Storytime Sharing: You CAN raise a reader!

We love sharing age appropriate books, songs and rhymes from our storytimes with you. We strive to teach the six early literacy skills at storytimes and offer suggestions for how you can reinforce these skills at home.

This week in Toddler Storytime we sang, danced, and read about snow! Good thing the weather came through just in time and dropped enough snow to have some fun. We read the book, Snowballs by Lois Ehlert which emphasized the pre-reading skill of Print Awareness.

Print Awareness is noticing print, how to handle a book, and knowing how to follow words on a page. As we read the story, we see how a bag full of seeds, popcorn, buttons, strings and other found things can decorate an entire family made of snow! We had fun rotating the book to see each member of the snow family. When the bright sun comes out, we said farewell to the melting snowballs.

We also read Under My Hood I Have a Hat by Karla Kuskin which emphasized the vocabulary literacy skill. As a little girl and her dog undress from all the warm winter layers to enjoy milk and cookies, we learn about various clothes, including a muffler.

Then, in Pip & Squeak by Ian Schoenherr, two tiny mice are heading out to a party, but with all the excitement of fresh fallen snow, they forget their gift!
Traveling to the party, they are not doing so well in finding a gift until they spot something orange on a snowman and think it's cheese (children will quickly identify it's a carrot). At the party we see that their friend rabbit loves their perfect birthday gift! Let your child be a storyteller and retell this charming story, so that they can deepen their narrative literacy skill.

We also had fun with songs, flannels and body puffs! For this snow rhyme, use a cotton ball or make a paper snowflake:
Snow on my forehead, snow on my knees, snow on my eyes, it's getting hard to see! Snow on my boots, snow on my hair, snow on my mittens, snow everywhere (throw your snowflake up and watch it fall)!


Make hand held bells by threading a pipe cleaner through 3 small jingle bells. Tie to make a circle and ring with delight as you march around the house with Frosty the Snowman from Kidz Bop Christmas playing in the background.




Find a new use for your body puffs! Play Carole Peterson's The Freeze song from Dancing Feet, as the whole family throws "snowballs" at each other and freezes when the music pauses.




We also sang to five little snowmen by Karen Banks-Lubicz from Karen for Kids, and counted down as each snowman melted. Your child can draw the five snowmen each on a sheet of paper and count down as they melt.

Our drop-in Toddler Storytimes continue on Thursdays at 10:30 and drop-in Preschool Storytimes continue on Tuesdays at 10:30 for the month of February.