"Spider on the Floor" Scarf Activity

This week's theme at storytime was bugs! Since my storytimes now are just for kids ages 2-3, I'm always looking for something extremely interactive and fun for them to do. One (probably not original) activity that was really fun this week was acting out the Raffi song "Spider on the Floor" with our dancing scarves. Each kid got a scarf, then they tickled themselves with it as the spider crawled up their legs, stomach, neck, etc. I will warn those of you who object to this sort of thing that Mr. Raffi rhymes the word "stomach" with "dumb ol' lummock," just for your information. If you sing live/without the CD, you can use whatever rhymes you fancy. I've also done this by acting the song out with a spider puppet. I have this one at home.

For the record, my preferred method of incorporating music into storytimes is to sing aloud with a CD/iPod accompaniment. For whatever reason, I find it easier to remember song lyrics this way.

If you don't know this song, here's a YouTube version. This video uses "big ol' lummock."

The rest of our bugs storytime went a little bit like this:

Books we read:
Bugs! Bugs! Bugs! (Barner)
The Very Hungry Caterpillar (Carle)
Giant Pop-Out Bugs (Chronicle)
Big Bug, Little Bug (Stickland)
Can You Make a Scary Face? (Thomas)

Nursery Rhymes Used:
Little Miss Muffet (Feltboard Miss Muffet with a spider puppet)
Itsy Bitsy Spider (Would be fun to try this one with the scarves, as well)

This song an adapt to other animals too. Maybe there's a tiger on your floor?

Oh, and since this didn't seem worthy of its own post... Here's 3 picture books I've been really enjoying lately: 
The Watermelon Seed by Greg Pizzoli (If you've got a crocodile puppet and some fake watermelon, this would be great for storytelling)
Tea Rex by Molly Idle (Tea party dinosaurs? YES.) 
Mustache Baby by Bridget Heos (Funny and on-trend.)