Spooky Stories

October 29, 2013

Spooky Stories!!

Stories that are spooky, but in a good way!

Books:

What's in the Witch's Kitchen? by Nick Sharratt

Goodnight Goon: A Petrifying Parody by Michael Rex

Alpha Oops!: H is for Halloween by Alethea Kontis

Moonlight: The Halloween Cat by Cynthia Rylant

Big Pumpkin by Erica Silverman

It's amazing that we managed to get a whole 5 books in today!

Songs:
 Opening Song: Where is Thumbkin?

 Song 2: Skinny-Marinky-Dinky-Dink - 100 Singalong Songs for Kids

Song 3 (Our Theme Song Pick): There's a spider on the floor! - Raffi - Singable Songs for the Very Young

Song 4: Shake My Sillies Out - Raffi

Song 5: Dance Your Fingers / Clap Along With Me - Wee Sing for Baby

Song 6: Wheels on the Bus - 100 Singalong Songs for Kids


Felt Board / Magnet Board:
The Orange Ghost! - The Storyboard, 1989. Illustrated by DP Designs
The story of an orange ghost on Halloween night who cannot fly yet. For a ghost to be able to fly, he must scare someone and the poor orange ghost has never been able to scare anyone. So, he attempts to scare a witch, a black cat, and an owl - all of who tell him to go away and scare someone else. He finally comes to a pond and decides to scare a fish - he yells "Boo!" at the water and sees his reflection, thus scaring himself and gaining the ability to fly for scaring someone!

We have a range of these felt board stories that were doanted to our library from the Keflavik Library in Iceland. I wish I knew more about the company who put these out because they are really cute and very helpful during storytime!





Craft:
Easy Pumpkin Craft!

 We took a standard pumpkin coloring sheet and traced a template for two eyes, a nose, and a mouth on the bottom of the page for the kids to cut out. Super easy! Here is the template we created for this craft.

How Many Did You Have?

45 total made up out costumed audience!

How did it go?

We managed to get in 5 books and 1 felt board - I'd say we were pretty successful.

Spiders!!

October 22, 2013

Spiders!!

Today's theme was spiders! Since its so close to Halloween we wanted to do something with a little creepiness but not too much. And so, we came up with spiders.

Books:

Diary of a Spider by Doreen Cronin

The Very Busy Spider by Eric Carle

Aaaarrgghh! Spider! by Lydia Monks

The Itsy Bitsy Spider by Iza Trapani

Songs:
Opening Song: Where is Thumbkin?

 Song 2: Skinny-Marinky-Dinky-Dink - 100 Singalong Songs for Kids

Song 3 (Our Theme Song Pick): There's a spider on the floor! - Raffi - Singable Songs for the Very Young

Song 4 (Another Theme Song Pick): The Itsy-Bitsy Spider - Susie Tallman- Classic Nursery Rhymes

 Song 5: Shake My Sillies Out - Raffi

Song 6: Dance Your Fingers / Clap Along With Me - Wee Sing for Baby

Song 7: Wheels on the Bus - 100 Singalong Songs for Kids

If you want kids to be really excited about Spiders do Raffi's "Spider on the Floor!" You trace a spider's climb from the floor to the top of your head. We wiggled our hands like they were spiders to act out the song.

Susie Tallman's "Itsy-Bitsy Spider" was also a hit - this song expands on the song to include the traditional rhyme, a marching band version, a slowed down version, and a jazzy version.

Felt Board / Magnet Board

We found this Magnet Board printout at The Daycare Resource Connection - they have a lot of popular books in felt board/magnet board form that you can print from your computer. Here is the link to the PDF.

Craft:
Paper plate spider!

We cut a paper plate in half, colored it with black crayons, and then cut the edges into eight sections to make the legs. We got the idea from this Craft with Jack blog entry. Theirs came out a bit cuter than ours, but the kids didn't seem to mind.

How many did you have?

We had a full house: 54! With lots of brand new faces.

How did it go?

With such a large crowd, its difficult to keep the little ones calm and attentive so we had to cut our last book. We were going to read a simple Little Miss Muffet book and do a felt board of Little Miss Muffet with her spider and tuffet. However, when the little ones are clamoring you have to roll with it.