Books We Read
One-Osaurus Two-Osaurus by Kim Norman (toddler and preschool)
I Love My New Toy by Mo Willems (toddler and preschool)
Vivi Loves Science – Sink or Float by Kimberly Derting (preschool)
I flowed through these by starting with dinosaurs, saying a rhyme where we pretended to be dinosaurs and said “we just played dinosaurs and now we’re going to read about two friends playing with a toy”. Then after Elephant and Piggie I said “now we are going to play with our own toys and learn what floats and what sinks. But first, let’s learn why some things float and others sink.”
Songs We Sang
Dinosaur, Dinosaur
Dinosaur, dinosaur, turn around
Dinosaur, dinosaur touch the ground
Dinosaur, dinosaur, reach up high
Dinosaur, dinosaur, wink one eye
Dinosaur, dinosaur, touch your nose
Dinosaur, dinosaur, touch your toes
Dinosaur, dinosaur, slap your knee
Dinosaur, dinosaur, sit down please
Credit: Storytime Katie
Shake Your Sillies Out
Gotta shake, shake, shake my sillies out
Shake, shake, shake my sillies out
Shake, shake, shake my sillies out
And wiggle my waggles away
I gotta clap, clap, clap my crazies out
Clap, clap, clap my crazies out
Clap, clap, clap my crazies out
And wiggle my waggles away
I gotta jump, jump, jump my jiggles out
Jump, jump, jump my jiggles out
Jump, jump, jump my jiggles out
And wiggle my waggles away
I gotta yawn, yawn, yawn my sleepies out
Yawn, yawn, yawn my sleepies out
Yawn, yawn, yawn my sleepies out
And wiggle my waggles away
I gotta shake, shake, shake my sillies out
Shake, shake, shake my sillies out
Shake, shake, shake my sillies out
And wiggle my waggles away
And wiggle my waggles away
Credit: Raffi
I Wake Up My Hands
I wake up my hands with a clap, clap
Clap a clap, clap, clap, a clap, clap, clap
I wake up my hands with a clap, clap, clap and
I wiggle my waggles away
Verses: Feet – stomp, head – nod, belly-beep, eyes- blink, hips – shake (also fun to take suggestions from the kids)
Credit: Jbrary
Early Literacy Tip
Sorting and grouping teaches your child to notice similarities and differences, learn to categorize, and develop early literacy and numeracy skills.
Flannel Board
One dinosaur went out to play
Outside in the sun one day
It had such enormous fun,
It called for another dinosaur to come!
“Oh, diiiiinosaur”
(Keep counting until each kid has brought theirs up to the board)
Idea from: Storytime in the Stacks
We also practiced sorting by sorting the dinosaurs by color and by dinosaur type. Finally, we put them in order of size once we had them separated by type.
Experiment
What floats and what sinks?
We put different objects I found around the office in water after making predictions about whether it would float or sink!
How it Went
This was my favorite storytime! Doing a little science experiment at the end was so much fun and the kids did not want to leave. Seriously, if you have a bucket and a sink, do this experiment after storytime one day!
The dinosaurs flannel was so fun that I will probably bring it back in a dinosaur themed storytime in the future. Kids get so excited when they see a book with dinosaurs in it.
The books were really popular, though with the younger groups, I skipped a few pages of Vivi Loves Science because it gets a little wordy for them and you can see their attention disappearing.