12/12/12 => 12/13/12

We have family story time on Thursday evenings, right?   So, when I was long-range planning the story time themes for story times, I noticed that the calendar was showing there was going to be a 12/12/12, and how cool that was.  However, little kids would really not understand that significance. Hmmmm...   Luckily, I have a wide variety of ages, and my older siblings DID get the significance.  What I did then was transfer that cool idea into a theme of "Numbers" for story time this week.

Books: 


A favorite author of mine is Mo Willems.  I don't know if there is currently another author who is quite as funny.  If there is any drawback to Mo Willems' books, it would be that the humor may be too subtle for kids -- you will see the adults chuckle at some of these references.





The kids like the frogs in this book, and it turned out to be a great book on predicting what will happen next. It is also a good book to talk about how frogs start out as tadpoles.

Song/Fingerplay:

 One two buckle my shoe
Three, four, knock at the door
Five, six, pick up sticks
Seven, eight, lay them straight
Nine, ten, a big fat hen

 Craft:

Sometimes it is really hard to have a craft that all ages can do or want to do...I have kids from age 2 up to 8 years.  Tonight I had cut extra large numbers out of cardstock, using my Cricut machine and the Mickey Font cartridge.  They were large enough that I had the kids mount them on their choice of 12x12 cardstock to make them more sturdy.  I then had a variety of little craft items, and different adhesive choices.  The kids were to pick the number of their age (i.e., the 8 year olds picked an 8, the 3 year olds picked a 3, etc.), glue it to cardstock, then glue that number of items to their paper. For example, a 3 year old would glue 3 pom poms, 3 cotton balls, 3 feathers, etc., the 5 year old would glue 5 of each item, etc.  

Examples of items I had available:
cotton balls
pom poms
sequins
felt cut outs
feathers
popsicle sticks
googly eyes
etc.
       

Other possible books:
The Three Bears, by Galdone
One Monkey Too Many, by Keller
One of Each, by Hoberman
Counting Kisses, by Katz
Richard Scarry's Counting Book, by Scarry
One Too Many, by Marino
One Odd Day, by Fisher
Olivia Counts (board book), by Falconer
10, 9, 8, by Bang
10 Rubber Ducks, by Carle