School Age S.T.E.A.M. Storytime & Craft: Very Special Trees

 

A seasonal storytime incorporating history & empathy, fantasy, gratefulness & giving back

Ask who’s seen the Rockefeller Tree?

Book: The Carpenter’s Gift: A Christmas Tale about the Rockefeller Center Tree by David Rubel (Construction workers at the Rockefeller Center site help a a boy and his family in need—then many years the boy, now grown to an old man, donates his enormous tree after learning that it will not only give pleasure but will also be used to help another family.  Afterward talks about the tradition and logistics involved with the Rockefeller Center Trees and notes that since 2007 the wood from the tree has been milled and used for Habitat for Humanity houses.) 

Book- talked: Night Tree by Eve Bunting (Every year a family decorates a tree in the woods with edible ornaments for the animals),

Book:  The Night Gardener by Terry and Eric Fan. (A boy in an orphanage and a rundown town are transformed by the magical topiary creations of the night gardener. Fascinating parallel story to compare with The Carpenter’s Gift – both have boys lives transformed by a generous stranger and the metaphor of the tool passing from generation to generation.) 

Singable Book: The Marvelous Toy by Tom Paxton (hand-me-down toy has special meaning; performed here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCjslf_a11c)

 

Book: Thankful by Elaine Vickers (A child creates a paper chain listing all the things she is thankful for - a great way to cultivate gratitude - and maybe make a nightly tradition to cultivate resiliance.)

Craft: Make our own "thankful paper chains," also trees and other paper ornaments (supplies: construction paper, scissors, markers, glue sticks, stamps & stamp pads, various things to decorate with)

Afterwards, finished with an indoor snowball fight 

Activity: Snowball fight using plastic bag snowballs, to the music “Sleigh Ride” by Leroy Anderson (on album Season’s Greetings)
Making snowballs for the program:
1) Gather a white plastic grocery bag into a long, skinny tube-like length with the handles on one end.
2) Fold the length in half, then in half again.
3) Wind a rubber band around the middle until it is tight.
4) Cut open both ends to remove any folded areas.
5) Then fluff out pieces

Idea courtesy of:  Susan Dailey, librarian, speaker and author of "A Storytime Year"-  

https://carolsimonlevin.blogspot.com/2014/01/let-it-snow-winter-storytimecraft-ages.html

More ideas at: https://carolsimonlevin.blogspot.com/2013/12/school-age-storytime-very-special-trees.html and https://carolsimonlevin.blogspot.com/2013/12/school-age-storytime-gifts-and-giving.html

Clarence Dillon Library 12/10/2025

Preschool Storytime: Flutterby Butterfly!

Preschool Storytime: Flutterby Butterfly

A celebration of individual differences, life-cycle, nature and change. Includes fiction and non-fiction and sign language songs.  More books, lyrics, and craft ideas at
  https://carolsimonlevin.blogspot.com/search/label/Caterpillars%20%26%20Butterflies

Bob and Otto – Robert & Nick Bruel  (Otto the worm is saddened when his friend Bob the caterpillar becomes a butterfly until Bob reassures him that his role in digging through the earth is critical in this story which beautifully combines earth science and the power of friendship.) 

Sign Language Song: "Look up Look Down"  -from Pick Me Up: Fun Songs for Learning Signs – Robert Berg, et. all 

From Caterpillar to Butterfly -- Deborah Heligman (describes the metamorphosis through the eyes of a classroom hatching butterflies)

Flannel: Color Butterflies (color IDs) - text (and lyrics to songs that follow) at: https://carolsimonlevin.blogspot.com/2013/12/preschool-storytime-flutterby-butterfly.html

Song: Roly-Poly Caterpillar

The Very Hungry Caterpillar - Eric Carle (reinforcing days of the week and counting, talked about how Eric Carle used colored tissue paper to make his collage papers)

Song: Life of a Butterfly 

If at First You Do Not See - Ruth Brown (kids practiced close observation with this clever  book -- vegetation becomes faces when the pages are turned upside down...possibly inspired by the works of the 16th c. Italian painter Guiseppe Arcimboldo)

Sign Language Song: "Let's Take a Little Walk") -from Pick Me Up: Fun Songs for Learning Signs 

Waiting for Wings -- Lois Ehlert (different sized pages and beautiful collage illustrations reinforce the butterfly life cycle. A musical version is on the Scholastic DVD Singalong Stories, great to act out with scarves).

Art idea: have the children make nature collages inspired by the books "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" and "Waiting for Wings"

6/5/2025 The Children's Corner Preschool

School Age S.T.E.A.M.: Flutterby Butterfly!

School Age: Flutterby Butterfly A celebration of individual differences, life-cycle, nature and change. Combines fiction and non-fiction, and sign language songs. More ideas at https://carolsimonlevin.blogspot.com/search/label/Caterpillars%20%26%20Butterflies

Bob and Otto – Robert & Nick Bruel  (Otto the worm is saddened when his friend Bob the caterpillar becomes a butterfly until Bob reassures him that his role in digging through the earth is critical in this story which beautifully combines earth science and the power of friendship.) Booktalked: Bubba & Trixie – Lisa Campbell Ernst – (An adventuresome ladybug with a damaged wing who cannot fly befriends an apprehensive caterpillar and helps him learn to enjoy life and be happy with what he is and what he becomes.)

Sign Language Song: "Look up Look Down"  -from Pick Me Up: Fun Songs for Learning Signs – Robert Berg, et. all 

The Very Hungry Caterpillar - Eric Carle (reinforcing days of the week and counting, talked about how Eric Carle used colored tissue paper to make his collage papers)

If at First You Do Not See - Ruth Brown (kids practiced close observation with this clever  book -- vegetation becomes faces when the pages are turned upside down...possibly inspired by the works of the 16th c. Italian painter Guiseppe Arcimboldo)

Sign Language Song: "Let's Take a Little Walk") -from Pick Me Up: Fun Songs for Learning Signs 

A Butterfly is Patient 595.789 AST (wonderful book in the An Egg is Quiet and A Seed is Sleepy series) Because this group today was on the younger side, we skipped a lot of the detailed info here but there is a lot of great info. – e.g. the difference between a chrysalis and a cocoon - the latter is spun of silk, the former is a kind of exoskeleton formed from the caterpillar's skin; also that butterflies can fly a mile in 3 minutes (faster than a human can run)

DVD: Waiting for Wings -- Lois Ehlert A musical version is on the Scholastic DVD Singalong Stories, we acted out with scarves).

Did some of the art projects featured here. https://carolsimonlevin.blogspot.com/2013/12/art-science-flutterby-butterfly.html

Additional art idea: have the children make nature collages inspired by the books "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" and "Waiting for Wings"

5/28/2025 Clarence Dillon Library

School Age Storytime: Black History Month

 

Opened by asking if the recognized the man on the cover of 

Martin's Big Words by Doreen Rappaport and talked about the Caldecott Medal on the cover, then read the book.

Sang: We Shall Overcome 

Asked if they knew who Ruby Bridges was then read:

I am Ruby Bridges by Ruby Bridges -- a first person account of her first days in school.

Talked about how this wasn't so long ago (their grandparent's time and how some white children left the school rather than go to school with black kids) and the crazy idea that skin color or national origin made some people think other people shouldn't have the same rights...

Read: Freedom Summer by Deborah Wiles - Joe and John Henry do everything together, from shooting marbles to shelling butterbeans. But when the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is passed and the town pool is opened to blacks and whites alike, the two boys discover that the workers have filled in the pool with tar. Based on the author's own childhood growing up in rural Alabama and Mississippi. 

Read: Sit-In How Four Friends Stood Up by Sitting Down by Andrea Davis Pinkney It was February 1, 1960.

They didn't need menus. Their order was simple.
A doughnut and coffee, with cream on the side.
This picture book celebration of the 50th anniversary of the momentous Woolworth's lunch counter sit-in, shows how four college students staged a peaceful protest that became a defining moment in the struggle for racial equality and the growing civil rights movement.
Andrea Davis Pinkney uses poetic, powerful prose to tell the story of these four young men, who followed Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s words of peaceful protest and dared to sit at the whites only Woolworth's lunch counter. 

Read: This is the Dream by Diane Z. Shore & Jessica Alexander

Inspiring text shows "before" and "after" the civil rights laws

Read: Be A King: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr's Dream and You by Carole Boston Weatherford. Words to live by...

Closed with: This Little Light of Mine illustrated by E.B. Lewis

Lyrics & more ideas at: http://carolsimonlevin.blogspot.com/search/label/Black%20History%20Month

3/10/23 Nicole's class postponed from February

Canine Companions Storytime - Special Needs - Virtual

 Stories that celebrate the bond between people and their dogs...

A pup just for me / A boy just for me by Dorothea Seeber & Ed Young ( rhyming story about a boy who is offered every kind of pet except the puppy he wants. When the book is turned over, the story is told from the dog's point of view.)

Flannel board based on the book Any Kind of Dog by Lynn Reiser

Rrralph by Lois Ehlert (Would you believe that Ralph the dog can talk? Yip, yip, yip--it's true With bestselling author Lois Ehlert's simple, funny, call-and-response text and bold, playful collage illustrations, this fresh, young book is sure to get little ones laughing (and talking to their dogs )

A Place for Grace by Jean Davies Okimoto (With the help of a hearing-impaired man, a little dog finally manages to graduate from a training school for hearing dogs.)

Action Song: Do Your Ears Hang Low? illustrated by Jenny Cooper 

Bark George by Jules Feiffer (When puppy George is asked to bark by his mother, he manages to produce a range of animal sounds including a "meow" & a "moo," but never an "arf." -- Asked at the end, "Who's inside George now?!")

No time for:

Martha Speaks by Susan Meddaugh (alphabet soup gives Martha extraordinary communication abilities)

How Smudge Came by Nan Gregory (Cindy, who lives in a group home, wants to keep the stray dog she finds on her way to work...)

6/12/22 - Dover Nicole's class (Special Needs)

Butterflies Storytime - Special Needs - Virtual

 A celebration of individual differences, life-cycle, nature and change. Combines fiction and non-fiction, a sensitive look at disability.  More ideas at https://carolsimonlevin.blogspot.com/search/label/Caterpillars%20%26%20Butterflies

Bubba & Trixie – Lisa Campbell Ernst Bubba & Trixie – Lisa Campbell Ernst – (An adventuresome ladybug with a damaged wing who cannot fly befriends an apprehensive caterpillar and helps him learn to enjoy life and be happy with what he is and what he becomes.)

Alternatively can use this shorter book with a similar theme (checked out 2022)  Bob and Otto – Nick Bruel (Otto the worm is saddened when his friend Bob the caterpillar becomes a butterfly until Bob reassures him that his role in digging through the earth is critical in this story which beautifully combines earth science and the power of friendship.)

Sign Language Song(s):  Let's Take a Little Walk and/or  Look up Look Down (alt: ) -from Pick Me Up: Fun Songs for Learning Signs (with CD) – Robert Berg, et. all 

Becoming Butterflies by Ann Rockwell J595.789 ROC (a schoolroom witnesses the metamorphosis of monarch butterflies in this clear concept book) and/or Traveling Butterflies by Susumu Shingu (simple, beautifully-illustrated picture book of the monarch life-cycle)

If at First You Do Not See - Ruth Brown (clever turn upside down book -- vegetation becomes faces...inspired by the works of the 16th c. Italian painter Guiseppe Arcimboldo

Could share related:  Hello Fruit Face 759.5 STR  -- kids will adore seeing his amazing paintings -- images online at: http://www.giuseppe-arcimboldo.org/  or go to  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giuseppe_Arcimboldo for more links and info.) more info on a related program: http://carolsimonlevin.blogspot.com/2013/12/art-science-flutterby-butterfly.html

Butterfly Boy – Steven Kroll (A boy and his disabled grandfather eagerly await the return of the butterflies in this gorgeous & moving story from Mexico) 

Other possibilities: (no time 2022)

Waiting for Wings  by Lois Ehlert  (short rhyming text, glowing illustrations and pages that literally expand as the caterpillar hatches into a butterfly ) 
DVD: Waiting for Wings (on Weston Woods PPR DVD "Spring Science” is a beautiful musical version of the story, great to act out with scarves

A Butterfly is Patient 595.789 AST (wonderful book in the An Egg is Quiet and A Seed is Sleepy series).great info. – this middle-aged librarian learned a lot (e.g. the difference between a chrysalis and a cocoon - the latter is spun of silk, the former is a kind of exoskeleton formed from the caterpillar's skin; also that butterflies can fly a mile in 3 minutes (faster than a human can run).some classes could research speed of animals and graph this.)  Related: Steve Jenkins'  book Just a Second; A Different Way to Look at Time  529 JEN. 

"Ultraviolet" (Butterfly Poem) from Butterfly Eyes & Other Secrets of the Meadow 811.54 SID (a "guess the answer" poem collection, also shared page on milkweed & butterflies - introduced vocabulary/science: toxin, predator, pollination, ultraviolet) omitted 2017, no time
Here's an article on why butterflies may have evolved UV vision: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/02/100216140301.htm
and some UV pictures of flowers: https://natureodes.wordpress.com/2012/06/25/see-like-a-bee-ultraviolet-flower-photography-2/

Butterfly House – Eve Bunting  (A girl and her grandfather hatch butterflies, whose annual return continue to bring joy to her, even after her grandfather is gone.) 

The Very Hungry Caterpillar – Eric Carle (Pop Up with flannel chrysalis and puppet)

We’re all Wonders – R.J. Palacio (a young spinoff on the amazing chapter book Wonder) expresses the hope that maybe "people can change the way they see"

additional songs at http://carolsimonlevin.blogspot.com/2013/12/preschool-storytime-flutterby-butterfly.html