August 2023: Unicorns, Dragons, and Monsters...oh my!

I'm the Youth Services Librarian at a rural library and I do story time twice a week with a toddler and preschool aged group. Each week I share what we're learning and doing! Here's what we did for the month of August.

Our Story Time Format: When the kids first arrive, we flip through our Circle Time notebook and talk about who is here, the weather, days of the week, colors, shapes, etc. We sometimes sing songs together with props, play a game, or use the flannel or magnet board. Then I read them a story. After the story we move on to craft time. After we make our craft, we have play time with special toys or a sensory bin. After we've had play time (usually when the parents start mentioning getting ready to go!) I encourage the kids to help pick up the toys, to check out books, and to come visit me again next week! This takes approximately 30 - 45 minutes.

August 2/3: The Nice Dream Truck by Beth Ferry was our book for this week! This book was just a tiny bit long for my crowd this week but the imagery in it is dreamy and fun. We did a sponge paint ice cream craft which was cute and easy. I used some round sponge brushes and cut up sponges and let the kids pick which they wanted to use. We played an ice cream number match game and talked about our favorite ice cream flavors. We also used our flannel board with an ice cream set and did some of the rhymes featured on this page.

August 9/10: This week we read Dragons Love Tacos by Adam Rubin. This book was a big hit - the kids - and I! - loved it! We did a paper taco craft I found on Pinterest that required a little extra prep work from me but wasn't too bad. We had a Dragons Love Tacos stuffy that came to storytime with us and used some flannel dragons to do this Ten Dizzy Dragons rhyme. I also gave the kids some Dragons Love Tacos Bookmarks to decorate that I downloaded (for free!) from Teachers Pay Teachers.

August 16/17: This week's book was If You Give a Mouse a Cookie by Laura Numeroff. We made these fun If You Give a Mouse a Cookie Hats for our craft! We had a a felt set with a little mouse and houses that we played "Little Mouse" with on the flannel board. I downloaded some cookie dough themed playdough mats that we used to practice counting with a plastic set of cookies with different numbered chocolate chips. I also attempted to make the playdough that was featured on that post but it wasn't really playdough consistency...so we just ate some of it instead. 😂

August 23/24: This week's book was There’s a Monster in Your Book by Tom Fletcher. This was the first of these books that I had read but I'm excited to use more of them in my storytimes because they're so interactive and fun! It reminded me of Don't Push the Button, which we did earlier this summer if you jump back in my earlier posts.
For our craft, we did an open ended Invitation to Create - Create a Monster. The kids love doing things like this because they can make them unique and their own. I printed off some basic blank monster body printables and then gave them googly eyes, a collection of cut outs, and markers. We did a Monster Movement rhyme and then played with Magnatiles!

August 30/31: We had a request from a sweet little gal to do a unicorn storytime sometime if we could so I did my best to deliver on that this week! My oldest daughter and I the night before had fun making rainbow unicorn fluffy slime! (We followed this recipe.) One batch was slightly more sticky than the other but that's part of the process of learning right? Our book this week was Uni the Unicorn by Amy Krouse Rosenthal. Our craft was super fun - we made paper plate paint splat unicorns with glitter! So sparkly! ✨ And after our craft was done, we played in a colored rice sensory bin where we dug for buried unicorn tokens! *Also: check out the awesome shoes my little friend wore on the day of our unicorn storytime! So pretty!