I'm a children's specialist in a small library. Luckily, I get to do storytimes 3 or 4 times a week.

Thursday, July 24, 2014

Trains and Trucks

This was an afternoon storytime with about 20 attendees.

Since afternoon storytimes are so much smaller, I tend to be a little more loose - choosing what I'm going to do about an hour before we do it.  Today, since I decided to wear my new train earrings - I thought that trains and trucks would be fun.

Hello!
We sang our hello song and then jumped into the books.  I always use the same hello song, it's my own version of the Dragon Tales Hello Song found here: http://youtu.be/CpTLdI3Jpn4

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Train  by Elisha Cooper
         This one was a bit long for the group, even though we started with it.  They held in there until the end, though.  I spiced it up by asking them questions.  We even pretended to be a server in the dining car, bumping up and down and holding our pretend plates.  That was a hit.


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Train Trip  by Deanna Caswell
    This one was definitely a better book for the group.  It has rhyming, and not many words on the page.

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Giant Pop-out Vehicles (no author but published by Chronicle Books in 2007)
   Honestly, I've never had a bad time in storytime doing Giant Pop-Out anything.  I love that it's a guessing game in a book - and they loved it too.  The kids were all yelling out the answers, there was so much participation!

Stand up and stretch!
   Usually, I do Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes at stretch time.  Today, though I thought it would be fun if we pretended to be trains and trucks.  I loved when one of the kids yelled out that we should be Motorcycles and we all revved our motors.

Fingerplay
This fingerplay was a little too young for most of the audience - but they did it anyway.

"I'm a Windshield Wiper"
I'm a windshield wiper (bend arm at elbow and hold fingers up)
This is how I go (swing arm back and forth)
Back and forth, back and forth (continue motion)
in the rain and snow
.

We then talked about how windshield wipers on our cars go alternately, so we did that, too.


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A Truck Goes Rattley-Bumpa by Jonathan London
    Even though my version was falling apart (note to self: try not to do storytimes with books that are falling apart), this went really well.  We talked about big and small and then we got off on a tangent about "what if a truck had eighteen thousand wheels?" "what if it had ten hundred?"  Sadly, I didn't think to get us to infinity, but that was pretty good.

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Down By the Station  by Jennifer Riggs Vetter
   Always a hit - especially if the parents can read the words to sing along with you as well (or have checked out the book so often that they now have it memorized.)

Goodbye!
I don't remember where I found my closing song.

To the tune of "She'll Be Comin' 'Round the Mountain"
Now it's time to say goodbye to all our friends (goodbye!)
Now it's time to say goodbye to all our friends (goodbye!)
Now it's time to say goodbye
Wave a hand and wink an eye
Now it's time to say goodbye to all our friends (goodbye!)

I offered them a hand out with connect the dots  trains on one side, trucks on the other.




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