11/30/18: I covered an extra storytime this week, for the same age group (2-3 years) and some of the same kids. Because I wasn’t sure who would show up, I chose some of my favorite books that have been successful at storytime before, as well as a craft that has been popular in the past (and that is quick and easy to prepare, especially if you happen to have an extra-large “squeeze punch,” which is a giant hole punch that cuts out circles; ours is made by Fiskars).

• Welcome, introduction, announcements, putting up early literacy tips
• Hello Friends song with ASL
• Name song (“____ is here today”)
• The Giant Jumperee by Julia Donaldson, illustrated by Helen Oxenbury
• Song cube: “Zoom zoom zoom, we’re going to the moon”
• Tyrannosaurus Wrecks by Sudipta Bardhan-Quallen, illustrated by Zacahriah Ohora (I meant to hand out scarves before this book, but forgot until a few pages in, so I paused and handed them out in the middle, so the kids could wave them on the word “wrecks”)
• Yoga cube (three poses)
• There’s A Bear on My Chair by Ross Collins
• Song cube: “I’m a Little Teapot”
• Hooray for Hat by Brian Won
• Yoga cube (three poses)
• Carrot and Pea by Morag Hood (foreshadowing: asked the kids what shape the peas were)
• Song cube: “Itsy-bitsy Spider”
• Lots of Dots by Craig Frazier (“We’ll be doing something with lots of dots later…”) When we looked around the room for dots, one observant kid noticed the round magnets holding up the early literacy tips! One grandpa also had dots on his socks.
• Goodbye song with ASL
• Clean up mats, set up craft (gluing colored paper dots to butcher paper)

12/3/18: Monday the weather was beautiful (sunny, spring-like, felt like 50 degrees!) and we had a HUGE group of about 20 kids plus all their grown-ups. There is some overlap between the two groups – plenty of kids come to the Monday and Friday storytimes – so I only repeated one book, There’s A Bear on My Chair. Again we skipped the name song as there were at least twelve kids at the beginning of storytime, and more showed up throughout.

• Welcome and announcements
• Hello song with ASL
• Nanette’s Baguette by Mo Willems
• “Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes”
• Yoga cube (three poses)
• A Greyhound, A Groundhog by Emily Jenkins, illustrated by Chris Appelhans
• Song cube: “I’m A Little Teapot”
• Cub’s Big World by Sarah L. Thomson, illustrated by Joe Cepeda: I wasn’t sure how this one would go over as it is a fair amount of text and not a lot of humor, but it went fairly well.
• “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”
• Yoga cube (three poses)
• Grumpy Pants by Claire Messer – always a favorite
• Song cube: “I Had A Little Turtle”
• There’s A Bear on My Chair by Ross Collins
• Song cube: “ABCs”
• A Parade of Elephants by Kevin Henkes: I cut out five elephants so we could put them up on the whiteboard with magnets on the counting page, and the kids helped tell me which color elephant came next. Then we marched in place, then marched “round” in a “parade.” There is so much to do with this book! I’m working on felt elephants so kids can put them on the flannel board.
• Meant to read three Shel Silverstein poems, but forgot
• Goodbye song with ASL
• Clean up mats, put on music (“The Wheels on the Bus” was specifically requested”) and dance with bubbles!

Toddlers dancing to music with bubbles closely resemble a mosh pit, so it was a small miracle that when one of the littler kids vomited, no one was hit or splattered – the kid found the only clear patch of floor and aimed there. Hurrah! (If you ever want to clear out a storytime room rapidly, this is a surefire way.) The kid had good timing, too, waiting until the very end of the storytime/dance party. Well done, kiddo, and feel better.

So that was an exciting end to the program, but even throughout, it was pretty boisterous. I used as many calming and quieting techniques as I could think of, from singing “Twinkle Twinkle” to doing resting pose from the yoga cube, to anything we could all do together, like stomping our feet during Grumpy Pants; then it’s not exactly quiet, but everyone is making the same kind of noise, so it’s less chaotic. What are your favorite techniques to settle a big group?