Thursday, May 23, 2013

Story Time :: All About Cats!

Recently, I began a story telling program at my local toy store Knowledge Nook ~ The Toy Place. At first, we had a handful of children attending my program and then by the fourth week I had more than quadrupled our participants. It was fantastic! And, we knew immediately, the seating area would have to expand.

Initially, I had set out to help my friend establish some great programs in her store and discovered how large the need truly was in our community for *free* early educational programming. I'm joyful to be able to assist her and to also stimulate all those little minds through stories, crafts, songs and activities.

All About Cats

 
For this story time, I opened with the If you're ready for a story song as follows:
If you're ready for a story take a seat. 
If you're ready for a story take a seat.
Clap your hands and stomp your feet.
Make your hands all nice and neat.
If you're ready for a story take a seat.
 
This song is sung to the rhythm of If you're happy and you know it.
 
I then read Splat the Cat by Rob Scotton; a cute story about a cat named Splat who has his first day at cat school. He takes his best friend Seymour, a mouse, with him and taught his fellow classmates a thing or two about being a cat.
 
This story is followed by Have you seen my cat? by Eric Carle. Carle creates a fun and easy to follow storyline for even the youngest of participants.
 
For our story time activity, I asked the children to make a small fist and pretend it was a sweet kitty. They were then suppose to pet their kitty as we sang the following song:
 
Soft kitty, warm kitty
Little ball of fur.
Happy kitty, sleepy kitty
Purr, purr, purr.
 
We sang the song twice while I used the hand puppet as my kitty. The children really seemed to enjoy this simple activity.
 
After our kitty song, I read the last book - Red Cat Blue Cat by Jenni Desmond about a pair of jealous cats. Each cat would prefer to be the other and they work hard trying to figure out that in the end they are who they are.
 
I didn't get a chance to read another book I had selected (The Amazing Hamweenie by Patty Bowman) as by now the group had an extreme case of the wiggles. It's a silly book!
 
We made thumb print cats for our craft. It was an extremely simple craft involving ink pads, paper, markers and wet wipes for clean-up.


 

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