Karen Beaumont

Week Six of Author Highlights: Karen Beaumont
This plan is for a preschool storytime, a registered program for 3-5 year olds that attend the program independently without a caregiver.

Opening Activity:
Little Mouse

Books:


Dini Dinosaur by Karen Beaumont
Doggone Dogs! by Karen Beaumont
Where's My T-R-U-C-K? by Karen Beaumont

Jazz It Up Moment #1:
Retell Move Over, Rover with puppets and cardboard box

I used a cardboard box I found in our Receiving Room to use as a dog house. Then I gathered all the puppets to match the animals in the story (dog, cat, raccoon, squirrel, blue jay, snake, mouse, and skunk). Luckily I had puppets for everything but the blue jay, and for that I substituted a robin instead.

I adapted the book a bit and wrote a little script so it would be easy to follow when telling the story, but it was basically just taking the text from the book and typing it up so I knew what animal came next.

It was extremely fun to stuff all the puppets in the box and then throw them all out when they started to smell the skunk at the end of the story. I hid the skunk puppet under the dog before the children got in the room for the element of surprise.

Action Song:

"The Airplane Song" by Laurie Berkner from Whaddaya Think of That?

Jazz It Up Moment #2:

Give each child a paint brush and have them follow along "painting" themselves while reading I Ain't Gonna Paint No More.

I've done this activity in the past successfully and I was really excited to bring it back for this storytime. I knew my kids could really grasp the idea of pretending, so we had a discussion about what it means to pretend to paint themselves with pretend paint. I even added another element to the activity by having the children guess which body part we would paint next based on the rhyming text. All together a very successful activity that really encouraged active listening.

Goodbye Song:

"Goodbye" by Old Town School of Folk Music from Songs for Wiggleworms

What Went Not So Great:

Doggone Dogs was the biggest let down. I chose it as more of a filler book and I ended up needing it in my morning session. The children just didn't get into it or enjoy the humor.

What Went Right:

Basically everything else! The puppet retelling was a hit, as was the paintbrush activity. The books were a blast to read aloud and the children really got into it. They loved seeing Dini keep getting into the bathtub with all his clothes on and my first group of kids didn't know what T-R-U-C-K spelled so that was a fun guessing game for them too.