Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Story Theme - Ducks

This week I will be doing story times with the theme of ducks.  This is always a fun theme each year as there are so many great stories, songs and fingerplays featuring ducks.

For the youngest group I will one of my Big Books - oversize picture books for library use,  Five Little Ducks - illustrated by Penny Ives.  This is a picture book version of the song, so it'll be sung instead of read.  I will then "retell" the story using my Mother duck and 5 duckling puppets.  This repetion is wonderful for early literacy.  Another book will be Little White Duck by Walt Whippo.As this story unfolds, the children and caregivers will help with some action and words. They will "quack" with the duck and "Hiss!" and slither with the snake.  Again, with be fore or after the book "reading" we will listen to the song and act it out. 



Other songs and fingerplays include:  "Four Little Duckies" on Ralph's World, "I Know a Chicken" by Laurie Berkner (we use shaker eggs with this and will change the lyrics to I Know a Duck.), "Six Little Ducks" from Toddler Favorites, and "Three Little Ducks" from Songs for Wiggleworms.






For the toddler story time, I will add the Big Book One Duck Stuck:a mucky ducky counting book by Phyllis Root and/ or Do Like a Duck Does by Judy Hindley.  For the first, I will stop several times to have the children count the various animals and also have them pretend to pull. 













For my preschoolers, I will use some favorite duck stories which include:

 Make Way for Ducklings - Robert McCloskey (As a Boston girl this is a must!)
A Jez Alborough duck book such as Duck's Key, Where Can It Be?, 
A Jackie Urbanovic booksuch as Duck Soup,
Mr. Duck Means Business by Tammi Sauer,
A Doreen Cronin book such as Giggle, Giggle Quack,
Farmer Duck  by Martin Waddell


This should be a fun week of storytimes!!!