Pages

Wednesday, September 30, 2009

In the Doghouse

Dog storytime!

Quick and dirty, here's what we did:

Books read:
Desmond the Dog by Nick Denchfield. Short and simple with fun moveable parts to keep things interesting.
Ten Dogs in the Window by Claire Masurel.

Felt stories:
Dog's Colorful Day (book by Emma Dodd). For more fun, hand out the colored spots and have kids place them on the dog when you get to the color they have.
Bark, George! (book by Jules Feiffer). A kid- and parent-pleaser for sure.

Song:
BINGO with felt glove. The kids don't always understand the concept of leaving out a letter in each verse, but that's okay. Having removable letters on a glove or flannel board promotes letter knowledge, one of the six early literacy skills!


Activity: Give a dog a bone. If you have awesome, creative staff members to create props for you, that's awesome. If you don't, you can make it yourself.

Take a large cardboard box and cover it in brown paper. Cut out a hole for the mouth and add doggie decorations (ears, eyes, etc.). Cut out bone shapes from different colors of construction paper and laminate.

Hand out a bone to each child and have them take turns "feeding" their bone to the dog. Call for each color and have the child with that color come to the front to feed the dog. This activity is infinitely adjustable to strengthen different skills. Mark each bone with a different letter to practice letter knowledge. For older kids, write short words on each bone and ask for rhyming words (ex. "Who's bone has a word that rhymes with hat?")

Lastly, don't forget your display of dog books for families to check out after storytime:



Want more ideas? Check out my Cats and Dogs storytime and The Almost Librarian's Dog Days of Summer book list.