If it's that fun to make animal noises with one baby, my Baby Steps co-conspirator and I figured it would be even more fun to do it with a room full of babies! Thus, the "Animal Sounds" Baby Steps plan was born.
The Plan:
- Hello songs:
- Well hello, everybody
- Hello, hello
- Knee Bounces:
- Bouncing up and down in my little red wagon
- Row, row, row your boat
- Rhymes and Songs:
- Roly Poly
- Elevator Song
- Dog on the Bus (yay, Raffi!)
- Stand up activities:
- Practicing Stop
- Handy Spandy
- Egg shakers:
- We're going to Kentucky
- Egg shakers up
In the midst of all our singing and rhyming, we read Mommies say shhh! by Patricia Polacco. For this storytime, we had animal puppets that we used along with the book, holding each of them up and having everyone make the sound along with us. If you don't have access to animal puppets, you can also make little flannel board animals!
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| See? So cute! |
After reading the book, we used a bluetooth speaker connected to my coworker's phone and found an educational app that had a bunch of different animal sounds...we would play each sound, and then the kiddos who were old enough to recognize them would guess what the animal was. Then we would find the animal puppet that went with the sound and all practice making the sound together. So much fun! This was one of my favorite storyimes to date.
Disclaimer: This last activity is obviously more successful if you have some slightly older kids in the room, since tiny babies aren't going to be able to guess, but that doesn't mean you can't do it with only small babies! It's still adorable watching them hear the sound and respond when you hold up puppets.
