All posts in Summer Story Time

Story Time: Leaves

By | October 24, 2012 | Fall, Holidays and Events, Summer Story Time | No comments
Leaf Story Time Preschoolers Toddlers

This summer, we ran a Story Time in the Park program at a local park here in Erie, PA.   The program was a huge success and we had a lot of fun participating in it.  I tried to highlight most of our weeks during the summer, but a few slipped through the cracks.  One of those was Leaf Day, and I thought this season would be a perfect time to share it!

This was an interesting story time because we had two books picked out, and our story reader had taken them home to practice.  She ended up getting sick, so I rushed to the library at 9AM to pick up some replacement books.

Here’s What We Had Picked Out:

What We Ended Up Reading:

My Take on the Books:

The book by Lois Ehler was very good, but the Leaves! Leaves! Leaves! book was a little off.  The review on Amazon says it best: “Unfortunately, the juxtaposition of somewhat detailed botanical facts with the bears’ affectionate dialogue is often jarring, and the static, cut-paper collage illustrations seem too young for the subject matter presented.”  I skimmed over a few facts in order to keep the book moving during story time, but I think another book would have been a better choice.

Song Time!

I found three songs for this story time session:

    • All the Leaves are the Falling Down (Tune of London Bridges)
    • Do you see the colorful leaves (Tune of Muffin Man) Check out the video below for demo!
    • Where is the Red Leaf (Tune of Where is Thumbkin?)

Be sure to grab this free PDF printable from PickleBums for leaf finger puppets and a cute little song!

Craft Time!

For our craft, we wanted to do something really simple.  I had picked up a Pennsylvania coloring book at the zoo just the week before and it had a great coloring page for all our local leaves.  We used that with the kids, but you can find similiar coloring pages here, here or here (or Google!)

More Craft Options:

Check out my Fall Fun Pinterest Board for lots of leaf-related ideas!  I particularly love the leaf-painting project!

Other Story Time in the Park Posts:

I love Fall!

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Story Time in the Park: Bedtime

By | August 13, 2012 | Infants and Toddlers, Preschoolers, Summer Story Time | No comments

But I Don’t Want to Go to Bed!

If you’re a parent, you’ve probably heard that cry more than you’d like to admit.  Thankfully, when you’re at story time in the park, we’re only READING about bedtime.  No one actually has to go to bed!

Books We Read:

 We usually get our books at our local Erie library, so be sure to check your own branch for great story time books!

Making Quilts Craft:

I wanted to go with the monkeys jumping on the bed theme, doing something like a Monkey Paper Plate or an Easy Monkey Face, but Miss Anne said monkey faces creeped her out.  :)  So, we did a quilt craft instead, which turned out really cool.  The kids colored a quilt pattern (find links below) and then crinkled up the paper several times to make it nice and soft.  When we told them the final step of the project, the kids just stared at us in disbelief.  It didn’t take them long to really get into the crumpling and uncrumpling though!

Quilt Patterns:

What About You?

What’s your favorite bed time book?  Leave me a comment and let me know!
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Story Time in the Park: Hats

By | August 6, 2012 | Preschoolers, Summer, Summer Story Time | No comments


For this story time in the park, the team was encouraged to wear a hat, but of course, I forgot mine!  Thankfully, Miss Anne had some extras in her car so I could still sport some hat-titude!

Books We Read:

  • If You Have A Hat. A Silly Rhyming Children’s Picture Book by Gerald Hawksley
  • Blue Hat, Green Hat by Sandra Boynton
  • Caps for Sale by Esphyr Slobodkina
All of these books were a big hit.  Only one was REALLY about hats.  The other mention hats, but of course — the kids didn’t care.  ”If You Have a Hat” was particularly a big hit with kids!

Making Hats Craft:

For our craft, we opted to make paper hats.  We used construction paper instead of the traditional newspaper.  It was a little smaller version, but more sturdy and colorful and perfect for little heads!

 Making Hats

Wearing Hats

You can learn how to make your own paper hats with the video below:

  

Until next time!!

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Story time in the Park: Sheep

By | July 23, 2012 | Erie, Summer Story Time | No comments
IMG_6134

We’ve been doing Story Time at Whitford Park in Erie all summer and man, do I love it!  It’s one of my favorite things in the ministry.  Recently, we had a sheep theme day.  Here’s the details on books and crafts.

Books We Read:

 The Little Lamb

Sheep in a Jeep

Miss Jen Reading Stories

This week, Miss Jen joined us as the story reader. She’s an elementary teacher at a local school, so she already knew a few faces.  I love when we can make those kind of connections.   It shows that the people who attend our church are just regular people.   She did a great job reading.

Craft Time!

For our craft, we did the classic “cotton ball sheep”.  Miss Anne made white circles and little black legs as well as a little head for the sheep.  We have eyeball stickers for the kids to use on the face, but as you’ll see below — some kids decided to go a little crazy with the eyes!

That’s a busy craft table!

Miss Anne’s girls brought some of their stuffed sheep dolls from home and that really livened the table up. Great idea to remember!

Here’s my daughter’s sheep!  As you can see, she went a little nutty with the eyeballs.

I guess she created some type of spider-sheep.  Oh well!

You can find the directions for the sheep craft at Favorite Easter Crafts or check out my Pinterest Board for more Story Time ideas!

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Summer Story Time: Patriotic

By | July 11, 2012 | Holidays and Events, Ministry Ideas, Summer Story Time | No comments
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Last week for Story Time in the Park, we did a Patriotic Theme for the 4th of July (naturally!).  Here’s the books we used:

John, Paul, George & Ben

Happy 4th of July, Jenny Sweeney!

John, Paul, George & Ben was a fun book, but a little too complex for a story time, I think.  I read it at home to our 2 year old to practice and she really enjoyed it, but the kids at story time seemed to get a little restless with it.   The book is about America’s founding fathers — their childhood and what they were best known for.   It was comical, but I think more so for adults who are already familiar with the founding fathers.

Happy 4th of July, Jenny Sweeney was a great choice for story time.  It’s all about getting ready for the 4th of July and is filled with colorful pictures of families hanging out together, the parade, and the fireworks.  The kids really got into this one.

For this story time, we had a pretty big crowd.  One of the local day cares (the one I used to work at, in fact!) has brought a bus load of kids to the park for a field trip and they had arrived about 20 minutes before story time began, so of course we invited them on over.  I was a little nervous that we wouldn’t have enough freezer pops, but like the feeding of the 5,000, the Lord provided!  (Another lesson in preparing for more than you think you’ll have!)

In order to accommodate the bigger crowd, we split the kids into two groups with one group doing the craft first and one group listening to the stories first.  This worked out well and kept the craft table from turning into a complete zoo!

For our craft, we made an American Flag with construction paper and stars.  To get the full tutorial, check out this page.

Nice looking flag!

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Story Time in the Park: Ocean Fun

By | July 2, 2012 | Summer, Summer Story Time | 2 Comments
Story Time in the Park
We’ve been having a great time doing story time at Whitford Park this summer.  This week’s theme was Oceans.

Books We Read:

The kids really loved Max and Ruby and listened well for Beach Day, but Seashells by the Seashore seemed a little too advanced for our 3-5 year old crowd.  Older kids would really enjoy it though.

Songs and Fingerplays

Five Little Fishies

There Was a Little Turtle

1,2,3,4,5 Once I Caught a Fish Alive

We also did a few songs from previous weeks such as “Shh! Be Quiet” and “Open Close Them“.   Kids LOVED the “Five Little Fishies song.  My two year old wants to sing it every chance she gets and I’m pretty sure she was singing it in her sleep the other night!

Craft Time!

We started with this template:

Beach Scene

We had mini stamps and these ocean stamps from Oriental Trading available for the kids to customize their beach scene.

You’ll notice the fish tattoos on the table — a big hit!

Here a stamp! There a stamp!

Which stamp to choose?

Miss Anne’s finished product (example craft!)

For more story time ideas, check out my Story Time Pinterest board, or head to this super cool website someone just tweeted about called Startwithabook.org.

What About You?

How are your summer programs going?

Here’s Some More of our Story Time Selections!

 

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