Good Days and Bad Days Preschool Story Time

I went and saw the movie Gravity a few weekends ago (it was amazing, btw), and a very interesting thing happened to me.  As we were going in, a library patron came out and recognized my boyfriend and I (we both work at libraries), and stopped to chat.  As we were talking, he told us that he loved the library because he recently found a book he had read a loooong time ago and checked it out, and that it REALLY reminded him of the movie we were going to see.  He then said, "Wait a second, I'll go grab it, it's in my car!", ran out to his car, came back, and proceeded to read us Fortunately by Remy Charlip.  I remember reading this book as a kid, and he was also TOTALLY right about Gravity being very thematically similar to Fortunately.  FORTUNATELY for me, I realized how awesome this book would be at story time.  And there you have it -- the reason I am doing a Good Day/Bad Day Story Time today, 10/17 :)

Opening Song:  Open Them Shut Them (From now on I'll just link to this, instead of opening it.  Feel free to click if you want to see my version of this popular story time song!)

Opening Nursery Rhyme: Hey Diddle Diddle and Humpty Dumpty

A new nursery rhyme, how exciting!  I haven't done "Hey Diddle Diddle" yet this season, so I'm going to add it in and teach it to them this morning.  This is another rhyme with movement I haven't found filmed anywhere the way I do it, so at some point I will film myself doing it so you can see.  I'll probably also do Humpty Dumpty, 'cause it gets us standing up before the first story.

Opening Discussion: BAD days and GOOD days!

I'll start by pulling the felt letters for "BAD" and "GOOD" out of my magical Dr. Seuss pencil box, and we'll sound them out together.  But then, I have a super fun activity!  Also hidden in the Dr. Seuss box I have tucked away photos of things that might happen on good days and bad days.  I'm then going to have the kids sort the images on the flannel board, and tell me whether they belong on the good side, or the bad side!  I have a few ambiguous images, to get conversation going.  Here's a few examples of the images I printed out (and laminated and glued felt to the back of):

 

 Picnic in the rain!  Good day or bad day?  Depends on whether you think it's fun to be outside in the rain! 

 I'm not sure how anyone could link eating delicious ice cream, but we'll see if I have any preschool ice cream haters.

SO SAD.  THE SADDEST THING.  Unless you hate ice cream, I suppose? 








Book #1: Fortunately by Remy Charlip

Since this is the book I designed this entire story time around, I'm going to read it first.  It really is perfect for preschool story time -- it'll be great to use for prediction dialog -- I can ask questions such as, "What good thing do you think will happen on the next page to fix this problem?".  The pictures are fantastic -- all the fortunately pages have bright, happy, colorful illustrations, and the unfortunately pages are in black & white. 

Action Rhyme/Game: Sleeping, sleeping, all the children are sleeping!

I think I may have learned this game from my Fairy Twin, Emily, actually!  She's used it in toddler time a bunch, and I'm not sure why I haven't absconded with it for preschoolers yet.  We'll see how it goes!  I am going to also borrow her adorable gigantic die with animals on each side for this game.  It basically goes like this. 

Me:  Sleeeping, sleeeeeping, all the children are sleeping! (Children pretend to sleep)
And when they woke up they were....
(Here I'll throw the giant die, or have a kid or parent do it and see what animal it lands on)
MONKEYS!

The kids then wake up from their fake "naps" and pretend to be monkeys.  This can go on forever with a million  different animals, if you'd like. 


Book #2: Mr. Tiger Goes Wild by Peter Brown

 I'm not sure if this book completely fits the theme, but I think that going wild counts as a good day, so I'm adding it in.  This is a new book, and I'm a little worried the pictures will be too small and detailed for my ginormous story time groups, but I'm going to try it because I love it, and it fits in with our previous action rhyme.






Action Rhyme: Baby Shark

I learned this song at camp when I was probably 10 or 11, and I have never been able to get it out of my head since.  I did adjust the lyrics from the camp version a bit, 'cause there's a little bit more blood & guts in that one, but preschoolers LOVE THIS SONG.  I've had parents tell me their kids go home and just cannot stop singing it.  It's kind of long, lyric-wise, so I'm just going to post the video of myself doing it.  It's the best.



Book #3: Good News Bad News by Jeff Mack

Everything ended up taking a little longer than I expected (as usual), so instead of doing a longer book like I planned, we did this book, which has very few words.  The kids basically get to tell the story for you, which is great for developing narrative skills!







Closing Rhyme: Tickle the Clouds

Tickle the clouds
Tickle your toes
Turn around
Tickle your nose!
Reach for the ground
Reach up high!
Story time is over,
Wave goodbye!

I got this rhyme from this awesome Jbrary video: Jbrary Goodbye Songs

--Sara