Thanksgiving Storytime

Well, another week has passed and I've only posted about Storytime. Ah well. So it goes.

This week's storytime's theme was THANKSGIVING. Of course. There are not a lot of books (that we own) about Thanksgiving that aren't SUPER wordy. So picking & choosing things didn't go as easily as I had hoped. I also wanted to do more books about autumn, harvest, etc but with early snow & extremely cold temperatures here this year, that didn't feel right.

In the end I found a few things that worked, and we had a great time!

In November by Cynthia Rylant
A great book which is perfect for this chilly, snowy November! Beautiful illustrations, talks about animals, people, the Earth...in November. :)

Next we did a Turkey Felt Board (idea courtesy of Kathryn Roach)

I cut out a turkey shape (free hand) along with feathers. LOTS of feathers. Since we have a lot of kids at Storytime, I wanted to make sure everyone had a feather in their hands. I used all the different colors that I had on hand. It turned out pretty cute. I wish I would've taken a picture after the kids had put up all their feathers!

The song is to the tune of Are You Sleeping?
Our Poor Turkey
Lost his feathers.
Let's all help, everyone.
Do you have a * (red) one?
Come on bring the * (red) one.
Oh what fun!
Oh what fun!

*change the color each time.

The kids had a great time waiting to put their feathers on the flannel board. It was pretty darn exciting! Thank you Kathryn for this great flannel activity!

Next we read Look Who's in the Thanksgiving Play! which is a really cute lift-the-flap book and seemed to get the kids settled back down after the excitement of the Turkey flannel!

Fall Mixed Up was next. Even though we're a month or two behind on this one, the kids enjoyed it an LOVED seeing all the crazy things that are happening in this book. They thought a lot of it was incredibly silly. And it is!

Next up we did the "Turkey Pokey" - yep, essentially the Hokey Pokey (but not in a circle because we don't have enough room) but using turkey body parts - wings, claws, wattles, beak. The kids really enjoyed this & I heard quite a few adults singing along too!

We finished up with Tomie dePaola's My First Thanksgiving. A more simple board book which talks about the first Thanksgiving and what we do to celebrate Thanksgiving today. It's always nice to end on a short book!

Overall it went pretty well. The kids seemed to be interested in the books & were eager & excited to tell me what special plans they had for Thanksgiving Day.

We had 66 at Storytime today - whew!


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