I had intended to post about my 3-5 story time programs each week, but that didn’t happen. And now it is already November. Crazy.

I snooped around the blogosphere and found some very helpful Librarian blogs. One of my favorites is Abby the Librarian. She has some great ideas for story times – rhymes, movement activities, and books. Another thing I’ve started doing are felt boards, which the kids really like. The only problem is that I find myself making them the night before, or sometimes not at all because I just don’t have the time. Also, I’ve been planning story times with only a few days to spare, if that.

I have some pictures of the crafts we did (most are my samples) and at some point later I will add links to my plans. Not that it always goes as planned, mind you, but I do my best to stick with it. Our story times are all drop-in and I never know who we’ll have or how many younger siblings will be in tow. I usually have extra books just in case some don’t work out. Here are the themes I did in the last 2 months:

Week 1 was about Fall. We read some fall-themed books and the craft was tissue paper leaves. This is one of the easiest crafts you can make and works well for a drop-in crowd. My staff pre-cut different leaf shapes and cut strips of red, yellow and orange tissue paper. It’s a great craft that kids can mostly do themselves – all they have to do is crumple up the tissue paper and glue it on the leaf. They also glued the leaf to a piece of blue construction paper (leaves flying through the air!)

Week 2 was Numbers & Counting. We read Chicka, Chicka 1 2 3 by Bill Martin Jr. and a few other counting books. The kids really loved this book and stayed with it. I like to get them involved by having them say the repeated lines with me or asking them to spot things in the picture. For the craft, I had pre-cut tree trunks and then had the parents trace the kids’ hands on green paper and then fold and cut to make four all together for the leaves. It amazed me at how many parents didn’t know about the fold-and-cut trick! Then the kids put green, yellow and red circle stickers (the kind you’d use for yard sale price tags) and drew on numbers. I also had a few foam numbers with sticky backs that I passed out to put on. I found this craft idea on A Mommy’s Adventures – a really cute blog with some great craft ideas.

Week 3 was Colors. I read a few books about colors, such as Where is the Green Sheep? by Mem Fox. The craft was a creative one, no sample to follow. I have 4 tables in the story time room and I set up each table with craft supplies of the same color. There was a green, red, blue and white table. This is a great way to use up random craft supplies hanging around. The colors I chose depended on what we had in stock. We had lots of white cotton balls, q-tips and coffee filters! The kids moved from table to table and created pictures using only the items on the table. Some did all four, while others only did one or two. These pictures were made by the kids.

Week 4 was about Cookies. This is one of my fall-back themes and I didn’t have time to really plan anything so we read If You Give a Mouse a Cookie by Laura Numeroff, plus a couple other cookie books. The craft was to create their own construction paper cookies. They cut out cookie shapes, some big and some small. I had a bunch of scrap paper so they could cut sprinkles or chocolate chips. We talked about different kinds of cookies that they liked when we sat on the floor earlier and I walked around and talked to them about it again to give them ideas.

Week 5 was Halloween! We did some fun Halloween books, ending with my favorite, In a Dark, Dark Wood by David Carter, which ends with a ghost that pops out of the book – the kids LOVE it. I went with another easy craft, but dressed it up a little. The original is the paper plate ghost with streamers. So I planned a ghost, a pumpkin and a black cat. I cut out shapes for the faces and put them out for the kids to glue on. However, the staff member who plans the table crafts (we have a table with a drop-in craft for kids to do in the Children’s Room and it changes each week) also planned the paper plate ghost with streamers. So, I cut the ghost option and just had the pumpkin and black cat. Obviously we need to coordinate our crafts better!