I love volunteering at our local library for a story hour! Here's how I volunteered this month: Alaska themed!
Our current group of community kiddos are on the younger side, babies through ages 4, with most kiddos being 18 months - 3. We do have a few older homeschool kiddos that join their families, so I try to include them too! It's a fun age range to keep entertained.
Getting Started: I love using a parachute and stuffed animals from the library to get things moving while kids trickle in as story hour begins. We did a few songs to start, this month using Alaska songs like "I Love the Mountains".
Things to try while using the parachute - everyone go low, everyone go high! Everyone go slow, everyone go fast! Everyone, stop. Everyone go slow + fast, high + slow. Now STOP! Counting to three then stopping, everyone going under the parachute, etc. There's so much to learn with these simple movements for little kiddos! Plus, it's just so fun for them. And it's a great way to feel like the program has started for the day, while still giving time for families to arrive a few minutes late.
Books: It's easier than you would think to find squirrel books! With a younger age group, I opted for two board books so that we could read several or just one or two depending on the kid's vibe that day. We read:
Under Alaska's Midnight Sun by Deb Vanasse
Cozy by Jan Brett
Mama, Do You Love Me? By Barbara M. Joosse
Wiggle Break: This week, I prepped ahead some egg shakers! We jammed out to the song "North to Alaska" and practiced shaking our eggs up high, shaking them down low, shaking them to the beat, shaking them next to a friend and more. You can see my full list of Story Hour songs I've used here!
Craft: This week was pretty simple on the craft front, but I did a "choose your own mess" adventure for parents. We had crayons, markers, and paints with q-tips available for the kiddos to paint their coloring pages. We did some of these free Alaska coolring pages and they turned out cute and scribbley! We also painted this free Alaska flag coloring page! I also offered this Alaska Forget Me Not flower coloring page.
Older Siblings Craft: This week, the older siblings did a fun STEM activity with another volunteer, so I didn't prep anything for them today!
All in all, and as usual, it was a delightful story hour! Looking forward to my next one.
Thanks for reading!
-Kami
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