When I walked into the children’s room at the library this morning, two staff were already talking about recent infectious disease news. I decided to address the issue of how sickness spreads at the beginning of my storytime by sharing two tips: (1) Wash your hands frequently with soap and water for the time it takes to sing “Happy Birthday” twice, and (2) when you sneeze or cough, bring your elbow up to your face, instead of coughing into your hand or whatever else happens to be in front of you. Fortunately, I had made a birthday cake felt board a while ago, so we counted out three candles (because March is the third month, and no one had a birthday today – I asked) and sang the happy birthday song while pretending to wash our hands.

• Welcome and announcements
• “Hello Friends” song with ASL
• “Happy Birthday” song, miming hand-washing, with felt board cake and candles
• Book! by Kristine O’Connell George and Maggie Smith
• Stretch: hands up, hands down, hands to the left, hands to the right, repeat (faster)
• A Fox Found A Box by Ged Adamson: How do you listen to music? (Most kids today wouldn’t recognize a radio as drawn in this book, so we talked about that first.)
• Song cube: “Zoom, Zoom, Zoom, We’re Going to the Moon” and “ABCs”
• “Bees” by Aileen Fisher, from The Beeman by Laurie Krebs, illustrated by Valeria Cis: I decided this book might be a little long, even as a lead-off book, but I shared the poem from the beginning.
• The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle, with felt board fruit, caterpillar, and butterfly: I hand out the felt fruit first, and there’s always enough for every kid to have at least one piece. They come up and stick their fruit to the board when we get to that page in the book.
• Song cube: “I Had A Little Turtle” (make a turtle with your hands by holding four fingers together, thumbs out, one hand on top of the other)
• Pete’s A Pizza by William Steig: This is one of my Top Ten storytime books. It’s just the right length, it’s funny, and there are plenty of opportunities for motion/action (kneading dough, sprinkling cheese, etc.).
• “Goodbye Friends” song with ASL
• Craft: Decorate a pizza together (butcher paper, pre-drawn pizza, yellow and red paper circles, glue sticks, crayons)

Stay safe and healthy, everyone. Happy reading!