DOOR 2 DOOR STORYTIME

EARLY CHILDHOOD LITERACY SKILLS:  Print Awareness & Narrative Skill

BOOKS TO DISPLAY

The Artist Who Painted a Blue Horse
The Very Hungry Caterpillar
Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?
Panda Bear, Panda Bear, What Do You Hear?
The Very Lonely Firefly
10 Little Rubber Ducks
The Mixed Up Chameleon
The Very Quiet Cricket
Rooster’s Off to See the World
Papa Please Get Me the Moon
Pancakes Pancakes
A House for Hermit Crab
“Slowly, Slowly, Slowly” Said the Sloth

BASIC TIMELINE

1. Intro
2. Hello Song
3. Read-a-Loud Book
4. Flannelboard
5. Read-a-Loud Book
6. Action Rhyme
7. Read-a-Loud Book
8. Flannelboard
9. ASL Goodbye Song
10. Craft

READ-A-LOUD BOOKS

The Grouchy Ladybug
The Very Busy Spider
From Head to Toe

ACTIVITIES

Flannelboard: “The Very Hungry Caterpillar”

Action Rhyme: “Itsy Bitsy Spider” (via Southwest Iowa Library Service Area)
The itsy bitsy spider went up the waterspout
Down came the rain and washed the spider out
Out came teh sun and dried up all the rain
Then the itsy bitsy spider went up the spout again

Flannelboard: “Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?”

CRAFT: Caterpillars!

There are literally dozens of adorable, Eric Carle/The Very Hungry Caterpillar-eque crafts floating around Pinterest and the internet. I really liked a sample I saw on the website: ABC and 123. I modified my version in order to make prep and assembly as easy as possible. I make a quick leaf shaped template. Then, I stacked cardstock 4-5 sheets thick, traced my leaves and proceeded to cut. I used my large, hand held circular hole punch to create dozens of circles (red and green). A tiny, regular sized hole punch was used to add two side-by-side holes to each red, caterpillar head. I cut up brown and black chenille stems/pipe cleaners which were inserted as antennae. Google eyes were provided. All things considered, this was a super-simple craft that the kids enjoyed.

REVIEW:

My munchkins were pretty stoked by this week’s storytime theme. The read-a-loud stories went over really well, as did the extension activities…despite the fact I had higher than normal attendance and telling The Very Hungry Caterpillar collaboratively using flannelboard pieces took FOREVER! Luckily, no one seemed to mind the wait because my attendees had so much fun waiting their turn to “feed the caterpillar”. As an added bonus, I decided to enhance this set of storytime sessions with an Eric Carle/Grouchy Ladybug themed photo-op inspired by an awesome prototype I discovered via Library Goddess. Some children were a bit shy at first, but everyone wanted to take a photo after a few brave extroverts went first.

Storytime crafts Door 2 Door Storytime early childhood literacy Eric Carle every child ready to read home school library narrative skill print awareness The Very Hungry Caterpillar