Achoo! It’s a sick storytime

By Awnali Mills

Yesterday we had a totally sick storytime.

Well, I don’t know what you were thinking, but our theme was being hurt or sick.  Sometimes I don’t know about you…

So ANYWAY, the books I chose were Soo’s Boo Boos: She’s Got 10! by Tilda Balsley and Llama Llama Home with Mama by Anna Dewdney.  I also read the iPad story Red in Bed by Josh On (app by Daniel Logeman.)

 

To start with, we talked about the rain we were having and did our weather flannel.  Then, we talked about how sick I had been recently and how many storytimes I had missed.  In my magic bag was a box of tissues.  The kids still had a hard time guessing what our storytime theme was about, but some adults finally prompted the answer.  This led to my EL tip:

“Isn’t it cool that talking back and forth uses four different parts of the brain?  That’s why it can take little ones some time to form their responses.”

And on to our books!  First, I told the kids that they were going to get to help me tell the first story.  Fortunately, I had a small group.  I handed out magnetic numbers and read Soo’s Boo Boos.  For each numbered boo boo, a child brought up their number and put it on the board.  Then, as Soo’s mommy fixes her boo boos, I removed a number.  The kids really enjoyed getting to run up with their numbers.

The tale of Soo’s boo boos led nicely into our flannel, one I got from Storytime Katie.  Where Katie used her dog, I used a dragon puppet.  In my defense, it was the biggest furry critter I had with enough parts to enable Band-Aid placement while still being small enough to hide in a box when it was done.  The puppet would tell us where it was hurting, and I would ask all the kids with (blank) color Band-Aids to bring them up and place them on the ouchie.  Once all the Band-Aids had been placed, I asked the dragon if he felt better and he shook himself all over, making all the flannel fly off.  The kids cheered and then raced to pick up all the fallen flannels.

Then we sang:

Wash, Wash, Wash Your Hands. Original Author Unknown http://www.preschooleducation.com/shealth.shtml
Sung To: “Skip to my Lou”

Wash, wash, wash your hands,
Wash, wash, wash your hands,
Wash, wash, wash your hands,
Wash with soap and water.

Rinse, rinse rinse your hands,
Rinse, rinse rinse your hands,
Rinse, rinse rinse your hands,
Rinse them under water.

Dry, dry, dry your hands,
Dry, dry, dry your hands,
Dry, dry, dry your hands,
Dry off all the water.

Then we read Llama Llama Home with Mama.  I was running out of time, so I skipped my other planned activities and went right into Red in Bed.  As usual, the kids loved this one and every time the colors used the wrong color for something, the kids cried, “No!”  When the story was over, the kids asked if we could read it again, but our time was up.