Sick Themed Storytime

This week we read stories about being sick.  This is actually kind of a fun topic for a storytime and there are a surprising amount of great books to go along with the theme.  We read Llama Llama Home with Mama by Anna Dewdney and How Do Dinosaurs Get Well Soon? by Jane Yolen.  I wanted to read A Sick Day for Amos McGee by Philip C. Stead but we didn't have time.  I will certainly try to read that one next time I do a sick theme because it is such a great story.

I had a bit of a hard time coming up with a craft to fit with my sick theme and then it came to me!  I made awesome green slime to represent snot!  Yaaay!  It was really fun and the kids loved it.  The slime is easy to make and we already had all the ingredients.  I made two different recipes of slime because I couldn't remember which one I liked best. 

The first batch of slime I made requires:

• clear glue, glitter glue, or white glue
• liquid starch
• water
• food coloring
• 1/2 cup measuring cup
• bowl and a spoon

In the bowl mix 1/2 cup of water and 1/2 cup of glue.  Add your food coloring at this time and give it a mix.  I added 5 or 6 drops of food coloring to mine but I wish I'd added a little more to make it a more vibrant green.  Once you've mixed the colored glue and water mixture together a bit, you can slowly add 1/2 cup of liquid starch to the mix.  Stir it with a spoon until it starts to thicken and then dig in with your hands and continue mixing.  It will feel really wet but keep mixing because it will get thicker.  

The second batch of slime I made requires:

• clear glue, glitter glue, or white glue
• Borax
• warm water
• food coloring
• 1 cup and 1/2 cup measuring cups
• teaspoon measuring spoon
• bowl and spoon

In your bowl mix 1 cup of glue and 1 cup of water and the food coloring.  (A full 8 oz bottle of glue is equal to one cup)  Next, fill up a half cup measuring cup with warm water.  To this warm water, add one teaspoon of borax and stir to help dissolve the borax a bit.  The borax won't dissolve all the way and that's fine.  Now slowly pour the borax water into the glue and water mixture and stir.  As with the other recipe, mix with the spoon for a while and then dig in with your hands.  

I made my slime with white glue because that's what we had on hand.  I think clear school glue would have  made a much more snot-like slime but this was still very gross looking!  I've found that the slime made with the starch is much more slimy and is a lot stringier.  The borax slime is much stiffer and more rubbery.  They are both awesome to play with but I could see the borax slime being slightly less messy.  My advice is to try both and see which one you prefer.  Either way, you're in for a good time!

Slime made with liquid starch 

Slime made with Borax

Slime made with Borax

Sensory Bins and Storytime

September 9, 2014

We celebrated our first storytime of the new school year today.  Yaay!  After a break from programs in August, I am super ready to get things rolling again.  I always struggle a little though with my first storytime.  I want it to be perfect and to, essentially set the stage for the whole year.  This is a really silly thing to worry about.  As I've learned (and should remember but never do) some storytimes are great while others don't always go according to plan.  And it's always fine.
So this year (with only a small amount of worry) I decided to kick off storytime with a variety of sensory bin activities.  I've taken a lot of workshops and read a lot of blogs about sensory bins and it seemed like such a simple activity that kids can't seem to get enough of.  For those of you who don't know, a sensory bin is a plastic tub filled with fun items that engage a child's senses.  It can be anything, really.  Some examples I've seen are dyed pasta, leaves, water beads, sand, etc.
I created seven different sensory bins.  Seven bins might seem like a lot but with a storytime group, you never know how many kids you'll have.  I wanted to make sure that, even if we had a large group, everyone would be engaged in the activity.  Well, as it turns out, I needn't have worried about too many kids.  We only had six.  But I'm glad in a way because it allowed me test drive the different bins and really see which ones were more popular than others.
Before we got down to the business of playing, we read some books first.  I mean, it is storytime after all. Since I had such a broad spectrum of items in my sensory bins, I decided to forgo the theme idea, which is usually how I roll.  Generally I like to read books about a certain topic and then do a craft or activity with that topic in mind.  That wasn't really going to work today, so I decided to read books that featured the library.  So we read Library Lion by Michelle Knudsen (an amazing book by the way) and Homer the Library Cat by Reeve Lindbergh.

Once we'd read, we got busy playing.  So without further ado, here are our sensory bins!

 This is the colored bean sensory bin.  I took plain white beans that we had left over from a previous summer reading and placed them in a Ziploc bag with about 15 drops of food coloring.  I sealed the bag and shook it until all the color was dispersed.  I spread the beans on a paper towel to dry and then added them to the tub with some little plastic dinosaurs.   

 This is the water bead sensory bin and it was a big hit, as I figured it would be.  Water beads are these wonderful, slimy little things that are so fun  to put your  hands in.  They start out as hard little bee-bee type things and you put them in  water and several hours later, you have water beads.  I added glitter to this batch to add a little sparkle.  I brought this bin out  after the kids had had a chance to play with all the other bins because I knew that once this one came out, everything else would be forgotten.  I also added some shaving cream to this when I brought it out.  It made a big mess but nobody seemed to care.   

 This is our alphabet sensory bin.  I found some foam letters, numbers, and squares at a dollars store and then I added some alphabet pasta.  I asked the kids to find certain letters, such as the first letter of their name.  This was a new and fun way to talk about the alphabet  

 This is the rocks and shells sensory bin.  The rocks are aquarium rocks and the shells are from a craft store.  I added some plastic cups for scooping and some plastic snakes.  The kids really enjoyed this one.  I think it was the scooping that they really liked.  

 This sensory bin is made with Epsom salt that I dyed with red food coloring in a plastic bag, the same way I did the beans. I added glitter, little heart shaped cookie cutters, and medicine spoons to use as scoops.  This one turned out really pretty with the added sparkles (I think I have a glitter addiction).  

 This bin is filled with plain old sand and all the kids ran toward this one first.  You can really never go wrong with sand.

 Finally, we have the yarn and pipe cleaner bin.  This might have been the least popular but it still got some action.  The kids had fun stringing pony beads on the pipe cleaners and yarn and making necklaces and bracelets.  

Overall, I would conclude that the sensory bins were a big hit.  One little boy told his mother that he didn't want to go home when she said it was time to go.  I plan to keep my sensory bin materials handy so that I can bring them out again another day.  Sometimes it's nice to take a break from crafts and just let kids play and exercise their imaginations.