School Age Storytime: Apples & Pumpkins

 

A storytime for K-2nd grade celebrating the season

emphasizing empathy & compassion 

Participatory Storytelling/Props:  The Little Red House with No Doors & No Windows, a Chimney On Top & a Star in the Middle (Tip: instantly turn flannel pieces into hanging signs for kids to wear using plastic paper protector sleeves with stiff paper inserts & yarn ribbon to hang around each child's neck, act out the wind blowing the trees and the “plop” of an apple falling in the farmer’s backyard. Prop: real apple & knife to slice horizontally.)

Book: One Green Apple by Eve Bunting --This beautiful (and beautifully illustrated) story emphasizes understanding and compassion as Farah, a new student from an unnamed country, goes with her class on a field trip to an apple orchard (defined) and finds that though she is different and doesn’t know the language, she can be accepted and will find friends here.

Participatory Storytelling/Props: Big Pumpkin – from the book by Erica Silverman -- In this variant on the folktale, “The Great Big Enormous Turnip,” the witch, ghost, skeleton, and vampire are unable to pull up the pumpkin until a tiny bat ignores their derisive laughter and suggests they all work together.  I sing/chant this to a tune from an old Scholastic recording – feel free to contact me if you want to learn the tune.

Book: Pumpkins: A Story for a Field by Mary Lyn Ray – A splendid modern environmental myth in which a man, saddened by the thought that the field across from his house is about to be sold, sells everything he has, buys seeds, grows pumpkins, and then sends them all around the world (by planes, trucks, ships, and even flying carpets) to get enough money to buy the field and save it.  

Participatory Storytelling/Props: The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything based on the story by Linda Williams (1st grade only, Kdg no time)  props for children to use - shoes, pants, shirt, hat, gloves, pumpkin head, scarecrow)

Booktalked:

Non-Fiction Book: Rotten Pumpkin: A Rotten Tale in 15 Voices* – 577.16 SCHWARTZ – “UnCommon Core” at its best!  -- Told in the first person by the pumpkin, mouse, squirrel, slug, fly, black rot, bread mold, sow bug, Penicillium, earthworm, yeast cell, slime mold, soil, and seed, this is science “on the hoof.”  Wonderful writing & delightfully yucky photographs complete this unforgettable tour through the life cycle of a pumpkin that kids will find completely enGROSSing!  (Pumpkin Jack by Will Hubbell is a less-detailed version for a younger crowd. Sophie’s Squash by Pat Zietlow Miller makes a great fictional companion story.)

Book (K-2): Bear’s Bargain – Frank Asch (also published as Moonbear’s Bargain)  Bear wants to fly & Little Bird wishes he was big -- clever problem solving).

See more ideas at: 

https://carolsimonlevin.blogspot.com/search/label/Apples

https://carolsimonlevin.blogspot.com/search/label/Pumpkins

Bedm K-1 11/1/2024

School Age Storytime - Earth Day

 

I Love Our Earth - Bill Martin Jr. - photographic celebration

Spring is Here - Taro Gomi  "Spring is here. / The snow melts. / The earth is fresh. / The grass sprouts." Taro Gomi's clever picture book about the change of seasons couldn't be simpler. The first spread shows a white calf against a hot-pink background. "Spring is here," it says. In the next spread "the snow melts." And indeed, the once snow-white calf is now spotted black and white! 

Song: This is the Way we Plant Our Seeds

Living Sunlight: How Plants Bring the Earth to Life - Molly Bang & Penny Chisholm  (572.46 BANG) -- this creative and memorable explanation of photosynthesis will stick with kids for a long time.

And the Green Grass Grew all Around (flannel) – lyrics here: http://carolsimonlevin.blogspot.com/2015/04/sing-springhappy-earthday.html 

Booktalk: The Great Kapok Tree

booktalk: The Camping Trip the Changed America

Dear Earth: From Your Friends in Room 5 - Erin Dealey When the kids in Room 5 write to Earth asking what they can do to help save our planet, they are delighted to get a letter back. This beautiful picture book is a celebration of every child's ability to connect with the environment and make a positive impact .

Action Book: Earth Dance by Joanne Ryder

Singable book: What a Wonderful World - Ashley Bryan

Mother Earth - Nancy Luenn Gorgeous watercolors accompany this extended metaphorical exploration of our planet

SN only:

Our Tree Named Steve - Alan Zweibel

No time:
Does the Earth Feel?  - Marc Majewki
The Water Hole - Graeme Base

Bedm/Paolino SN 4/19/23

School Age Storytime: St. Patrick's Day and Finding Treasure in Unexpected Ways

 

Jamie O'Rourke and the Big Potato: An Irish Folktale by Tomie De Paola. (Discussed meaning of folktale, compared retelling to game of "telephone.") Ireland's laziest man happens upon a Leprechaun and is given a potato that grows to huge proportions and creates humorous problems. 

That's What Leprechauns Do by Eve Bunting (Delightful illustrations from Caldecott medalist Emily Arnold McCully accompany a playful text written in a lilting Irish style about three leprechauns' mischief-making on their way to place the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.)

Speaking of looking for gold...

The Book of Gold by Bob Staake (Single name = author & illustrator.  Young Isaac Gutenberg isn't a curious boy . . . that is, until he meets an old shopkeeper who tells him about The Book of Gold. This special book, hidden somewhere in the world, holds all the answers to every question and turns to solid gold when opened. Isaac is determined to find the book and spends his whole life searching for it...discovering many other things along the way.

Another book celebrating the magic of discovery:

The Pink Refrigerator by Tim Egan ("Try to do as little as possible.” This was Dodsworth’s motto, until, one morning, on his daily trip to the junkyard, he discovers a pink refrigerator...)

Last, a book with no words...but a special kind of magic!

Chalk by Bill Thomson  (A rainy day. Three kids in a park. A dinosaur spring rider. A bag of chalk. The kids begin to draw...and then...magic! The children draw the sun, butterflies, and a dinosaur that amazingly come to life. Children will never feel the same about the playground after they experience this astounding wordless picture book and the power of the imagination.)

No time for:

If… by Sarah Perry (Imagine if cats could fly, leaves were fish, mice were hair, caterpillars were toothpaste, toes were teeth, or frogs ate rainbows…then imagine what else you can imagine!)  

Imagine a Day/Night/Place/World books by Sarah Thompson  (mind-bending images & poems)

Other books celebrating books, reading, and libraries: 
http://carolsimonlevin.blogspot.com/search/label/Books%20%26%20Reading

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

Read Across America - Celebrating Reading, Libraries, and Librarians - 2nd grade

 

Opened by asking fiction or non-fiction?

Library Lil by Suzanne Williams
A formidable librarian makes readers not only out of the once resistant residents of her small town, but out of a tough-talking, television-watching motorcycle gang as well in this modern tall tale! 

Asked the same question again for:

Librarian on the Roof! by M.G. King

When RoseAleta Laurell begins her new job at the Dr. Eugene Clark Library in Lockhart, Texas, she is surprised that the children of the town think the library is for adults. She vows to raise the money for a children's section and spends a week living and working on the library roof, even surviving a dangerous storm. With the help of the entire town, RoseAleta raises over $39,000 from within the community and across the country.

Followed with another book based on a true story:

Nour's Secret Library by Wafa' Tarnowska 
Forced to take shelter when their Syrian city is plagued with bombings, young Nour and her cousin begin to bravely build a secret underground library. Based on the author’s own life experience and inspired by a true story, Nour’s Secret Library is about the power of books to heal, transport and create safe spaces during difficult times. 

Finished with the imagination-starter:

If by Sarah Perry
Take a fantastical journey through an inspiring world where anything can happen: leaves turn into fish, cats fly with wings, humans have tails, frogs eat rainbows, and dreams become visible. 

First published in 1995, Sarah Perry’s delightful picture book of “surreal possibilities” was the Getty’s first children’s title. Twenty-five years later it remains a visual feast that children of all ages enjoy.  

Booktalked:

Sector 7 by David Wiesner (a cloud takes a boy on a magical journey to the cloud factory in this wordless  book by this incredible author/illustrator)

Imagine a Day/Night/Place/World books by Sarah Thompson  (mind-bending images & poems)

Chalk by Bill Thomson (another magical wordless book)

More Than Anything Else by Marie Bradby (A fictionalized story about the life of young Booker T. Washington. Living in a West Virginia settlement after emancipation, nine-year-old Booker travels by lantern light to the salt works, where he labors from dawn till dusk. Although his stomach rumbles, his real hunger is his intense desire to learn to read.... )

Applemondo's Dreams and Aunt Chip and the Great Triple Creek Dam Affair by Patricia Polacco (celebrations of imagination and the power of books & reading by this great author-illustrator) 

Mr. Hogan's class Bedm 3/2/2023

Storytime: “Groundhog Day–Shadowplay!” - Bedminster Library/Nicole's Special Ed Class/Bedminster School

For school-aged groups, opened with Groundhog Stays Up Late by Marjory Cuyler
For CDPL live storytime, set up projector with Youtube pure white screen & Reading Rainbow "My Shadow" tabs

Read: I have a Friend by Keiko Narahashi (great figurative language)  
(Science snippet: talk about when shadows are short and long -- midday & ends of day because of the position of the sun.)

Action Song: Shadow Song by Carol Simon Levin (Tune: " Mary Had a Little Lamb”  suit actions to words)

It was a very sunny day, sunny day, sunny day.
It was a very sunny day, when my shadow came to play.
And everywhere that I did go, I did go, I did go,
Everywhere that I did go, my shadow followed too.
It followed me when I ran fast, I ran fast.
It followed me when I ran fast, for that's what shadows do.
   It followed me when I climbed high…
   It followed me when I dug in the sand…
   It followed me when I skipped rope…
It started out pretty short, pretty short, pretty short.
It started out pretty short, in the early afternoon.
Later it grew very long, very long, very long,
Later it grew very long, at the end of day.
When nighttime came, my shadow was gone, (sharply clap hands together)shadow was gone, shadow was gone.
When nighttime came, my shadow was gone -- it had gone away.



Read: Moonbear’s Shadow by Frank Asch (also published as Bear's Shadow)

Action Song: I Am Your Shadow by Carol Simon Levin (Tune: “I'm A Little Teapot”)

I am your shadow, short and fat,
Lift up your hand, I can do that,
Lift up your foot, I'll do that too,
I do anything that you do.
I am your shadow, long and thin,
Put your finger to your chin,
Then watch me, I do that too,
I do anything that you do!

Read: selections from What’s That Shadow – 535.4HAR  (interactive – can read some of the rhymes aloud w/o showing pix to emphasize listening skills) skipped for CDPL
(Could follow with "Look There Daddy" flannel)

Guess Whose Shadow by Stephen Swinburne, better for younger, didn't arrive in time.

Action book: Shadows are About by Ann Whitford Paul (splendid action words =verbs)

Action Song:  Did You Ever See A Shadow?  by Carol Simon Levin (Tune: "Did You Ever See A Lassie", suit actions to words)

Did you ever see a shadow, a shadow, a shadow?
Did you ever see a shadow, swing this way and that?
Swing this way and that way and this way and that way.
Did you ever see a shadow, swing this way and that?
Continue with other actions e.g. Jump… Dance…Clap …

Read: My Shadow by Robert Louis Stevenson (clever classic poem) - showed this from video below at CDPL storytime

Action Song:  Be My Shadow by Carol Simon Levin (Tune: "Be My Echo" from Sesame Street --action song, words in italics are echoed by children)

Be my shadow, sing after me
Do what I do, care-ful-ly
Reach high, high, high (high, high, high)
Bend low, low, low (low, low,low)
Run fast, fast, fast (fast, fast, fast)
Walk slow, slow, slow (slow, slow, slow)
Walk along a tight rope (walk along a tight rope)
Skipping to and fro (skipping to and fro)

Be my shadow (be my shadow)
Do what I do (do what I do)
Follow the leader and sing after me (sing after me)

Climb up stairs (climb up stairs)
Turn around (turn around)
Reach arms to the sky (arms to the sky)
Now touch the ground (touch the ground)
Walk on your tippy toes (walk on your tippy toes)
Then upon your knees (then upon your knees)

You've been my shadow (been my shadow)
You did what I did (did what I did)
You followed the leader and sang after (sang after) me!

Handout available here: http://tinyurl.com/csl-singalong-shadowplay

Action Song: Dancing with my Shadow on  Musical Games by Don Cooper

Flannel (1st grade only, no time in Kindergarten): The Shadows Run Free

DVD Reading Rainbow: My Shadow finger shadow demo. segment (through curtain fall)  left projector on so kids could try themselves (repeatedly ran this segment with no audio the rest of the program - kids could make hand shadows and watch their puppets dance on the lighted screen as well.)  also available on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yh6acX_OkA) -- first five minutes is the science behind light & shadows, at 7:00 there is an incredible shadow puppet show with hand shadow master puppeteer Sonny Fontana. 

Other possibilities: 

Shadowville by Michael Bartolos 
Nighttime Ninja by Barbara DaCosta 

You are My Shadow by Anne Harris, Wichita Public Library (tune: “You are my Sunshine”)

You are my shadow, my only shadow.

Whenever I jump, then you jump too.

Whenever there’s sun, you are right by me.

Oh, clouds (or night) don’t take my shadow away.

Continue with other actions e.g. run, dance, wiggle

Additional possibilities for Groundhog Day:

Talk about Groundhog Day, showing pix of groundhog in Groundhog Day by Lynn Peppas (394.261 Peppas) or from other sources.
Read: Go to Sleep Groundhog by Judy Cox (can create a season/holiday “clock” to accompany story) or Grumpy Groundhog by Maureen Wright

Flannel: Ground Hog Day – Gregory Groundhog Looks for His Shadow based on the book Gregory’s Shadow by Don Freeman

Songs: 
1. Groundhog Day  (to the tune of "Where is Thumbkin? / Frere Jacques", source unknown)

Where is groundhog? Where is groundhog?   (Thumb behind back)
Here I am! Here I am!   (Bring thumb forward)
Shadows on this sunny day,   (wiggle thumb)
Frighten groundhogs all away.   (Thumb behind back)
Winter will stay! Winter will stay!

Where is groundhog? Where is groundhog?   (Thumb behind back)
Here I am! Here I am!   (Bring thumb forward)
My, oh my, a cloudy day.   (Wiggle thumb)
I will stay outside to play.   (Move thumb around)
Spring is near! Spring is near!

2. Shadow Time  (to the tune of "The Itsy-bitsy Spider", source unknown)
The furry little groundhog
Goes in his hole to sleep,
Through the cold winter's
Snow and ice so deep,
In February
He stretches to and fro,
Will the furry little groundhog
Get scared by his shadow?

3. I'm a Little Groundhog (to the tune of "I'm a Little Teapot", source unknown)
I'm a little groundhog, it's my day.
Wake and stretch, go out and play.
Down in my burrow, down so deep,
Time to wake, from my long winter's sleep. I'm a little groundhog short and stout,
February second I will come out.
If I see my shadow they will shout,
"Six weeks more winter without doubt!"

4.  Little Groundhog --Jean Warren  (Tune: "Kookaburra" from
www.preschoolexpress.com/pattern_station03/groundhog_activities_feb03.shtml)
Little Groundhog sits in his home all day.
Wishing that winter would go away.
Go - ice and snow. Go - winds that blow
Let Little Groundhog play.
Little Groundhog sits in the sun all day.
Wishing his shadow would go away.
Go - ice and snow Go - shadows that show
Let Little Groundhog stay.

DVD Go to Sleep Groundhog.



Crafts:

• Shadow Puppets – (materials: cardstock, scissors, hole punches, paper fasteners, pipe cleaners, scotch tape, chopsticks or popsicle sticks) resource book: Making Shadow Puppets 791.53 BRYANT  (2017)
• Silhouette heads (materials: overhead projector, 11x17 black paper, 11x17 construction paper for backing, pencil, scissors, glue sticks, chair to sit in, tape to hold black paper on wall)
• Making silhouettes pictures  – cut their own action shadows (materials: scissors, black paper, construction paper, gluesticks, pencils) -- related book: Nighttime Ninja by Barbara Dacosta
• 
  Hand Shadows handout (use projector left up after DVD) http://www.funnyjunk.com/funny_pictures/4753864/how+to+hand+shadow+like+a+boss/ or https://www.gutenberg.org/files/12962/12962-h/12962-h.htm (LOTS!)
• Groundhog visor (printouts from http://www.daniellesplace.com/imagesApat/groundhog-hat-pat2.gif, scissors, markers, tape)

Storytime: Gifts & Giving - Bedminster School/Nicole's Special Ed Class/Bedminster Library

A storytime featuring tangible & intangible giving, with a nod to geography, interactive songs, and create your own verses. Great lead-in for holiday toy, coat & food drives.

Book: Rabbit’s Gift – George Shannon (Chinese folktale in which each animal tries to share the turnip left at his doorstep.)

Song/Flannel: Helping  by Shel Silverstein from Free to Be, You and Me. Lyrics & tune: http://singbookswithemily.wordpress.com/2013/08/08/helping-an-illustrated-song-by-shel-silverstein/

The Gift – Gabriela Keselman (Mickey's birthday is coming and his parents cannot figure out what to do when he tells them that he wants something big, strong, smooth, sweet, warm, funny, and long-lasting)  Alternatives:  The Gift of Nothing – Patrick McDonnell or Immi’s Gift – Karin Littlewood

The Marvelous Toy by Tom Paxton (sung) (Several book versions available. Hand-me-down toy has special meaning; performed here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCjslf_a11c)

(Stopped here at Clarence Dillon Library, had an indoor snowball fight - see details below -- to finish)

A gift for the animals... 

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

Who knows what a “family tree” is?

Sign Language Song: Family Tree  Song by Tom Chapin & John Forster, additional verses on their album “Family Tree”; video of their performance with signs: http://www.tomchapin.com/docs/lft.htmland and on their video “This Pretty Planet.” 
Signs handout:  http://www.tomchapin.com/docs/ftsigns.html 

Family Tree by John Forster & Tom Chapin © 1988 Limousine Music Co. & The Last Music Co. (ASCAP)
Before the days of Jello
Lived a prehistoric fellow,
Who loved a maid and courted her
Beneath the banyan tree.
And they had lots of children.
And their children all had children.
And they kept on having children
Until one of them had me!
We're a family and we're a tree.
Our roots go deep down in history
From my great-great-granddaddy reaching up to me,
We're a green and growing family tree.

My grandpa came from Russia;
My grandma came from Prussia;
They met in Nova Scotia,
Had my dad in Tennessee.
Then they moved to Yokohama
Where Daddy met my Mama.
Her dad's from Alabama and her mom's part Cherokee.
We're a family and we're a tree.
Our roots go deep down in history
From my great-great-granddaddy reaching up to me,
We're a green and growing family tree.

Well one fine day I may go
To Tierra Del Fuego.
Perhaps I'll meet my wife there
And we'll move to Timbuktu.
And our kid will be bilingual,
And though she may stay single,
She could, of course, comingle with the
King of Kathmandu.
'Cause we're a family and we're a tree.
Our roots go deep down in history
From my great-great-granddaddy reaching up to me,
We're a green and growing family tree.

The folks in Madagascar
Aren't the same as in Alaskar;
They got different foods, different moods
And different colored skin.
You may have a different name,
But underneath we're much the same;
You're probably my cousin and the whole world is our kin.
We're a family and we're a tree.
Our roots go deep down in history
From my great-great-grandmother reaching up to me, (sign for “grandmother is the same hand as grandfather, but thumb touching the chin and bouncing 2x)
We're a green and growing family tree.
We're a green and growing family.

This song appears on Tom Chapin's Family Tree CD.  More very special tree stories here: https://carolsimonlevin.blogspot.com/2013/12/school-age-storytime-very-special-trees.html

Book: Gifts by Jo Ellen Bogart (A grandmother travels the world bringing back gifts both real and fanciful in this lovely rhyming story illustrated with three dimensional pictures created from plasticine clay. The child grows to a young woman and the grandmother gets more frail until the last page shows the child grown up with a child of her own traveling the world and concludes "and everything she shared with me I'm going to share with you." Kids might identify geographic locations mentioned on maps on the endpapers.)

Speaking of clay... Song/Flannel:  I Had a Little Dreidel (with myriad variations --source unknown -- students encouraged to make up new verses!

Song: We Wish You a Happy Chanukah, Merry Christmas, Happy Kwanzaa, Happy New Year… (lyrics to this and many other holiday songs here: http://carolsimonlevin.blogspot.com/2013/12/singalong-keep-spiritwinter-holiday.html)

If time, could add some of the materials from the programs here:  

http://carolsimonlevin.blogspot.com/search/label/Gifts%20and%20Giving

Looking for additional special holiday titles?  Check out this bibliography: http://www.somerset.lib.nj.us/kids/PDFs/holidays2011.pdf

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"

Bedm., Dover Special Needs, CDPL 12/22