Happy April! Today was a super fun storytime. We had a great group of about 14 kids and their grown-ups, and I was excited for our activity/craft to go with A Parade of Elephants. Initially I was planning to read The Rabbit Listened, but ended up swapping it out for Z Is for Moose.

• Welcome and announcements
• “Hello friends” song with ASL from Jbrary
• Hello Hello by Brendan Wenzel: I’m tempted to lead off with this book every time. It always elicits engagement from the kids and provides so many opportunities for moving and thinking.
• Wolfie the Bunny by Amy Dyckman and Zachariah Ohora: This was a little long, but funny, and it doesn’t go where you think it’s going to go. The kids stuck with it (one of them took one look at the cover and observed, “That doesn’t look like a bunny!” Correct, kiddo.)
• Yoga flow: mountain pose and forward fold, feet apart and gentle twist
• I Am Josephine by Jan Thornhill and Jacqui Lee: In general I like to stick to books that have some kind of story (and forward momentum), but this one has questions and animals, which worked out pretty well. It’s also a good one-on-one book to discuss the different categories: living thing, animal, mammal, human being.
• Song cube: “Itsy-bitsy Spider” and “Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes”
• Goose Goes to the Zoo by Laura Wall: The last goose book until she writes a new one. The best part of this one was the page with all the honking: one kid yelled “It’s a car horn!” (It’s not. It’s geese.)
• Yoga flow: tree/flamingo pose (there were flamingos in Goose Goes to the Zoo), Warrior 1 and 2
• “ABC” song to get ready for…
• Z Is for Moose by Kelly Bingham and Paul O. Zelinsky: If you’ve never read this aloud before, give it a few run-throughs first, to decide how you’re going to do the interruptions by Moose and Zebra. So funny, and a sweet ending.
• Song cube: “I Had A Little Turtle”
• Clean up mats
• A Parade of Elephants by Kevin Henkes: We cleaned up the mats first because I wanted clear space for marching and parading. I also turned the flannel board around so everyone could see the flannel elephants, and lots of kids came up to touch them, take them off, and put them back on. Then we read the book and marched!
• “Goodbye friends” song with ASL from Jbrary
• Craft: using glue sticks to glue paper elephants and stars to butcher paper on the wall. I drew a path for them to use if they wanted but we ended up with beautiful chaos, of course. The kids spent a long time doing this – gluing is always a fun activity.