the St. Patrick's Day holiday that we had talked about like rainbows, pots of gold, and leprechauns, but they could choose to draw whatever they wanted and we saw all kinds of fun choices. I loved the idea of giving the kids a chance to do some free drawing so that they could really get creative and personalize their artwork. Drawing is also a great skill for kids to work on as these motions are very similar to the motions they will use when they eventually learn to write. The two shades of green paper were also a subtle nod to the book Green that we had read.
No comments:
Post a Comment