Toddler Story Time: Summer!

Today I was so happy that our new MW Eagle students and parents joined us today! We celebrated our last story time meeting by reading all about Summer! As we gathered we listened to a great Jason Mraz Sesame Street song "Outdoors."

We started by reading Heatwave by Eileen Spinelli. We knew too well about the heat of Summer these characters were talking about! We sang a silly song with Miss Nina called "We are going to Kentucky," which made us get up and move! Then we read Blackout by John Rocco, who is one of my favorite authors. I love his illustrations! We all loved the comic book feel of this book about a family and their community when their lights went out.

Then we read our favorite of the day, I'm bored! by Michael Ian Black. Ever wonder which is more exciting, a potato or a kid? This one had us laughing!! If you want more fun, visit the illustrator's page at inkygirl.com.  

Last we used the Barnes and Noble Online Storytime to get our imaginations working by reading Where the wild things are by Maurice Sendak. It was fun to share a story many of us know and love!

Thanks to everyone who came out! Check back for summer reading ideas! Read lots of fun books this summer! I hope to see you and your friends in the Fall!

Graphic Novel Creators

The members of my club created comic versions of themselves using the Comic Book iPad app.

Toddler Story Time: Books

I LOVE BOOKS!!! (Just in case you didn't already know.) So, today's story time was all about books about books...
First we had to be ready for reading, so we "unplugged" with Doug Unplugged by Dan Yaccarrino. Doug is a robot who discovers that you can learn through a computer, but you learn even more when you experience things! We continued to unwind together by singing "Where is Thumbkin?" with Miss Nina. Then we read A book by by Mordicai Gorstein about a family that lives in books, and the little girl who wants to find her own story.   Next we read We are in a book! by Mo Willems. Remember, Elephant and Piggie want you to read their story again! After that, we watched an ebook version of There's a Monster at the End of this Book  with Grover as our narrator! I loved the sound effects in the telling of the book, too. In manyof the books I loved how the characters actually talked to us!  That was fun!  We closed up story time with our "Good Bye Song" from "Out of the Box." Next week is our final week for Story Time, as our school year is coming to an end. We hope to have many new MW parents attending before their grand tour as incoming families.

Toddler Story Time: Cats

At my house, we love our cats! This is a picture of my Tom and Luna, who came to live with us 3 years ago! They are brother and sister, and are adorable!
We had so much fun reading about, singing about, and acting like CATS! We started by learning a finger rhyme called "Kittens" from the book Hand Rhymes by Marc Brown. Then we read Cat Tales by Mitchell Hall about cats who get their words all mixed up!  They're so silly! Then we sang "When cats get up in the morning" with Miss Nina and we were able to make all sorts of fun animal sounds. We all read Have you seen my cat? by Eric Carle together to try to figure out where the little boy's cat had gone.  Then we watched a video of Eric Litwin performing the book Pete the Cat: I love my white shoes. What a groovy, cool dude that Pete the Cat is! We had so much fun singing and helping tell the story with Mr. Eric! Our last story we read was Cat Secrets by Jeff Czekaj which told about all the things that cats love to do.  We ended with our good-bye song and a few meows to top it all off!
We had some special guests from the school district come to visit us during our story time, too. They filmed our time together, and asked a few parents and children to share why story time at Meadow Wood is a part of their week.  It was so nice to hear that everyone is enjoying the time we spend together.  It truly is the highlight of my week! I love seeing moms, dads, and other caregivers bringing their little ones to instill a love of reading in them at such a young age.  (I will update with a link to our video segment once they publish it very soon!)

Children's Book Week

Celebrate great children's books all week long!

Have you read a Magic Tree House book lately, or Where the Wild Things Are, or how about a classic like Peter Pan? Start collecting great reads to enjoy together all the way through Summer!

Here are some events at Blue Willow to help you celebrate new Children's Book Authors, too!
Wednesday, 5/15/2013 5:00 pm

Christopher Healy will discuss and sign his novel for kids, THE HERO’S GUIDE TO STORMING THE CASTLE.
Thursday, May 16, 5:00 p.m.
Eoin Colfer will discuss and sign his novel for kids W.A.R.P.: THE RELUCTANT ASSASSIN.

Toddler Story Time: Mommies

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY! We celebrated our mommies at story time today. We started with the finger play "Five little babies," which also tied in our other theme of animal mommies and counting. Our first book was "Mommy's best kisses" by Margaret Anastas. My little friends were able to identify giraffes, polar bears, and camels as we read about all the places mommies love to kiss and love on their children. Then we sang with Miss Nina about a mommy who was not happy with her children in "Five Little Monkeys" who we're jumping on the bed! Next I shared a wonderful website created by the Pearson Foundation called We Give Books. You sign up for a free account and you can read all sorts of books online for free! And for every book that is read, points are earned that are turned into books being given to deserving organizations. We read the DK book " Mommy loves me" about all the ways our moms love us. Then we read Eric Carles' book "Does a kangaroo have a mother, too?" together. Then we listened to Harry Monster from Sesame Street sing "Furry blue mommy of mine", which makes me want to bop and dance around. We finished by reading "What mommies do best" by Laura Numeroff.

Toddler Story Time: Dogs

Today's story time has gone to the dogs! While we waited for friends to come, we watched several old segments about dogs on Sesame Street. (I love that Sesame Street has an official channel on YouTube!) We also played with a book called Can you spot the spotted dog? by John Rowe. On each page we had to find the spotted dog and his friends, and some of those pages were pretty tricky, and yet we found them all! Our first story was Bear and Dog: Two friends, three stories by Laura Vaccaro Seeger. And since dog had a friend bear, we sang Miss Nina's song "Me and my teddy bear" while rocking the stuffed animal friends in the library. (We had lots of fun WAKING UP Miss Nina so she could finish her song!) Then we read Dog Tales by Janet McLean that helped us know all the things a dog does during the day. We even acted out a few, like dancing, barking, howling, begging, and stretching. Then all the kids helped me tell the story of A ball for Daisy by Chris Raschka. It is a wordless book about a dog who loves playing with her ball! After singing good-bye many of the kids told me about a dog they loved.  Some had their own dog, some had dogs at another family member's home, and others loved their stuffed dogs!