Baby Storytime: New Stuff and Community Building

February 4, 2013 by Kendra 14 Comments

So good to see the babies again after a two week hiatus. We were closed for MLK, Jr. Day and I was in Seattle last Monday (they were well taken care of by a co-worker). Since it’s a new month, there are some new things happening in storytime.

Here’s today’s outline with changes noted and explained. I’m excited and nervous to see how everything works out.

Hello Bubbles

Penny Pointers

Zoom Zoom Zoom

Bouncing, Bouncing Baby on my Knee (use your baby’s name instead of “baby” if you want)

Book: Look at the Baby by Kelly Johnson (what delicious babies in this book!)

Noble Duke of York

Song Cube: BUS: Wheels on the Bus

This is new to baby storytime! I got the idea to make one from Mel’s Desk  but  Andrea has a fancy spinner I wish I had! When I introduced the cube I told parents even babies are starting to learn to attach meaning to symbols. By using the song cube we are helping the draw connections between the picture of a star and the word star. We are adding to their vocabulary and reinforcing that this black thing I see is a word! I rolled the cub and bus was on top. I showed the babies the bus, while we all said the word (everyone was really in to this!) and then sang wheels on the bus. We’ll do this every week for at least this month, but if it’s successful like it was today I’ll keep it going. If you’d like the template I used to make it (a box template with clip art images put on in Publisher) let me know and I’ll send it to you.

My cube looks like this:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Book: I’m a Little Teapot by Annie Kubler

Parachute:

These are the Colors Over You

Peek-a-Boo

Song Sharing: Mulberry Bush in the first group, a Spanish rhyme in the second group (forgot to ask her the name of it!)

This is also new! Parents and grandparents often tell after storytime me about a song they remembered from when they were little or they sang to their children. Since I’m challenging myself to do more community building I saw an opportunity to incorporate their songs in baby storytime. Each week I will ask the group if they have a song or rhyme they would like to share. It can be one we have done before in storytime, or one we may never have heard (or even in a language other than English!). No one is required to share and if no one has anything to share one week, I have plenty of things to throw in to the ring.

My goal is to bring these parents closer together (Oh, you speak Spanish, too?!, That’s my favorite song, too!) but also to make storytime goers feel more involved in what we are doing. They are not just here to be entertained for 20 minutes, bouncing their baby and singing along. There is tremendous value in that, of course! However, we are hoping they are singing and bouncing their babies at home, right? So I want them to see that other parents (not just the librarian who may or may not be a parent) are singing to their babies. Other parents are comfortable singing in public so I can definitely sing in the privacy of my nursery or kitchen! Not to mention the camaraderie that naturally happens among people sharing parts of their life.

We’ll see how it goes. It was VERY well received today, even in the second group where she had to teach it to us in Spanish. None of us got it right, but it sure was fun trying-smiles and laughter in abundance!

Cuckoo Clock

Goodbye Bubbles

Splish Splash

Playtime!

 

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