One of the things I love the most about how my library does summer storytimes (besides going outside for them) is that we schedule an extra person to help me out with them. This is a luxury that I would LOVE to have more often, because we can do so much more things with another set of hands. One of my favorite is to do a dual reading. And one of the best book series for this is of course by Mo Willems. Any of the Elephant and Piggie books can be great this way, but my favorite is There is a Bird on Your Head.
I am the lucky owner of these puppets from Discount School Supply and am a huge fan. The puppet for the number 3 happens to have three little baby birds in there. When we read this book, I play Gerald (the elephant) and leave the closed nest on my head. When the baby birds are born, I pop my fingers up and there they are. It's a great effect, she said humbly. The other person simply holds the book for us and reads Piggie's lines. At the appropriate time, I move the nest to their head. Surprise! Easy peasy.
These puppets are a great set for storytime planning collections. They come with lots of ideas for using them and, if I remember correctly, the words are also in Spanish.
I occasionally have volunteers to help me out with storytime - makes the flannelboard work so much more smoothly...unfortunately, I don't have regular volunteers, so I'm never quite sure if there will be a second person or not!
ReplyDeleteJennifer @ JeanLittleLibrary