Story Time - Being Thankful - and a Giveaway!

For our Thanksgiving story times, we steer away from historical depictions (traditional or more accurate) of the 'first' Thanksgiving, and focus on being thankful and sharing. There is so much goodness and fun to have with this topic, it could easily take the whole month!

Stories



My kids at home have read this so many times that, whenever we see wild turkeys cross the road in front of us, even the two-year-old says, "Gobble-gobble wibble-wobble!" Such a fun rhythm and rhyme, the words just roll off your tongue.



Cumulative lines, great for predicting, follow the family as everything is prepared just right, and then - oh, no! The turkey meets with disaster. All is well, however, because the family still has each others' company and plenty left to eat.


9781416958567
$17.99

Another one with predictable lines that let kids chime in, and again focusing on sharing and enjoying each others' company.



Not about the holiday at all, this is a fun way to talk about sharing, with call and response and predicting. And dinosaurs!

Songs


This site has some fun and easy turkey songs. Since we ended up skipping the Monster Pokey last month, we went with the Turkey Pokey this time around. In the middle of "put your tail feathers in", I did think to call out, "no Facebook videos!" Nobody needs to see Miss Ami shaking her tail feathers all about.

Craft

Omg, why in 2016 am I still seeing paper headdresses and buckled Pilgrim hats on Pinterest? Just...don't, people. Please. Don't.

We did a few thankfulness-related crafts during field trips, but this week took an entirely different tack and spun off of Groovy Joe. What could a library possibly need more than 30-40 preschoolers with their own drums?!

We put out a plea for tubs, and actually came up with more coffee than ice cream, but those worked even better. City employees drink a LOT of coffee, so we got bunches from City Hall, as well as a literal truckload from a friend who hadn't made it down to the recycling place in a while.

And then I got stuck at home with sick kids, and had to cancel the second story time. That's okay, our craft table had finally run out of leftover Halloween crafts, so EVERYBODY can have a drum!

We didn't get too fancy, just put out paper, foam shaped, and various shinies. The important part is the fun, and tapping out rhythms - a great skill to form now which helps with hearing syllables later!

Prereading Skills

So, we had rhythm, rhyme, repetition, predicting, vocabulary, and print motivation. Quite a bit packed into those four short stories!

Giveaway

The kids can't have all the fun, can they? Today we would like to offer up this pretty adult coloring book from Harper Collins:

9780062481917

Just tell us in the comments something you are thankful for, and you are automatically entered! I will draw a winner at random on Wednesday, November 16, and try to get it in the mail before Thanksgiving - so you have a way to tune out any family...discussions going on around you, should the need arise. Make sure your comment includes a way for me to get hold of you, and US addresses only, please!