Fall and Winter 2023: Marshmallows, Monkeys, Halloween, Pumpkin Pie, and Jingle Bells!

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. Every so often I share what we're learning and doing! Here's what we did for the months of September, October, November, and December of 2023!

I don't know that I'm going to continue and post allllll of 2024 since we are nearing the end of it now...I may just go through and highlight some of the more fun Storytimes I did this past year.

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 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 45 minutes.

September 6/7: Five Little Sharks Swimming in the Sea by Steve Metzger was our book for this week. We did a shark dot painting craft using our dot markers. I made an Ocean Friends magnet board set, we talked about what different ocean creatures were in the group, and we used this Ocean Friend rhyme to go with it. We sang Baby Shark and played with blocks and duplos.

September 13/14: This week we read Count the Monkeys by Mac Barnett/Kevin Cornell. This is such a cute book - was a big hit. We did this Alphabet Dot Painting with the M is for Monkey page and talked about other things that start with M. We used these printables and practiced counting and did the "Five Little Monkeys" rhyme listed on that page.

September 20/21: On these days we read Most Marshmallows by Rowboat Watkins. We did Marshmallow Math with this cute dollar deal from Crystal McGinnis on TPT. (She has tons of awesome stuff on her TPT page so make sure and check it out!) We did Marshmallow Squish Art - in a bag since I have little littles in my story time - and it was okay. It was a little hard to maneuver them around in the bag so it didn't work quite like I thought it would. Still fun though. I downloaded some counting mats from PreschoolMom.com that had hot cocoa cups on them that the kids added mini marshmallows to - can't find the link for it but if you browse around her site you can probably find it. And of course we ate looooots of marshmallows!

September 27/28: Driving my Tractor by Jan Dobbins and David Sim was our book. We sang "The Wheels on the Tractor, which you can see HERE. I made a sensory bin with our farm animals, filled it with dry oatmeal, and made some silos out of recyclables. (I was inspired by this post here - Fill the Silo Farm Sensory Bin.) We did a Tractor Coloring Page and a craft similar to this one.

October 4/5: We read In the Middle of Fall by Kevin Henkes. We used a flannel board set that my predecessor had made - a squirrel hiding his acorn in leaves. The kids had to guess which leaf the acron was hidden under. We then used a leaf template to design our own leaves. We also had a leaf sorting game I found online.

October 11/12: We used a bats flannel board set that I made and did 5 Little Bats. We read That’s Not My Bat by Fiona Watt and also the book Hedgehugs: Autumn Hide and Squeak by Steve Wilson. We did a bat magnet craft that was leftover from previous years that was from Oriental Trading.

October 18 - 19: No Storytime due to Fall Break Fun Week activities

October 25 - 26: We read There’s a Witch in Your Book by Tom Fletcher. I love these books! They are always such a hit with the kids. I made a Halloween sensory bin with alllll stuff from the Dollar Tree - candy corn mix, cocoa rice puff cereal, Halloween matching cards, and little foam pumpkins. For our craft, I used these cauldron templates and cut them out on black paper - then had the kids glue them to another sheet of colored construction paper & decorate their cauldron however they liked. The example I used had some googly eyes, was multi-colored, and I used some chalk to make steam lines coming up out of it. For our flannel board, we used a set called "One elephant went out to play" - I thought the spiderweb went well with the Halloween theme.

November 1 - 2: Our book for this week was This is Owl by Libby Walden and our craft we made was this Do a Dot Owl. We also did 5 Little Owls with some magnetic owls I made up on Canva and laminated.

November 8 - 9: This week's book was The Very Hungry Caterpillars First Fall by Eric Carle. We made a foam doorhanger craft that said "Hello fall" that I believe was from one of our local craft stores. For our flannel board time we did Five Little Footballs/Under the Helmet.

November 15 - 16: Our book this week was My Leaf Book by Monica Wellington. We did a Q-Tip Painting of trees during the different seasons from CraftsonSea. We also did this Leaf Sorting Activity - I cut them out and laminated them so we can use them again.

November 20 - 22: This week we read One Big Turkey by Anne Kennedy. We did a Pumpkin Pie craft from Oriental Trading and we did a flannel that had turkeys missing their feathers. The kiddos added the feathers on one by one and we talked about the different colors.

November 29 - 30: We read Llama Llama Red Pajama by Anna Dewdney. I printed off this game from Inspiration Laboratories and colored/laminated it so the kids could practice matching up the right pants/top. I printed off these pajama coloring pages and encouraged the kids to make patterns or designs on them.

December 7: This week's book was How the Grinch Stole Christmas by Dr. Seuss. We made these super cute little hot cocoa oriental trading craft. For our flannel board time, we used our snowman flannel set, dressed up our snowman in several different ways, and talked about what you should wear when it's cold outside.

December 13 - 14: Since we read the Grinch the week before, we went ahead and read How the Grinch Lost Christmas also by Dr. Seuss - I had never read this before now! We made a Grinch Wreath craft that was leftover from a Winter Wonderland event we had the week before - I believe it was from Oriental Trading. We played with balloons that were also leftover from our event and decorated the felt Christmas tree I hung up in the Children's Room.

December 20 - 21: Our last book for the year was Winter by Stephanie Hedlund. I was sick so this is what all I had planned out & what my boss did when she took over for me. I had printed out a Christmas sweater coloring page - I was going to let the kids decorate the sweaters however they wanted. We sang I'm A Little Snowman from Super Simple Songs - you can find them on YouTube. And lastly, I was going to use the snowman flannel we used on the 7th!