House Storytime, Friday, August 31

Puppet: Our turtle puppet came out of his house in his shell long enough to make the rounds:
There was a little, who lived in a box.
He swam in the puddles, he climbed on the rocks.
HE snapped at the mosquitoes, he snapped at the fleas.
He snapped a the minnows, he snapped at me!

He caught the mosquitoes, he caught the fleas,
He caught the minnows, but he didn't catch me!

There were some new little minnows in story hour today, Dylan and Bianca, today, and they liked being nibbled.
Books:
Guess What I Am by Anni Axworthy. This is a nice die-cut, but any book can be used as an intro to this storyhour that's interactional. "What has a lot of teeth and lives in the ocean?" "What's a bird that can't fly and lives at the South Pole?" 
Not this year: The Way Back Home by Oliver Jeffers. Love this wonderful, wide-eyed book about a little boy who finds an airplane in the back of his closet. Perfect for storytime.
Vincent Paints His House by Tedd Arnold. Love it!
The Napping House by Audrey Woods. With the Big Book and a xylophone, I had the perfect combo.

I struck a different note for each character in the book. This really worked -- thanks for the loan of the xylophone, Dan, Barbara, and Danny!

Max Cleans Up by Rosemary Wells.  Would Max be good about cleaning up?  Oliver knew the answer to that! Not a chance. Max was a disaster!

If All the Animals Came Inside by Eric Pinder. With Marc Brown's bright, funny pictures and Eric Pinder's wonderfully silly versification, this is a great storytime readaloud. And who wouldn't love the premise? If all the animals came inside. The walls would temble. The closets would quake. Oh, what a terrible mess we would make! Next time, I think I'll try to get the kids to beat out the rhythm of that couplet in chorus.
The Doghouse by Jan Thomas. Think The Sandlot boiled down a Jan Thomas book.  Sooooo funny, sooooo charming, a perfect readaloud.

Last year we made a pop-up house (link below) but it was kind of product and I've been doing a lot of those lately so I felt like just some process artwork for a change.  So I hit upon this spider web white crayon resist.  "You're all going to get a piece of white paper and a white crayon for coloring. How will that work?" Milo answered: "Oh, I don't think white on white will do."

Craft: House collages w. stickers, markers, and a little scissor action.

Last year: watercolor over white crayon

This is the one I made.  Milo was right; coloring white on white is hard.  So I warned the kids to color SUPER SLOW & SUPER STRONG so they could go over their lines a bit.  The results?  

This is the kid version.  Actually, with several you really could see the spider web peaking through.

Anyway, it was a very fun craft, and some of my more easily bored crafters enjoyed it.  (The stars are made with sponge brushes from Oriental Trading. I didn't really intend for them to add stars -- I just put them out so the easily bored could fill up the space faster, but they were happy fooling around with the colors.)

Last year's craft: 

Our craft was cards with a  Pop-Up House  designed by the great pop-up artist Robt Sabuda himself. There was some fine glue sticking and paper fringeing and drawing and stickering done.

Since Halloween is right around the corner, this year I'll alter the Pop-up House pattern by making the roof more slanty and therefore more haunted.  It would be a fun tie-in for Ghosts in the House; we can glue on tissue paper ghosts.