My first real story time after a 2 month absence. I will admit it, I was terrified. My voice is still weak and terrible, and although I have a handy-dandy new portable voice amplifier, I still can only speak for a short period of time, before my poor voice pretty much evaporates. I spent the night before worrying that my voice would just cut out completely half way through and we’d have to have a mime story time, and I’ll admit it was a bit tougher than a usual story time, but I made it through, and I couldn’t be more pumped!
The trick I found was to pick short books with lots of audience participation, choose songs that everyone knew so I could just lip synch for most of the time, drink lots and lots of tea, and use my voice amplifier when I had to talk so I could use almost a whisper and still be heard.
It felt weird with the silly headset on, I felt like I should be taking orders at the drive through, but I’ll be upgrading to a wireless one soon with a little collar microphone, which will be awesome! And I have a quiet week off in between programs to recuperate. All is going according to plan!
Here’s what we did on my first exploratory trip back to the fold:
Welcome Song: Hello, Friends
Book 1: Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? / Bill Martin Jr.
Hand Rhymes
- I wake up my hands
- Wiggle your fingers
- Open-shut them
- Roly poly
- Little turtle in a shell, sitting so still…
Book 2: The Bus for Us / Suzanne Bloom
Action Songs
- Zoom zoom
- Twinkle twinkle little star
- If you’re happy and you know it
- The elevator song
Goodbye Song: Goodbye, Friends!
The kids just went nuts for today’s books, it was awesome. I pulled out “Brown bear” and a little boy cried out “animals! I love animals!” I had the group tell me what each animal was and name its colour, and make suitable noises when appropriate. I must confess I’d never used that book before in one of my story times, and it was a total it!
It was my first time using the little puppets too, and the little ones were speechless. Seeing the little turtle pop in and out of his shell pretty much blew their minds. We had to say the rhyme a couple times, due to audience demand. Who knew something so simple could be such a big hit?