Storytime: Bugs

We're on Fall Break from our fall storytimes this week while the kids are out of school and our annual harvest festival is going on, but we had a preschool group visit and did storytime for them. They are studying bugs and reptiles this week, so we featured those animals in our storytime.

Here's what I did:

Opening Song: My Hands Say Hello

Book: I Love Bugs by Emma Dodd. This book has fun, rhyming words with lots of different sounds describing lots of different kinds of bugs. The large, colorful pages invite kids to share their observations as we read.

Book: The Very Busy Spider by Eric Carle. The kids chimed in on animal sounds with me as we made our way through this book and the spider spun her web.

Song: The Itsy Bitsy Spider. I had a felt for this song and we repeated it with the eensy weensy spider and the BIG FAT spider!

Book: Can You Make a Scary Face? by Jan Thomas. This is a fun, interactive book that gets the kids up and moving around after they had been sitting for quite awhile.

Song: The Ants Go Marching. Since we were already up with that last book, we did a little marching around the room as we sang this song.

Felt: The Very Hungry Caterpillar. I have a felt set that I bought at Lakeshore Learning several years ago and used it for this story. This is one of my favorites and a favorite of the kids as well.

Activity: Color bugs. I handed out felt bugs of different colors and had the kids bring them up to the board (to "put them in our garden") as I called their color.

Book: See You Later, Alligator by Laura McGee Kvasnosky. Since they were also talking about reptiles this week, I threw in this book which rhymes words with lots of different reptile names. It was a good book to end with because it says goodbye in so many different ways.

Ending Song: Do You Know What Time It Is?

After we finished our storytime, the teachers allowed the kids to spend some time in our Children's Room playing with the computers and toys and looking at books. The teachers found some great books to check out for their classroom, too. We love to have groups come in and visit!

Check out more bugs storytime plans at Storytime Katie (she has two - Bugs 2011 and Bugs 2012) and Cozy Up and Read, and Flannel Friday has a whole pinboard for bug flannels on their Pinterest site.