A Whole New Story

So the first age group I ever did storytime for was babies, 6-12 months old. The wee little ones! So that's what I'm going to discuss today.

Every storytime we start with the hello song. I like to use ukulele for my hello song since it seems to get everyone's attention. My favorite hello song goes to the tune of London Bridge:

Hi, hello, and how are you?

How are you?

How are you?

Hi, hello, and how are you?

How are you today?

Then we go around to each baby and introduce them with the name song. I love this part because the kids really start getting excited when its their turn to be sung to.

After that we'll go over our early literacy skill of the day. We have six skills and six classes per session, so each class gets its own skill. These skills include:

Vocabulary

Print Motivation

Phonological Awareness

Narritive Skills

Letter Knowledge

Print Awareness

Then I like to do a movement song with the kids, like Baby Hokey Pokey or Acka Backa. Something to get them moving and engaged, since the early literacy skill is really for the parents and not at all exciting for baby.

This is about the time where I introduce the baby sign (American Sign Language) of the day. We choose a different sign for each class so that by the end of the session, baby and caregiver have learned 6 new signs. At this age we stick to really basic signs, like "mommy" and "daddy." Signs for concepts like "hungry" don't come until later.

Mommy

Daddy

I really love Baby Sign Language.com. They have flashcards and video clips for hundreds of baby signs that are good to start with. (The images above are from their site.)

Since we have our fingers all warmed up, I usually move into a fingerplay/nursery rhyme from here. Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and The Itsy Bitsy Spider are special favorites for this age group

From here I'll talk about some simple ways the parents can practice our early literacy skill of the day while reading, then we bring out the book basket! For this age storytellers don't read a book to the group as a whole. Rather, the parents are given a chance to share stories from the book basket one on one with their child. This is because 1) babies can't see too well at a distance, so trying to read to them as a group doesn't do much for them, and 2) the child picks up the importance of reading my seeing their caregiver doing it.

As we put away the book basket we sing the cleanup song which serves as a transition and small distraction from the fact that I'm taking their books away. (Cleanup time can be very traumatic!) I usually try to find a fun/distracting song for right after the books are put up. I want to reinforce that it's okay to put away the books and not dwell on the sadness. My favorite distraction songs are Jelly On a Plate, Let's Go Riding in an Elevator, and Toast in the Toaster.

Then we pass out the shakers and sing some shakey egg songs. I really love Laurie Berkner's I Know a Chicken... it's a good length and a fun one to sing. Our shakers are from Kindermusik and they are super sturdy! They've held up for ages!

And then we have to clean up again with our ever faithful cleanup song. Quickly followed by another distraction song/rhyme. (One that I didn't use the last time through.)

This is where we start winding down, so we review our baby sign for the day and break out the bubbles!

The best bubbles ever are Gymboree Bubbles. They can really fill a room! I like to play some background music while I blow bubbles for the kids and we can get the whole room looking like a snow globe! The bubbles work best in a warm room, but with a little effort you can get them going pretty well even with the AC going.

Then we wind up by giving the parents an assignment based on the early literacy still of the day... just something to work on at home that will help them work on the skill with their child. And then we sing the goodbye song (also with ukulele) which is a mirror of the hello song. It goes like this:

Goodbye, goodbye, we'll see you soon,

see you soon,

see you soon.

Goodbye goodbye, we'll see you soon.

Goodbye until next time!

And there it is in a nutshell! Baby storytime!