Giving thanks for storytime

As a part-time library assistant, I'm not really involved in the programming at our library.  I do have some of the most amazing coworkers ever who find ways to include me in their programming, but it's very rare that I get to be involved in the actual planning stages of said programs.

That being said, this year we had a preschool group ask about holding a November storytime at the library, and all the stars aligned for me...I got to plan my own storytime!  This may not be exciting for all the seasoned librarians out there, but for me, two years post-graduation, still trying to get hired as an actual librarian somewhere, I was ecstatic!  The holiday season truly is magical, you guys.

Anyway, as soon as I heard that I got to do a Thanksgiving-themed storytime, I took to Pinterest to find some ideas, and oh my...did I find ideas.  It's mind-boggling how many turkey crafts are out there in the world for people to choose from.  Fortunately (for me, not so much for him), my husband had a medical procedure scheduled the Friday after I was told I got to do this, so I was off work to take care of him...and, as it turned out, to make a ridiculous number of Thanksgiving crafts so I could decide which one I wanted to use.

I made a paper bag puppet, a handprint turkey hat, a couple coffee filter turkeys (my husband even got to make one of these, he was very excited), and two different paper plate turkeys before I finally settled on the paper plate turkeys with feathers for them to write their names on.  Of course, by "settled on," I mean "am probably going to use, unless I change my mind again."  Pinterest is like the craft version of online dating, I can't commit because I keep thinking, "there has to be better out there!" (yep, here I am, halfway through this blog post, browsing Pinterest at work, and I find this adorable turkey hat!  So cute.)

Then, of course, there's the actual story portion of storytime!  So many options.  And they're all adorable!  How do you settle on only three or four?  I finally landed on Bear Says Thanks, Turkey Trouble, and I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Pie.  Of course, then I came across a few different flannel board ideas to accompany my final story, ended up making two of them, and ultimately had to make one of my coworkers choose which I should use because I couldn't decide which I liked more.

Anyway, in spite of being overloaded with fantastic options, I finally managed to focus in and make my plans.  We started off by showing the kids pictures of Thanksgiving foods, a family eating together, etc. and having them guess what we were going to talk about.  Since we were talking about Thanksgiving, the kids and I agreed that it only made sense to start out by reading a story about being thankful...Bear Says Thanks.  I had some pictures of all the food Bear's friends bring to share with him to put up on the flannel board, but the kids were so absorbed in the story that we ended up not using them.  Everyone had a great time saying "thanks" along with Bear, and one of the boys felt very strongly that Bear should invest in a front door, so people wouldn't be able to keep bursting into his house uninvited.

Just like Bear was thankful for his friends, we all figured we had a lot to be thankful for, so we sung "if you're thankful and you know it" and clapped our hands, stomped our feet, and shouted "I am!" to show everyone how thankful we were.  Then we helped poor turkey, who wasn't feeling as thankful as we were, find his feathers so he would be a little happier.  We were supposed to have ten kids visit us, so I made enough feathers for all of them...and as it turns out, ten may be a few too many with a group of restless kiddos.  By some miracle we managed to keep everyone focused, and they loved being able to come up to the board to put turkey's feathers on.  They also got really excited about taking all the feathers down when we were ready to move on, which gave us a great opportunity to work with them on sharing and taking turns pulling the feathers off the board.  One thing I would change if I use this activity again would be to come up with a rhyme with more repetition, to make it easier for the kids to follow along.  Several of them were trying to sing along with us, but the words seemed a little too hard for them to remember.  Still though, I felt like this was ultimately a success.

We couldn't help but notice after helping Turkey find all of his feathers that he still seemed a little down.  After some discussion, we realized that maybe it was because he was still in trouble...Turkey Trouble.  I have to admit, I chose this story because I love it, and their teacher was really excited to hear it--she even commented that she had never read that story before.  As it turned out, though, the story was not quite as captivating for the younger audience members.  I managed to keep them interested by having them make all the animal's noises along with me and changing up the story's wording a bit, but the next time I use this story, I'll probably plan for some modifications.  Reading Turkey Trouble was a great lead-in to our next activity, though, and this one seemed to be far and away the favorite activity of our entire storytime.

Five Nervous Turkeys

I actually came across this idea for Five Nervous Turkeys when emergency planning a babytime program (when it rains, it pours...the opportunity to plan two programs in one week was unprecedented and awesome!), and I loved it so much that I decided to use it for this storytime instead of the pumpkin pie rhyme I was originally planning on.  We had so much fun singing the rhyme together, and all of us got really into the "gobble, quack quack!" at the end.  It got increasingly silly, and by the time we got to one turkey, our quacking was pretty ridiculous.  As a bonus, because I feel like I've firmly established that I can't find one good idea and then just leave well enough alone, I've discovered several equally adorable variations of this rhyme since making my original set, so I'll definitely be adding some of those variations to my repertoire.  It was so. much. fun.

Our final story was I know an old lady who swallowed a pie, accompanied by our rapidly enlarging flannel old lady, which I was worried would be a little long for them.  It seemed to go pretty well, though, and by the end, all the kids were saying the book had made them hungry.  We shook off those hunger pangs with an enthusiastic performance of the Turkey Pokey, sung a goodbye song, and then moved on to making our paper plate turkeys (yes, I stuck with my craft decision!  I was very proud of myself for not changing my mind.)  Part of what I loved about this craft was that it gave everyone the opportunity to write out their names on their turkey's feathers.  We only had one child who didn't know how to write his name, so we made dashed outlines of each letter, and then he got to practice tracing over each letter with different colored crayons, so he still got to write his name.  Everyone seemed thrilled with how their turkeys turned out--they were lining up to show them off to all of the adults.  It was awesome.

There were definitely a few rough patches involved in this whole escapade (the most notable might be when I woke up around one o'clock in the morning the day of our storytime realizing that I had never made sure we had paper plates available for the craft), but ultimately, I would definitely call it a successful first run at planning and implementing my own preschool storytime.  Everyone was engaged and enthusiastic, and we all had a great time together.  I'm feeling very thankful for Thanksgiving storytimes right now.