It was a cold rainy Monday the week of Thanksgiving, so attendance was a little sparse, but we had five kids in our target age range, plus two baby siblings, and we had a great time! I introduced my new creation this week: a yoga cube, made from the illustrations in the endpapers of Yoga Bunny by Brian Russo. I showed the book but didn’t read it, explaining that it’s a little long for two-year-olds. We tried out the yoga cube and it went really well – I brought it out three times during storytime and we did about three poses each time.

I also lucked out and found a big donkey puppet in the closet, so I used that to accompany my lead-off book, The Wonky Donkey by Craig Smith. Hee haw!

• Hello song with ASL
• Name song (including the grown-ups, as we only had six total bodies in the room at the beginning)
• The Wonky Donkey by Craig Smith, with puppet. Definitely made at least one parent giggle.
• Introduced the yoga cube and did three poses together
• Grumpy Pants by Claire Messer: this one is a hit every time. It is just the right length for a group of 2-3-year-olds, and just the right concept too – sometimes you can be grumpy for no reason and just need a bath to cheer you up. (A nice cold bath, in Penguin’s case.)
• Song cube: “If You’re Happy and You Know It, Clap Your Hands”
• Carrot and Pea by Morag Hood: Another perfect book for this group, and a nice friendship story that emphasizes how difference can be good.
• Yoga cube
• I Feel Teal by Lauren Rille: I love this book, and it seemed to go over okay, but it may be that this age group doesn’t quite get linking colors and moods, they are still too literal (“I’m wearing green!”)
• Song cube: ABC song
• 88 Instruments by Chris Barton: I hadn’t planned to include this one, it was one of my backup books, but the kids in I Feel Teal play musical instruments on one page of that story so my storytime kids got excited about that too. I pulled the jingly things out of the closet and we made some noise! The jinglers aren’t especially loud, which is good, because there aren’t good prompts built into the book to tell you when to make noise (you could jingle at every page turn, though).
• Song cube: “Zoom Zoom Zoom, We’re Going to the Moon”
• My Heart Is Like A Zoo by Michael Hall, with flannel board. I pointed to the flannel animals before starting the book and asked the kids to point or raise their hands when one of our flannel friends showed up in the book. It worked – with help from grown-ups.
• Yoga cube
• Roly Poly Pangolin by Anna Dewdney: This is a cute story about an unusual animal overcoming his shyness and making friends, plus it comes with a coloring sheet, so that’s what we did for our activity.
• Goodbye song with ASL
• Clean up mats, pass out coloring sheets, set out bowls of crayons

And that’s it for this week. Happy Thanksgiving!