Today began our Fall 2015 Session of Infant Storytime! We read stories and sang songs about apples, a nice fall season fruit. Babies were invited to take an apple to hold if they wanted to, and then bring it back up and put it on the felt board at the end of storytime.
We read Ten Red Apples by Virginia Miller:
We met a few animals who LOVE to eat apples, who were hiding in our I Spy box!
You might remember this box if you were in my storytime last winter… I decided to dress it up a bit. 🙂
It’s just a cardboard box I cut a hole into, and then covered with felt to make it look more attractive. Babies like the puzzle of seeing only part of the puppet and then the surprise of seeing the whole puppet. We met a bear, a horse and a rabbit! Then babies were invited to feed the animals some apples!
We sang a song to the tune of “Where Is Thumbkin?”:
Great big apple tree, great big apple tree (extend baby’s arms)
Standing tall, standing tall, (lift baby up)
Moving your branches, when the wind blows (sway baby’s arms)
Apples fall! Apples fall! (bring baby’s arms down)
We did a traditional tickle song:
Way up high in the apple tree (lift baby)
Two little apples smiled at me
I shook that tree as hard as I could (shake gently or tickle baby)
Mmm, Mmm, Mmm, those apples were good!
Then we sang about Five Red Apples and counted down from five to zero:
Five red apples hanging from the tree
Big and round and so shiny
Along came a worm with a hungry tummy
And he ate one apple right off the tree!
Four red apples…
We sang a song lifting our babies up and down in the air, to the tune of “Here We Go Looby-Loo”:
Here we go up, up, up
Here we go down, down, down
Here we go up, up, up
Here we go down, down, down
Babies love the change in altitude 🙂
We sang a bouncing song, “Bumpin’ Up and Down in my Little Red Wagon”:
Bumpin’ up and down in my little red wagon
Bumpin’ up and down in my little red wagon
Bumpin’ up and down in my little red wagon
Won’t you be my darling?
One wheel’s off and the axle’s broken
One wheel’s off and the axle’s broken
One wheel’s off and the axle’s broken
Won’t you be my darling?
Then we read the book Orange Pear Apple Bear by Emily Gravett. This book has a lot of repetition, using the same words over and over. But it stays surprising by always giving us a slight change in the order and a slight twist on the meaning:
We bounced to the song “Ladies Ride,” increasing our tempo with each verse:
This is the way the ladies ride, trit trot, trit trot
This is the way the ladies ride early in the morning
This is the way the gentlemen ride, clip clop, clip clop
This is the way the gentlemen ride early in the morning
This is the way the farmers ride, clippity cloppity, clippity cloppity
This is the way the farmers ride early in the morning
This is the way the cowboys ride, giddyup, giddyup
This is the way the cowboys ride early in the morning
We did another tickle song called “Round and Round the Garden”:
Round and round the garden (circle baby’s belly)
goes the teddy bear
One step, two step
A tickly under there! (tickle baby’s armpit)
Babies love the anticipation of where the tickling part comes in the rhyme. We did another tickle about a bee:
Here is the beehive (show a fist)
But where are the bees? They’re hidden inside where nobody sees!
But wait, and you’ll see them come out of their hive…
One, two, three, four, five! (open each finger one by one)
Bzzzzzz! (Tickle)
Then we sang some other traditional fingerplays using our Song Cube:
And we ended with a goodbye song to the tune of “London Bridges”:
Goodbye, goodbye, we’ll see you soon
See you soon
See you soon
Goodbye, goodbye, we’ll see you soon
On another day
As you can see, our Infant Storytimes will have books, counting, rhymes, fingerplays, songs to bounce your baby, songs to tickle your baby, and songs to lift your baby up and down. Our hope is that you take the fun of these storytimes back home with you, and keep singing songs and saying rhymes so that your baby will hear rich vocabulary and music, and acquire great listening and pre-literacy skills!