Specs
Age group: toddlers (24 - 36 months)
Group Size: about 10 kids and one parent/caregiver per toddler
Time: 10:30am to 11:15am
Parent/Caregiver Handouts
One of my colleagues told me that one of the ways we can encourage parents to participate is to give them printouts of the songs and rhymes we use. This way, they can participate with the child beside them, or on their lap, and the handout close by. Here are the ones we used for this storytime:
The Plan
Up Down Turn Around
Hands Are Clapping
Book: If I Had A Robot by Dan Yaccarino
Song: If You're A Robot And You Know It
Activity and Rhyme: 5 Noisy Robot
Book: Robots Everywhere
Song: We Sail
Craft: Robot Card
Parachute and Colouring Sheet
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Welcome Song
(sing to tune of “London Bridge is Falling Down”)
Hi hello and how are you
How are you? How are you?
Hi hello and how are you?
How are you today?
It’s a bright and sunny day
Sunny day, sunny day
It’s a bright and sunny day
For storytime and play!
Stretching Rhyme: Up Down Turn Around
Up, down
Turn around
Touch the sky
Touch the ground
Wiggle fingers
Wiggle toes
Wiggle shoulders
Say hello!
Song: Hands Are Clapping
(sing to tune of “Skip To My Lou”)
Hands are clapping
Clap clap clap
Hands are clapping
Clap clap clap
Hands are clapping
Clap clap clap
Clap your hands my darling!
Continue with …
-feet are stomping
-arms are flapping
End with …
Now let’s sit on the floor
Now let’s sit on the floor
Now let’s sit on the floor
Sit on the floor my darling!
Or continue more actions …
Toast in the toaster
Getting very hot
Tick tock tick tock
Up you pop! Book: If I Had A Robot by Dan Yaccarino
I always use the longest book at the very beginning because toddler attention tends to waver and wane quickly. This book is a little bit longer, but it has a lot of ideas that you can use to question the toddlers, like "would you want your robot to eat your vegetables?", and so forth.
Song: If You're A Robot And You Know It
(Tune: If You're Happy And You Know It)
If you’re a robot and you know it clank your coils (clap)
If you’re a robot and you know it clank your coils (clap)
If you’re a robot and you know it and you really want to show it
If you’re a robot and you know it clank your coils (clap)
Continue with:
-clunk your gears (stomp feet)
-press your buttons (“Beep beep”)
-twist your arms (rotate from elbow)
-do the robot dance!
We all did the robot dance at the end. The toddlers are so cute! Wish I could have videotaped this!
Activity and Rhyme: 5 Noisy Robots
5 noisy robots in the toy shop,
Shiny and tall with antennae on the top.
Along came a girl with a penny one day.
Bought a noisy robot and took it away.
(continue with 4, 3, 2, 1 noisy robots)
We started this activity by rolling play-doh and pounding them into coin shapes. We then started the rhyme and asked the toddlers to use their "coins" to pay for their new robot pet. Usually, I do the rhyme twice so that each toddler has a chance to do the activity, but this time around, I wanted to try something different. I tried asking the toddlers to come up in pairs to pick out a robot pet together. The older toddlers were amenable to sharing, but the younger ones wanted their own robots. Whoops! Oh well. I tried...
Book: Robots Everywhere by Denny Hebson
This is a short, very easy read. I don't usually get a chance to read two books during toddler storytime, so imagine my surprise when we finished this book. The pictures are also simple and bright. I also used this book to ask the toddlers questions, since the robots did things that we don't do, like blow hair dry with a blowtorch!
Song: We Sail
(Tune: you can listen to the song here)
We sail and we sail and we stop
We sail and we sail and we stop
We sail and we sail and we sail and we sail
We sail and we sail and we stop
We used music shakers for this song, which helps the toddlers with rhythm. We shook the shakers and then stopped them whenever the song said "stop!". We also sang this around the cardboard robot in one of the images below.
Craft: Robot Card
Our awesome teen volunteers helped us by cutting the many different shapes for this craft. Afterward, they divvied up the components into little ziploc bags for each toddler. Since it's April and Earth Day is coming up, we used scrap paper for all the little shapes. You can find the instructions for this cute card at Crafts By Amanda.
We used dot sticks for some of the robot parts. The toddlers were able to choose which happy-face sticker to add to their robot.
By the way, the awesome cardboard robot in the picture below was made by one of my super talented and creative coworkers (and partner in crime!). The boxes rotate around a cardboard dowel in the middle. We actually put this robot in the middle of the room and danced around it while singing the We Sail song.
Materials:
-coloured paper, scrap paper
-lots of stickers!
-crayons and markers
-googly eyes
-glue or tape
This was a really cute craft, and I think the toddlers enjoyed designing their own robots. I always love it when a toddler doesn't follow the rest of the kids and makes his or her own design. I wish I had taken photos of their work!
Parachute, Bubbles and Colouring Sheet
We had time for the parachute today! Yahoo! We sang the "Under My Umbrella" song. I then handed out a robots theme colouring sheet.
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Credits: I took the songs and rhymes from a variety of sources, some from work, and others from different parts of the internet. I will try to give credit where it is due, so if something is yours and I haven't credited you, please let me know and I will link back to you. Thank you!
