We had StoryTime this week all planned out. Really, we did. Our session on Concepts is over and we’re moving on to a few weeks about People. Ms. Garria picked out lots of great stories for us about people, like Children Make Terrible Pets and The Boy who Cried Ninja (two of my favorites!).But then our morning shuttle arrived right before StoryTime and it had a copy of Mo Willems‘ new Pigeon book The Duckling Gets a Cookie!? in it.

Needless to say, EVERYTHING changes when a new Mo Willems book shows up. So, instead of having a session on People, we changed our plan and talked about Things That Are Alive. Now, normally, the books we read have some sort of common theme running through them, but this week it would be easy to think they have nothing at all in common with each other. But, if you follow Ms. Garria’s train of thought it all starts making sense. See if you can keep up:

• First, we read Do You Know Which One Will Grow by Susan Shea, a fantastic book about which objects will grow up. Because things that are alive grow.
• Next we read The Duckling Gets a Cookie!? by Mo Willems, because things that are alive love cookies.
• We followed this with our Silly Dance Contest because the previous story was exceptionally silly.
• Being silly is cool, and we just proved that we rock out at being silly, so our next book was Silly Sally by Audrey Wood.
• We ended Story time with The Pigeon has Feelings, Too! by Mo Willems because silly is something that you feel, and it was really Pigeon’s fault that we threw our original theme out the door.

Finally, we made our craft, a self-portrait collage that shows how we were feeling today (because we ended our stories with feelings AND things that are alive usually have feelings!).

In some strange and slightly twisted way, this new theme of ‘train of thought’ actually ties in with our Ready to Read early Literacy Skill for the week: Narrative Skills.

“Narrative skills is the ability to describe things or events and to tell and re-tell stories. Being able to talk about and explain what happens in a story helps children understand the meaning of what he or she is reading. Good narrative skills lead to good reading comprehension.

Parents can help children strengthen their narrative skills by allowing them to talk with you and by listening carefully when he or she talks or tells stories. Encourage interaction by asking open-ended questions, by asking children to tell about their day or an event or by asking them to tell you about the book instead of just listening to you read the story. Choose books that repeat or predict to encourage telling and retelling of the story or choose wordless books that allow children to tell the story. Encourage ‘picture walking’ – allow your child to retell the story using the illustrations as guides.”

We hope to see you next week at the Union Township Branch StoryTime!