Storytime today started with a small enough group (just 8 kids, plus an infant) that I swapped the name song in for “The More We Get Together.” I always like to do the name song if there are ten kids or fewer, because (a) it helps me learn the kids’ names and (b) some of them really love being the center of attention! Usually we have more than ten kids, though, so the name song would take up too much time. Today some more came in throughout storytime, and we ended up with about 11.

• Welcome and announcements (I remembered – I’m very proud of myself – that next Monday is a holiday and the library will be closed, so my next storytime after this is in two weeks)
• “Hello Friends” song with ASL (Jbrary)
• Name song (“___ is here today” x3 “we all clap our hands, ___ is here today”)
• Three short poems from The Frogs and Toads All Sang by Arnold Lobel
• Are You A Monkey?: a tale of animal charades, by Marine Rivoal, translated/adapted by Maria Tunney. This is a much longer book than I’d usually use for a group of 2-3-year-olds, but it has so many opportunities for participation (animal sounds and motions) that it worked as a lead-off book…
• …provided we did “Shake Your Sillies Out” with egg shakers right afterward!
• And we kept our egg shakers for The Odd Egg by Emily Gravett. I would have liked to have Monkey and Me in the lineup instead, but it was checked out, and The Odd Egg worked well with the shakers – I asked the kids to shake on page turns or when we said the word “egg.”
• Mamasaurus by Stephan Lomp: This is a “where’s my mother?” plot, but with dinosaurs. It’s not my most favorite picture book of all time, but I thought the dinosaurs might appeal. It seemed to hold their attention well enough.
• The mouse house game! They love this. We played three times.
• “Where is Thumbkin?” song/fingerplay
• A Parade of Elephants by Kevin Henkes: I have felt elephants for this, but didn’t use them today; we just counted, marched, and made elephant sounds.
• “Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes”
• “Goodbye Friends” with ASL (Jbrary)
• Put away mats, color with markers(!) and crayons on butcher paper (This is the first time I put out markers. I did ask the grown-ups to help make sure the caps got on the markers when they were done, and they did!).

“Little mouse, little mouse, are you in the orange house?”