I love volunteering at our local library for a story hour! Here's one of my favorites to do: Fall Squirrel 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, like Tooty Ta. 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. 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:
The Leaf Thief by Alice Hemming and Nicola Slater
The Busy Little Squirrel by Nancy Tafuri
That's Not My Squirrel by Fiona Watt
Wiggle Break: Inevitably, these kiddos will need to get some wiggles out! I brought my bluetooth speakers and led the kids in these songs: The Isty Bitsy Spider and The Hokey Pokey. Then we could sit for the rest of our books! You can see my full list of Story Hour songs I've used here!
Craft: I saw this on Pinterest and knew it would be a great one for the kids! I've included the print below of the squirrel without a tail. First, kids will glue their squirrel to their black page. (Or you could do this beforehand.) They can color their squirrel how they like! Then, I just cut out leaves to glue for a cute tail. Start gluing at the top of the page! I did include real leaves to glue as well, but glue sticks didn't work for them. So with younger kids, just use paper leaves OR find another method of gluing - glue dots maybe? - that would hold the real leaves to the page better.
Older Siblings Craft: I LOVE Teacher Pay Teachers and can find amazing things on the site - often for free! I printed out this cute autumn word search, this squirrel math game, and this squirrel fun facts booklet that the younger grades kids could color!
You can download this image above for the craft!!
All in all, it was a delightful story hour! Looking forward to my next one.
Thanks for reading!
-Kami
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