Manners Storytime

Happy Almost Thanksgiving! Turkey day is my all time favorite holiday. Food, family, togetherness, and no gifts, love it. Plus it isn't necessarily tied to religious traditions and can be more easily celebrated by a wide swath of the population. (Okay I married into an Alaskan Native family and I know many Native American groups do not advocate it - my mother-in-law calls it the feast of the oppressors, but I think she's joking.)

However I don't love most kids Thanksgiving books. They either present the rosy version of what is actually a fairly troubling history or I just don't like them. There are a few exceptions, but I didn't want to do only Thanksgiving stories. Instead I chose to do a manners storytime to help prep kids for the big meals. Several parents thanked me for it; it was one of my more popular themes.

I did this as a toddler (18 months to 36 months) storytime, but I'm giving you suggestions for going a little older with the books.

Intro and sign:
I talked about thanksgiving was a good time to practice manners because it was an extra special meal with people we maybe didn't get to see very often, but we should use good manners all the time. Our signs (American Sign Language) for the week were please, thank you, and you're welcome.

Books I used:
Please Say Please: A Penguin's Guide to Manners by Margery Cuyler and Will Hillenbrand, a cute story about penguin's animal friends coming over and showing good and bad manners. Easy to encourage audience participation since every situation ends with "Is that right?" followed by "No, that's wrong." This is the longest book I used and I skipped a few animals because my group was getting restless. Sadly out of print.

How Do Dinosaurs Eat Their Food? by Jane Yolen and Mark Teague, honestly the entire "how do dinosaurs" line is a great one for kids and very well known. But it is always a crowd pleaser, it rhymes, and has nice big clear pictures that work well in groups.

The Nice Book by David Ezra Stein, this is as much a behavior as a manners book, though it has some manners in there. But it is quite short with clear simplistic pictures. It is a great third book for a toddler group because of it's brevity and eye catching illustrations. It is also my choice this week for (the only book I'll read in) baby storytime.

Other Book Options:
Thank You Thanksgiving by David Milgrim, I would have used this if I had reserved it in time. Short, simple, all about saying thank you and about Thanksgiving. Perfect. My favorite kids Thanksgiving book.
Suppose You Meet a Dinosaur: A First Book of Manners by Judy Sierra, Tim Bowers. Good book, but I already had one on dinosaurs and it was a bit too long. (It would be fine as a first book for toddler storytime, but not as a second.) Plus it focused on general out and about manners not mealtime manners.
Emily's Out and About Book by Cindy Post Senning. Good book, written by the heir to the Emily Post/Miss Manners empire. However it is again a more general manners book and I was focusing on mealtime manners.

Songs:
I don't know specific manners songs, but I added verses to favorite songs.

If you're happy and you know it...
(After the three traditional verses)
If you're polite and you know it, say please & thank you...
If you're polite and you know it, and you really want to show it, if you're polite and you know it...

The Wheels on the Bus
(Do however many traditional verses you want)
The children on the bus say please and thank you, please and thank you, please and thank you...
The driver on the bus says you are welcome, you are welcome, you are welcome...
(Here we use the signs for those words)

By the by I always end "The Wheels on the Bus" with: "The librarians on the bus say READ A BOOK" and use a motion like opening a book (the American Sign Language sign for book).

Flannel Board:
I cheated here and used the Very Hungry Caterpillar flannel board. Hey, it's about eating!

Craft/coloring page:
We don't do crafts, just coloring pages. So we did a turkey coloring page. A very simple craft is to let kids decorate placemats. Either just coloring placemat sized sheets of paper or even gluing on shapes that represent where the fork, knife, plate, etc go. They can be "flash laminated" with contact paper. I have done this in the past and it was widely popular.

Hand Stamp:
A turkey for thanksgiving, or a star because stars use good manners. Or a Thank You one from the card making section of the craft store.

There you go - this is a widely popular storytime (at least for the parents). And it probably reaffirms the role of librarians in socializing to a specific set of class norms, but I can live with that.

Rhythm Storytime (flannel friday)

This week I did a rhythm lapsit storytime inspired by a book I found on the new book cart last week. It was so much fun and so easy. Almost any song or fingerplay works with this theme!

(Lapsit storytime = 18 to 36 months with caregivers in the room) Here's a general outline, though of course I'm talking about our "core" songs that we use every week, feel free to substitute in your own.

Intro: After our standard opening song, I asked the kids if they knew what rhythm was. Then we all clapped together. Than faster. Then in a very simple rhythm. (Four beats, clap clap rest clap)

Wiggle game (follow the monkey)

Book: Cha-Cha Chimps by Julia Durango

This is one of my all time favorite books. I will read it for any possible theme: monkeys, dancing, jungle friends, counting, rhythms, etc. I love the repeated chorus "ee-oo-ah ah ah 9 little chimps do the cha cha cha". I get the whole group to say it with me. And it rhymes and has a great beat to read it to.

Songs and movement: Here we did our normal, every week songs (I'm a little teapot, head shoulders knees & toes, etc). As well we did the Grand Old Duke of York, repeated that faster and slower.
Grand Old Duke of York is a great faster, slower rhythm, but it also happens to be one of my favorites.

Wiggle Rhyme

Book: I Got The Rhythm by Connie Schofield-Morrison and Frank Morrison

This was the new book that inspired me. Very fun, happy, colorful story of a girl who walks around her neighborhood hearing and finding the rhythm. Quite short text on each page, one sentence plus a rhythm you can do (stomp stomp or clap clap). Great for toddlers with short attention spans and great for audience participation. Definitely going into my storytime rotation. Bonus points because it is a diverse book.

Songs We sang a piggyback version of "If you're happy and you know it" with "If you've got the rhythm and you know it". The only other words I changed in that song was "and you want the world to know it" became "and you want the world to hear it". You could add in other rhythms besides clapping and stomping like snapping and ding-dong-hip-shakes.

Wiggle Rhyme

Flannel
This flannel board is in our library's collection and pre-dates me. I'm not sure who made it, but it was printed on pellon with a standard printer and then colored in. I don't believe it was purchased as a commercial set. Of course it is the illustrations from the amazing Peanut Butter and Jelly by Nadine Bernard Westcott. Printing on pellon (or another non fusible interfacing) is a great way to expand your flannel board set without having to have incredible artistic abilities. I will do a post on it someday.

I love this rhyme as a story, but as a flannel it works really great too. We put up each piece as we sing that verse of the rhyme and do the hand motion and in between each verse, we clap with the chorus.

Early Literacy Moment:
At the end we have all the illustrations up and I did a quick talk about how when we make a PB&J sandwich we do this THEN this THEN this and how great it is to learn about steps and orders things happen in (what Every Child Ready to Read v1 called narrative skills). I told parents that learning about sequences of events and being able to tell things in sequence was an important part of building reading comprehension and would help them all the way up to their SAT tests. I encouraged them to talk through the steps of making lunch that afternoon together.

More Songs & ABCs & Counting
Instead of just counting, we did this rhyme (to the tune of 10 little Indians):
1 little, 2 little, 3 little fingers
4 little, 5 little, 6 little fingers
7 little, 8 little, 9 little fingers
10 little fingers on my hand!
10 little fingers dancing in the air,
10 little fingers dancing on the ground
10 little fingers dancing in the air,
10 fingers dance everywhere!

Book: Tanka Tanka Skunk! by Steve Webb

This is another one of my favorites. Tanka and Skunka love to play the drums. You say their names and the names of other animals and play the drums so you can hear the beat of each name. For example caterpillar's name has four beats. I've passed out rhythm sticks to kids so they can beat along with me, but this time we just played our leg drums. Bright cheerful pictures, so much fun for audience participation, and amazing early literacy phonological awareness! (also easy to skip pages if you have a rowdy group like I did.)

Close it up:
Insert your favorite closing songs and rhymes here.

That was this week's rhythm lapsit storytime. We had tons of fun - hope you can do it too!