Pre-K Rabbit Storytime, Friday, April 14 @ 10:30

We'll be searching for eggs in the library again this year, so bring your baskets!  You know what I love best about Easter? When all my alumnae come to visit me on their spring break and I get to see how  SMART and GROWN UP everyone is.

2016: This year's Easter Storytime was THE BEST!!!  We had so much fun, and I got to see so many old friends. Eggs were hidden, eggs were found, balloons were blown up.  It was great.

I was late for storyhour so I rushed in garbed in white plush but without my bunny ears. I was carrying my bag with all my hats, and after I apologized, I started trying them on.  "Is this the right hat?" I asked, and pulled on my witch's hat.  "Nooooo!"  I went through a Cat in the Hat hat (NOOOOH!), a pirate hat (NOOOOOO!), and a crown (NOOOOO!) before I pulled on my ears.  Ham I am!

Books:

• Across the Stream BIG BOOK.  
• Too Many Bunnies by Matt Novak. I had so much fun with this goofy old favorite! I had five little beanie baby rabbits and two strawberry boxes.  All five bunnies were crammed into one of the boxes and the other was empty.  During the book, the bunnies move back and forth between the holes, and I act it out with the bunnies.  
• Wolfie the Bunny by Ame Dyckman.  This is actually a pretty complicated story and a little weird too.  It needs a bit of a set up.  It's about being eaten up, which is always a fave, but it needs a bit of an explanation. Emphasize the chorus, "He's going to eat us up!"
• Fierce Bad Rabbit by Beatrix Potter. Don't forget to bring some wrapping bubbles to stomp on for the boom of the hunter's gun. I just introduced the famous rabbits, Peter Rabbit and Max and Ruby, today.
• Little White Rabbit by Kevin Henkes.  You deserve all those Caldecotts. This was a great wrap up tale at the end of story time.
• Lion vs. Rabbit by Alex Latimer. The pictures are very busy, and they may have missed the humor. 
• The Easter Bunny that Overslept by Priscilla & Otto Friedrich
• Daley B. by Jon Blake. This funky old book deals with a very confused bunny who doesn't know what the heck he is, where he should live, or just what being a rabbit is supposed to be all about.

Songs:

• "Little Bunny Foo Foo." 
• "This is the Way We Shake Our Eggs," to the tune of "This is the Way We Wash Our Clothes" and we shook our dollar-store-plastic-eggs-filled-with-lentils-and-taped-shut way up high, way down low, very fast and then oh-so-sloooooow. 
• "The Bunny Pokey" -- you put your ears, your nose, your tail & your paws in.  At this time I swept away by the whole Easter Bunny spirit. After all, I was the one with the ears. I was the one with a bushy tail.  I felt myself becoming larger then life -- like Kevin Henkes' Little White Rabbit. I was full of myself indeed.
• "Little Peter Rabbit had a fly upon his nose/ Little Peter Rabbit had a fly upon his nose/ Little Peter Rabbit had a fly upon his nose/ and he flicked it till it flew away...& then ear, paw, tail, etc. (Thanks Miss Mary Liberry!), starring Peter Rabbit and the Fly. 

Craft

Shaker Eggs

After years of careful research, I've finally discovered the easy (and only) way to make homemade shaker eggs.  Run the strips of duck tape lengthwise. Then and only then will the eggs not snap open under the baby's determined grips.

Rabbit Mobiles

Have them decorate white paper bags with markers, stamps, stickers, cutting around the edges, etc. These will be the bags for their Easter Eggs. While they do this, you can hide the eggs.  Really, four is plenty per child. A Hershey's Kiss, a butterscotch, and a mini.

A very simple rabbit mobile made of cardstock w/a few stickers.  How I yearn for a diecut at egg time! But Michelle, my obliging teen volunteer, hardly complained at all about cutting out all those bunny rabbits and some eggs.  I gave some visiting four year olds scissors and crayons too, but I kept it simple for the young ones.