As cities across California gear up for “El Niño,” I thought our little niños might enjoy some fun books and songs about rain, puddles, and rainbows.  We started storytime with our usual opening song and took scarves to sing One Bright Scarf and Peekaboo.  Then we read a board book called Water by John Hutton and illustrated by Andrea King.

We bounced our babies to the song A Smooth Road to London Town, and then read another short board book called Rain, Rain Go Away by Caroline Jayne Church, an adaptation of the nursery rhyme.

We sang Oh My Hat Goes On My Head and did a flannelboard activity about counting out the number of boots each animal would need, depending on how many feet they have.

 

We read a third book today, which I had on hand and just thought was too cute not to share–it’s about ponds and includes a finger-puppet fish.  It’s called In My Pond by Sara Gillingham and Lorena Siminovich.

We sang Here We Go Up, Up, Up and Hurry, Scurry Little Mouse.  We did a fingerplay about five little raindrops:

Five Little Raindrops
Five little raindrops (hold up five fingers)
Dancing on the walk (dance hand up and down)
Pitter patter, pitter patter, that’s the way they talk. (pat legs)
Out comes the yellow sun, shining in the sky (raise arms up like the sun)
And away goes one raindrop (hold up one finger)
Bye, bye, bye! (wave goodbye)

We sang Itsy Bitsy Spider and did a flannelboard activity about counting up to and down from ten, singing to the tune of “Ten Little Indians”:

 

One little two little three little raindrops

Four little five little six little raindrops

Seven little eight little nine little raindrops

Ten little raindrops falling down!

Now the sun is out and there are…

 

Nine little eight little seven little raindrops

Six little five little four little raindrops

Three little two little one little raindrop

Now there’s just a rainbow!

We finished up with the bouncy song Row, Row, Row Your Boat and our song cube.

Thanks for coming!  I will not be here next week because I’m taking vacation, so you will be in Miss Marie‘s talented and very capable hands.  See you in two weeks!