Cows Preschool Story Time

We're finally back after a short holiday story time break, and I'm SO HAPPY!  It's nice to have a few weeks off, but I always miss doing story time when I'm away for it from too long.  Over the break I found a bunch of really awesome cow story time books -- so here we go with our first theme of the year (from 1/16/2014), COWS!  Anyway, without further amoo (hehehehe)...

Opening Song:  Open Them Shut Them (Click here for the link to my version!)

Opening Activity: Spell "COWS" with felt letters.  I've been trying to connect my opening spelling games to kids names -- so as I go I'll ask if anyone has any of the letters in the word in their name.  It always starts good conversation (for example: "MY SISTER'S NAME HAS SEVEN Ws IN IT!) :) 

Opening Nursery Rhymes: Hey Diddle Diddle ('cause there's a cow in it), and Hickory Dickory Dock.  I really need to film myself doing some of these nursery rhymes that I can't find the exact version I do anywhere on YouTube :) 

  Book #1: Millie Waits for the Mail by Alexander Steffensmeier

 I love the hilarious page with the picture of Millie being terrifying and the mailman screaming and the audience realizing that Millie's favorite thing is "SCARING THE MAILMAN!"  I usually do some predicting before this page with the preschoolers, and they never guess that that's her favorite past-time :)

  Action Activity: Sleeping Sleeping, All the Children Are Sleeping!

This is a really fun game where all the preschoolers pretend to be sleeping on the ground.  I encourage snoring noises, because why not?  While they do this, I quietly say, "Sleeping sleeping, all the children are sleeping!  And when they woke up they were...." and then I tell them what to transform into when they wake up.  Then the kids wake up and pretend to be whatever I told them to be!  For example, this time we did cows, monkeys, airplanes, and more.  This can go on for quite some time if you want it to (and the preschoolers usually want it to).

Book #2: The Cow Loves Cookies by Karma Wilson

For this book, I actually printed out and laminated pictures of each of the animals with their favorite food for the kids to help me remember and read the book -- matching each animal with their food of choice!  I could point at the picture on the felt board if they had trouble remembering or reading.

Action Rhyme: Old MacDonald Had a Farm

To jazz up this familiar favorite, I used our farm-shaped finger puppet stage that has opening doors.  For each animal in the song, I put on a finger puppet and popped it out of the door!  To make this even more fun, I used lots of animals with strange noises that would never be found on a farm.  We found a bat ("with an EEE EEE here and an EEEE EEE there!"), a turtle (we were just silent during the parts where the animal usually makes a noise), an owl, and more!

Book #3: Moo by David LaRochelle

I think I wish I had used this book first instead of last.  I wanted the kids to help me read the book by looking at the way the text was written (big?  small? long? short?) and the punctuation.  Since the book is entirely written using only one word, I thought it'd be great for that!  The kids were kind of restless by this point, though, and had a little trouble concentrating.  I think it would work really well at the beginning next time.

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