We started Preschool Storytime with a flannel board reading of Pat Hutchins’s Ten Red Apples. As the animals ate the apples off the tree, we took them off the board, fiddle-dee-fee!

Adding a visual or tactile element to a reading of a book can help bring the book alive and aid in processing. Story extenders, such as crafts related to the story, are also great!

Next we read a book using the same repeated line from our first book, Will Hillenbrand’s version of Fiddle-I-Fee. Nonsense words and musical language are so much fun!

Bear is Not Tired by Ciara Gavin was our third book. Poor Bear doesn’t want to sleep through the winter and miss all the fun his duck family is having! He can’t escape being a bear, though, and ultimately settles in for his winter hibernation.

We looked at a nonfiction book next, learning that bears use fallen leaves to line their dens and stay warm during hibernation. We also learned that other things fall from trees, like acorns.

Tap the Magic Tree by Christie Matheson was our next book. We pretended that our arms were tree trunks with our fingers being branches and acted out the book’s directions. We tapped, blew, and clapped away with our trees! This beautiful, interactive book looks at a year of seasons on one tree.

Finally, we read Dot & Jabber and the Great Acorn Mystery. We learned how acorns move away from their parent oaks to become oak trees themselves, then acted it out with a song (to the tune of “London Bridge”):

• All the acorns are falling down, falling down, falling down [stomp your feet like plopping acorns]
• All the acorns are falling down all around the town
• Squirrels come and scoop them up, scoop them up, scoop them up [pretend to be a squirrel collecting acorns]
• Squirrels come and scoop them up all around the town
• Squirrels take acorns and bury bury bury, bury bury bury, bury bury bury [pretend to be a squirrel burying acorns quickly]
• Squirrels take acorns and bury bury bury all around the town
• Acorns will grow into trees, into trees, into trees [stretch up into a tall tree with arms spread overhead]
• Acorns will grow into trees all around the town

Thank you for joining me for storytime – see you next week!

~*Nicole