Our Summer Reading program ended last week, which means that our regular preschool storytime resumes this week! I’m super excited to be taking over storytime again. We had a great two months of celebrity storytime, but I’ve been seriously missing flannelboards and fingerplays and reading picture books to preschoolers. I’ve spent the past two weeks revamping my storytime routine, and I’ve added a few new components to it.
1. Writing Activity.
As we all know, the new version of ECRR has an emphasis on writing. However, incorporating writing into storytime can be a little tricky (but definitely doable; the more I think about it, the more ideas I get for it!). So how am I going to add writing to the storytime curriculum? Well, I went out and bought a small white board, and I plan to start each storytime (after the opening song, of course) with a question about our theme, and then I’ll write the children’s answers down on the white board! I may be the one who’s doing the writing, but the children will be taking in the written words and learning that we write from left to right and from top to bottom. They even might start recognizing a few sight words!
2. Rhyme Cube.
Looking back at my past storytimes, I’ve come to the conclusion that I don’t sing enough! To solve this problem, I made a rhyme cube with six rhymes/songs that the children will either already know or learn fairly quickly. I also chose rhymes that I don’t incorporate regularly into storytime. For example, we do variations of If You’re Happy and You Know It and The Hokey Pokey quite a lot. Can you imagine singing If You’re Going to the Moon, Wear Your Boots and then rolling the rhyme cube and having it land on the original If You’re Happy and You Know It? That would drive me crazy, so I stuck with songs we don’t use as often: The Itsy Bitsy Spider, I’m a Little Teacup, The Noble Duke of York, This is the Way the Lady Rides, Twinkle, Twinkle and Row, Row, Row Your Boat.
3. iPad Apps.
Over the summer, I had the opportunity to attend ALA Annual. While I was there, I attended a session called There’s an App for That. It was there that I learned about all the cool things we can do with iPads in our libraries. By the end of the two hours, I was determined to buy my own iPad and start incorporating it into my storytimes. I admit that I’m a bit nervous about this one. However, I’ve been thinking a lot about how I intend to use the iPad in storytimes, and I have a plan. Now I just need to see how it works out. I’ll update more about this at a later date.
fallingflannelboards.wordpress.com 
I too am trying to find ways to use the iPad during storytimes and I just tried it for the first time last week. The idea I used came from another Flannel Friday blogger. Here’s her link: http://storytiming.com/2011/06/03/flannel-friday/
The kids loved it so now I’m trying to figure out what other apps will work well. I can’t wait to see what you come up with!
I’m actually doing a similar animal sounds app for my storytime this week! I didn’t find the same one mentioned in that post, but I got something that should still work out pretty well.
Glad to hear that it worked out well for you! I’ll be interested in seeing what other apps you use in storytimes as well. We’ll have to trade notes. 😉
I’ve used a couple other apps since I last commented. “The Wheels On Bus” app by Duck Duck Moose is fun. The kids sang along to the song as I held the ipad and touched the screen to activate the motions (swiped the door open and shut during that verse and so on…). You can also record the kids signing the song and then play it back for them so they can hear their own voices as you go through each verse. Another fun app is Peekaboo Barn (as well as other Peekaboo apps). There is an animal in the barn making noise. Once the kids guess what it is you can open the barn doors to reveal if they guessed correctly.
I knew about the Peekaboo apps, but had never heard of the Wheels on the Bus one! Thank you so much for sharing! I’m going to type up a blog post about some apps I found.