Abiyoyo with Giant Feet, Hands, and Hat

Book:  Abiyoyo by Pete Seeger, illustrated by Michael Hays

Puppets:  none

Props:  Stuff to make someone look a little bit like a giant

Presenters:  two

Audience:   Family Storytime  (mostly 3-6 year olds)

Abiyoyo is one of a handful of stories I tell that I actually heard as a child.  We had the Pete Seeger version on a record (it's possible it might even have been a reel to reel tape!).  It was too scary at first and I would leave the room at "the sun rose blood red over the hills," but eventually I got used to it.  I've told it solo a few times over the years, but at my current library Terri and Sheila came up with a way to tell it as a two-person tale, and Terri and I did this way for our "Monster" storytime theme.  

The first part is just telling and acting out.  I narrated, introducing the boy and his father.  While I described the boy's annoying ukelele playing, Terri acted as the boy.  We considered using a real ukelele, but decided that pretending works almost as well.  I talked about the Father's tricks with his magic wand while Terri became the townspeople he tricked.  She mimed drinking a glass of water, sawing a log, and sitting in a chair.  I did a "Zoop!  Zoop!" with my want (also imagined, no prop) and she acted like the things just disappeared.  The second half begins right after the boy and his father are ostracized (there's our vocabulary word of the week!).

While I tell the audience how the townspeople liked to tell stories about giants, Terri zips off behind the backdrop and gets her Abiyoyo gear together.  Instead of trying to actually become tall, Terri puts on giant-sized gloves, giant-sized feet, and a giant sombrero.  She makes her entrance by sticking one giant hand into sight then stomping out into full view.  

Her kind of silly appearance works just right, as the kids who might have been a bit scared at the build up to the giant's arrival get that it's all in fun, but we still got the suspense up for a while, which is a key part of the story.


 While I narrate Abiyoyo's path towards town, Terri stomps around.  We have some cut-out sheep, cows, and goats that we set up (they're about three feet high) and she knocks them all over.  In the original story he eats them, but this works too.

When the Father and Son run out to meet Abiyoyo, I get on my knees, so I'm looking up at the giant.  I play my pretend ukulele, Terri dances in a silly giant style that's a little too funny for me to keep a straight face, but that's okay.   Click here for a video clip (no audience) sample:  

When she dances so fast that she falls over, Terri lies down mostly behind the backdrop, but with her giant feet sticking out so everyone can see them.  As the Father, I go up with my magic wand, and as I Zoop!  Zoop!, Terri pulls her feet all the way behind the backdrop and "Abiyoyo disappeared!"

We finish up with the people welcoming the Father and Son back into town, and a final singalong version of the Abiyoyo song, which is a little hard for me because I'm a bit out of breath and even harder for Terri because she just got through dancing like a giant, and then dancing faster.  

For the telling, I pretty much went straight with Pete Seeger's words, though I did have to edit the "bring your damn ukulele," which is how he told it on the record, to "darn ukulele" as it is in the book.  At five years old I thought it was pretty cool that Pete Seeger used one of the bad words right there on a record, and I guess I still can't quite bring myself to use it with kids.  

Foolish Frog with Puppets

Story:  "The Foolish Frog" by Pete Seeger
Puppets:  Frog, Man, Woman, Child, Cow, Chicken (can cut one or two)
Props:   Grass, Water Bottle, Barn (optional)
Presenters:    One
Audience:   Family Storytime, also good for K-2

When I started as a children's librarian a few decades ago the world of storytelling seemed totally new to me.  Later I realized it wasn't, because I grew up listening to Pete Seeger records, and although I liked his songs, it was the stories that really captured me:  "Abiyoyo"..."Sam the Whaler"...and this one, "The Foolish Frog."  It's kind of daunting to tell a story that you grew up with, especially when it's told by such a great teller (who also has a banjo).  But fortunately the best stories work with all levels of tellers.  And although I have no banjo, and don't sing well, I do have some puppets, and that's the way I first started telling this story in storytime.

It starts with a farmer watching a Bullfrog jumping across a creek.  I narrate and act as the farmer, with the Bullfrog puppet on my hand.  The Farmer makes up a song about it:   "Way down south in the Yankety-Yank / A bullfrog jumped from bank to bank / Just because he'd nothin' better 'fore to do..."  You can get the tune from Pete Seeger's version.  I'm no singer, but this is simple, silly, and has a strong rhythm, so anyone can sing it just fine.

The Farmer sings it to the folks at the corner store, and that starts the pattern.  When I sing the song the second time, I usually ask the audience to join in, which sets up the silly sing-alongs that come later.  Since all the men are at the store singing (and drinking Coca Cola (I think the book switched it to "strawberry pop") and eating soda crackers), the wives come to look for them (gender stereotyping I know, but it works fine in this story).  That's when I get the Woman puppet.  She sings the same song.  Then it's the kids who come down to the store (and I use one Child puppet).  It's fine to skip Woman or Child to save time, which I typically do because it can be a longish story...but if I do have the time I use them all.

Next it's the Cows.  Like Mr. Seeger does in his telling, it's fun to have each newcomer wonder aloud to the audience where everyone is, to give each a bit of personality and silliness, and also build the anticipation.  When the Cows sing along, though, they say "Moo-moo, moo-moo, moo-moo-moo..." to the same tune.   This is a fun moment, when the audience realizes this is a much-silllier-than-usuial participation story.

Next come Chickens, though I sometimes also skip them to shorten the tale.  Then there's another clever shift, from the mild silliness of animals singing, to the really crazy silliness of other stuff, like the Grass wondering where everyone went and swishing its way down to the corner store too. For Grass, I don't use a puppet, just hold up a handful of Easter grass and move it around like a puppet.  The song there is "Swish-swish, swish-swish, swish-swish-swish...."  Barn is pretty fun too:  I sometimes skip it, but when I've had a toy barn of about the right size, I pull that out and we all "squeak" the song like a barn door.  For the River, I use a half-full water bottle and shake it around while everyone sings in bubbly voices.

The final twist brings us back to the Bullfrog, who wonders where the creek he was jumping across went.  He hears everyone singing about him, "puffs himself up with pride," and puffs himself so big that he explodes.  I've thought about trying to actually make the Frog bigger as he puffs himself, but I think of this as really more of storyteller's version than a puppeteer's, so don't feel the need to visually represent everything.  When he explodes, I grab as many of the puppets and props as I can and toss them up in the air.  And Pete Seeger has a great ending for the tale:  Nobody can find the Frog, so "all that's left of the Frog is the song...and we might as well sing 'er one more time."  Which gives the audience one last go-round, this time with the words restored.

We've also done this at my library as a two-person puppet show, with one person playing guitar, singing, and telling, and the other person behind the puppet stage managing puppets and props.  It's excellent, and even includes an inflating balloon for the "puffing up" at the end!  But I haven't been a part of that version yet, so will wait to write more about it in a future post, because I definitely want to try that way.  But the one-person with a few puppets version is also quite fun and works great too (as long as you avoid comparing your version to Pete Seeger's)

The book version of The Foolish Frog is long out-of-print (and runs for $100+ if you've got a new copy), but I always think of it as a record rather than a book.  The version I grew up with was this one from Children's Concert at Town Hall.  What a great album!  It also included "Abiyoyo," "Here's to Cheshire, Here's to Cheese" (a version of "Froggy Went a Courtin'), "Henry My Son" (aka "Mother Be Quick, I'm Gonna Be Sick, and Lay Me Down to Die" (Henry ate some green and yeller eels that turned out to be snakes), and a bunch of other great ones....

Santa Cat with Signs

Book:  Here Comes Santa Cat  by Deborah Underwood;  Illustrated by Claudia Rueda
Puppets:  2 Cats, Bird, Frog (or substitute)
Props:  Signs (copied from book); Santa Clothes for Cat (just a hat would do); Two Cat Food Cans (or similar); Christmas Lights;  Puppet Stage (optional)
Presenters:   Two
Audience:  Family Storytime  (could be done with one)

We needed a new holiday story to go with our annual puppet show presentation of The Nutcracker, so Brad and I decided to try Here Comes Santa Cat.  In the book, the "narrator" is talking directly to Santa Cat, who responds by holding up signs.  Very clever and fun!  We considered using the projector to show scanned images, but decided the act of Cat physically holding up the signs was really the heart of the book.  So we scanned some pictures, laminated them, and taped them to paint sticks.

For Santa Cat, we just squeezed a puppet cat into a little Santa coat and hat.  Probably just having a hat could work, but the coat did help with this particular puppet.

From in front of the stage, Brad interacted with Santa Cat.  When he asked a question, like "Why won't Santa bring you any presents?" Santa Cat disappeared below, then popped up holding a sign.

The sign is a pie chart comparing "naughty" to "nice," which is pretty funny, but most preschool age kids won't get it just from the visual, so Brad's reaction helped to explain it:  "Oh, you were mostly naughty this year [point to blue part], and only a little bit nice [point to pink part]."  That's the pattern we followed for the most part, but we also mixed it up with some other props besides the signs.  

Santa Cat was silent for the whole thing, except for a couple of bursts of singing, as when he decides to sing Christmas carols and meowl's horribly to the tune of "Jingle Bells."


We also did some substituting.  In the book, Santa Cat is asked how he'll travel like Santa without reindeer, and S. C. tries a rocket.  Lacking a convenient rocket prop, we switched it to a Bullfrog, and the visual of frog and cat slowly hopping across the stage was pretty funny.  Then when Brad reminded Santa Cat that he had to fly. we had a puppet Bird grab S. C., fly above the stage, and drop him.

In another scene from the book, Santa Cat tries going down the chimney....we just skipped that one for brevity and because we couldn't think of a simple way to replicate it.

With the Christmas Tree joke, we used sign and prop.  When asked what else he can do that's nice,
Santa Cat brings up the Christmas Tree sign.  Then disappears below stage, makes crashing noises, shakes the stage, meowling to the tune of "Oh Christmas Tree," and reappears tangled in Christmas lights.

The book's ending is very satisfying, and worked well with puppets.  The narrator decides that Santa Cat has been trying to be nice, so gives him a present.  We used two cans of cat food.  Then a Kitten appears.  There's a little back-and-forth as Kitten shows interest in the cans and Santa Cat fends her off, until finally Santa Cat pushes one of the cans over to Kitten in the true spirit of the holiday.

Overall the story worked well, with the combination of puppets, props, signs, and interaction with Narrator.  The one change we'll make for next year is to make the signs more visible....it was a bit hard for people in the back to make them out very well.  We printed them kind of in a hurry, and next time Here Comes Valentine Cat....
we'll play around with contrast.  And if needed, bold up the main lines with a sharpie.  But that's twelve months away.  Meanwhile, we've got two months to figure out another cool book:

Fly Guy and Buzz

Book:  A Pet for Fly Guy  by Tedd Arnold

Puppets:  Fly, Octopus, Monkey, Porcupine, Dog, Cat, Frog, Chipmunk, Spider, Worm (can substitute for all but Fly)

Props:  Garbage Can, Banana (or substitute food), Bags for three puppets

Presenters:  Two

Audience:  Family Storytime

Tedd Arnold's "Fly Guy" books are excellent, but most don't translate too easily into read alouds or a two-person act-out kind of thing.  But A Pet for Fly Guy is written as a picture book, rather than an early reader, and the structure is just right.  I've used as a storytime read aloud several times, so when Sheila and I had a "Friends" theme for Family Storytime, I thought we could try it with a bigger production.

I was Buzz, and Sheila used this cool fly puppet she made some time ago (for Old Black Fly) on a bent up wire hanger for easy control.  The story divides neatly into sections.  For the first part, Buzz introduces Fly Guy and talks about the cool things they do together.  Fly Guy responds with variations of "Buzz," which is all he can say.  So we act a few things out:  playing chase, hide and seek, and eating snacks.

In the next part, Buzz tells Fly Guy about all the great pets kids have.  We had three bags with puppets in them and asked one volunteer to come up and show the audience their pet.  This was a good simple way to do the child volunteer thing, because we could pick them in the middle of the story, and the thing they had to do, pull puppet out of bag and show audience, was simple and cute.  Then we sat that first one down and chose another.  We used a Monkey, Porcupine, and Octopus, but any three unusual/silly animals for pets would do. 

The next phase is a visit to the Pet Shop, where Buzz tries to choose a good pet for Fly Guy.  We just had our backdrop with a Pet Shop sign and I went behind it and came out with a new pet each time.  We used Cat, Dog, and Frog; substitutes could work, but they should be pretty typical pets this time.  Each time the pet interacts with Fly Guy in a bad way:  Dog licks, Cat pounces, Frog chases.  We tried to keep plenty of movement going on, and Fly Guy responded with appropriately toned buzz-y noises each time. 

The final set of puppets are ones that Fly Guy chooses when they visit the Park.  We used another backdrop with a tree in front for the park.  For these, Sheila took Fly Guy behind the backdrop, then Fly Guy popped out on top with a pet.  Our choices were Chipmunk (too loud), Worm (too slimy), and Spider (too scary).

For the conclusion, it's just Buzz and Fly Guy again, and this time Fly Guy decides that Buzz will be the perfect pet for him.  

You don't really need the two backdrops to do this, and using two puppets per section instead of three would work okay too.  I'm pretty sure this will also work as a one-person story with puppets, and hope to try that soon....

Finally getting to use a "Fly Guy" book in Family Storytime gave us the opportunity to promote other books with F. G. and Buzz, since we always have two tables full of books available for check out.  And with Fly Guy we could promote not just the early readers, but also the non-fiction "Fly Guy Presents" series, which at least some of our picture-book crowd hadn't heard of yet...

Dark Stairs, Mice, a Monster, and Music

Book:  The Dark at the Top of the Stairs  by Sam McBratney,    Illustrated by Ivan Bates
Puppets:  None
Props:  None
Technology:  Projector and Scans; Music and Sound Effects in PowerPoint
Presenters:   Two or more
Audience:  Family Storytime

For our annual "Slightly Spooky Storyime" we decided to try The Dark at the Top of the Stairs  (the Sam McBratney picture book, not the William Inge play), .  It's been one my favorites suspenseful/funny read alouds for a long time, but we thought it could make a good Act-Out with Scans.  It would have been okay, but then Brad added some just right music bits and it really came together.  We did it with six(!) people on our big Halloween event, and the rest of the week Terri and I were joined by the newest member of our team, Deborah Gitlitz (our new bilingual outreach librarian, and also an excellent storyteller).  It can also work fine with two people, though.

 In the book, an old Mouse takes three eager/scared Little Mice slowly up the dark stairs in the cellar, where a monster supposedly awaits.  We edited and ad-libbed a bit, but tried to keep a lot of McBratney's excellent storyteller's voice in there.   For example, I always love the line where the Old Mouse agrees to bring the mice up the stairs, speaking "as if he knew that sooner or later all young mice will try to see the dark at the top of the stairs."  I'm not big on messages in storytime, but it's a nice little nudge to the grown-ups to let their kids do scary things once in a while.

Before they go, the Old Mouse tries to talk them into going to the meadow or swinging on the grass.  The music Brad chose for this opening was "Morning Song" from Rossini's William Tell Orchestra, which gives it a nice, light, carefree mood.  



When the story moves into the cellar, the music switches to "In the Hall of the Mountain King" by Grieg, which is just the right amount quiet and mysterious.  We only used the kind of tiptoe-y part at the beginning, not the big ending.  It's always neat to see how much of an impact a well chosen piece of music can make.

I was the Old Mouse, and also narrated.  Deborah and Terri were Cobb and Berry-Berry....we axed Hazel in the three-person version.  We scanned illustrations of the stairs, and tiptoed around in front of it to kind of simulate going up the stairs.   Each new page-turn / scanned image brings the mice further up the stairs.  And with each section there's a new bit of dialogue as they get more scared:

We didn't do any costumes or anything to make us look like mice...we counted on the story and the images to convey that.  And as the story progressed, we didn't really try to act out ascending stairs.  We wanted to stay facing the audience, or sideways at least.  So we just sort of crept in place, making sure to stay on the sides of the screen, without blocking it.

The pace of the story works really well with a mostly preschool age audience.  The scariness the mice show is kind of real, but also kind of self-generated, so the audience is tense, but not really really scared.   When they get close to the stop of the stairs, with the mice bickering and getting excited, the Narrator can build up to the climax with a louder, more ominous voice:   "And then....Something Happened."   At the same time, the music abruptly stops.  The door opens and the monster is finally revealed.

For the "monster," which of course is a cat, we put a black box over the image in the PowerPoint slide, then animated it so it slowly rose to reveal the Cat.  Another click added a "Meow" word balloon, plus a sound effect of a real cat's meow.


At which point all of us mice kind of ran around in a tizzy for a while and then finally flopped onto the floor "in a jumble and a heap."  

The tale has a very satisfying ending, as the Old Mouse asks the Small Mice where they would like to go the next day and "none of them mentioned the Dark at the Top of the Stairs."

With our "Slightly Spooky Stories," we usually like to get the kids just a little bit scared, but then have them able to say after the story is over:  "I wasn't really scared....even though they probably were."  This story seemed to hit that pretty well....  

Fox's Sack with Puppets

Book:  What's in Fox's Sack?  by Paul Galdone
Puppets:  Fox, Bee, Rooster, Pig, Child, Dog; 4 people optional
Props:  Sack (pillow slip works fine)
Presenters:  One
Audience:  Family Storytime (older too)
Video:  How to Tell What's in Fox's Sack? with Puppets

Here's one of the first stories I ever told with puppets.   It has a repetitive pattern that's easy to learn (and for the audience to follow), and that pattern builds and twists a bit at the end to make a very satisfying story.  When I tell it with puppets I like to it as narrator, as well as doing the puppet characters.  So I'll describe Fox catching a bee, then show him doing that.  I tell how he "walked and walked and came to a house...."  And later it's  "off he went, trot, trot, trot, to Squintum's house."  I think it's because I first presented as a book and an oral tale, and I just really like Galdone's language.

Fox proceeds to meet four different ladies, and asks each one not to look in his sack while he goes to visit his friend Squintum.  I usually don't use puppets at all for the ladies, I just kind of play them myself, interacting with Fox in character, promising not to look, then opening the sack after all.  I've done it with four people puppets (I don't have four ladies, so two ladies, two men), but I don't feel it adds that much, and any time I can simplify the prop and puppet handling I usually do.

The strong pattern of the story invites some good interaction with the audience.  They'll often join in when Fox says "Don't look in my sack!"  And you can play up their involvement as the Lady by asking them:  "....should I look in his sack?"  (response is typically split evenly between "yes" and "no.").

The heart of the story is the narrative and dialogue, rather than action, but there are moments where puppet movement can really help:    When each Lady pulls the animal out of the sack  when Fox returns and kind of gets in the Lady's face when he says "Oh ho!  So you did look in my sack!;"  And short simple chases when one animal chases the previous one away.

It's always fun to watch the audience's reactions shift towards the end.  They've kind of settled into the easy pattern of Fox getting a new animal in his sack each time, but when they realize it's a Child who will be in there, they're not quite so relaxed.  And that brief bit of tension drops once they realize that the last Lady is putting her Dog into the sack to fool Fox.

You can see a video sample of this story on my Youtube Storytelling with Puppets page.  It's a tale that also works great with a puppet stage.  When I do it that way, I drop the narration part, so Fox and the Ladies describe what they're doing as the story proceeds.  With a stage, you can have some fun with the interactions between the animals, extending the chase scenes, having Rooster hide from Pig a few times, for example.

The excellent Paul Galdone version of this tale is out of print and goes for $140+ new on amazon, but Houghton Mifflin Harcourt has brought several of P. G.'s folktales back into print in the past few years and I keep hoping they'll add this one.  And The Monkey and the Crocodile....and The Magic Porridge Pot....okay, let's just say:  all Paul Galdone folktales should be back in print...in hardcover.

The Hat with Clothesline

Book:  The Hat  by Jan Brett
 Puppets:   None
Props:   Character Signs, Various Articles of Clothing, Clothesline
Presenters:  2, plus child volunteers (could be 1 plus kids)
Audience:   Family Storytime (mostly 3-7)

Brad and I chose to use Jan Brett's The Hat for a "clothing" themed Family Storytime.  Jan Brett's website has a bunch of great resources for teachers and storytellers, including neat and simple printouts for the animals from The Hat.  They're designed for reader's theater, but we used them in a slightly different way.  We printed out one of each, laminated, and strung some yarn through for the kids to wear.   Then we strung a clothesline across the stage.  We just tied string to two our our backdrops, but I'm sure there are other ways to work that out.

The story is pretty simple, and we simplified it a bit more to make it work with child volunteers.  Each of the kids got an animal sign and stood beneath the empty clotheline.  Brad narrated while I managed kids and clothes.  One by one, I pull each piece of clothing out of a basket and hang one above each animal.  Then Brad describes how the sock blew off an fell on Hedgehog.  And I unclip the sock and place it on Hedgehog/Child's head.

Then it moves to the other animals seeing Hedgehog's cool "hat," and wanting one for themselves.  And one by one, the animals spot the clothes above them and I put each one on their head.  We considered not revealing the clothes until it was time for each child to "wear" it....keeping the shirt in the basket, for example, until it was that animal's turn for a hat.  It actually was much more fun to have all of the clothes in sight from the start, though.  You could watch it all dawn on the audience in different stages, as they anticipated that each child would soon have a silly hat.  The child volunteers went through the same process, as they put the pieces together and realized what they were each about to wear.  Of course, leaving the underwear for last build up the suspense even more.  I really wish we'd taken a photo of the kids, before the "hats" and after, but I think you can imagine it.

The story ends with me coming to take down the clothes, spotting the silly looking animals, and collecting the pieces one by one.  This is one of those stories where the props and the kids really make it work.  Though Brad and I split up the narration and child/prop management, those could easily be done by one person.  So all you really need is a clothesline, a color printer, and some cute kids.  

Lo-Jack and pirate puns

Book:  Lo-Jack and the Pirates  by William Hooks,  Illustrated by Tricia Tusa
Puppets:  none
Props:  Pirate Costumes, Two Paper Eyes, Yo-Yo, Santa Hat, Squeaky Hammer (or similar), Flagon, Toast
Presenters:  two
Video:   short sample excerpt
Audience:  Family Storytime

We do a Pirate-themed Family Storytime every year, but it's been a Terri/Brad presentation for several years.  This time Sheila and I took a turn, and I thought back to my first pirate event, which was probably 20 years ago, and a book that's out of print now but was one of the few pirate early readers on the shelves back then.  Lo-Jack and the Pirates is sort of like Amelia Bedelia:  Lo-Jack is hijacked to be a pirate's cabin boy and gets everything wrong.  The book is great for 1st and 2nd graders, but younger kids miss some of the puns, so we simplified a bit for our mostly-preschool audiences and acted it out with a few props.

I was Captain Grimm, and basically I try to teach Lo-Jack some pirate stuff and she gets it wrong:

Pirate lingo:  "Pirates say aye-aye!":   Lo-Jack holds two goofy looking cut out "eyes."  Get it?  Most of the kids did, though not all.

Pirate songs:  "Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate's life for me":   Lo-Jack gets a yo-yo and sings "Yo yo, yo yo, a pirate likes to play."  Then gets a Santa hat and it's:  "Ho ho, ho ho, a pirate Santa Claus."

Pirate jobs:  "You can be a look out and shout "ahoy" when you see land.:   Lo-Jack steps on a stool, looks at the audience and shouts "a boy!" while pointing at one of the kids.

And of course with each mistake Captain Grimm gets more impatient.  When he says "Blow me down!", Lo-Jack tries to blow him over; Captain G. says he's too small to blow down a mighty pirate, so Lo-Jack grabs a squeaky hammer and bops him.  When the Captain says it's time to Loot and Pillage the people in the audience, Lo-Jack convinces him that they are nice people and they shouldn't do that.

So Captain Grimm turns nice and the story ends with C. G. proposing a Toast to Lo-Jack, which is when Lo-Jack grabs a couple of pieces of toast.

The humor really worked just fine for the audience.  For those who maybe didn't get the verbal humor, there was enough going on visually with the props and people that it was still funny.  Like maybe a three year old doesn't register that Lo-Jack got "yo ho" mixed up with "yo yo" because they sound the same, but knows that pirates don't play with yo yos, and that's pretty funny anyway.

Click here for a short, not-well-edited video clip we did as a sample.

The Chocolate Chip Ghost (and other colors)

Story:  The Chocolate Chip Ghost  by Meighan Piefer & Phyllis French

Props:   Felt Ghosts + Felt Board; colored food props or pictures (optional)

Presenters:   one

Audience:   Toddler, Preschool

I keep trying to get back to this blog, and my motivation this time is to get in a good Halloween story before the holiday happens.  This a favorite among pre-school teachers and librarians, but not everyone knows it.  I've pretty sure that I've  never actually seen the book:  I learned it as a felt board story from someone years ago.  I don't do many stories with felt, mostly because I'm so completely unskilled at scissors, patterns, and just general crafty creativity.  But these shapes are even simple enough for me.  You just cut out five small ghosts and one big one.  I made the big one into a simple flat puppet, but it works fine as just a felt shape.


 Then you tell the story, which is basically this:

Mother Ghost goes to the store to get some food.  She tells her five little ghosts not to have anything but milk when she's gone.  One by one, each ghost goes to the fridge and gets something that's not milk, but something with a distinct color.  Ghost one gets a tomato.  [pick her up and bring her behind the felt board; show the tomato].  And when she came back, she was......red!  [switch white ghost for red ghost and put that one back on the board].

Then then next three ghosts do the same thing, with different colors and different fruits or vegetables.  Play food or real food both work fine.

That simple anticipation and guessing game, where the kids guess what the ghost will eat and what color she'll turn to, along with the satisfying visual image of that brightly colored ghost, works just great.  Similar in effect to doing Pete the Cat: I Love My Red Shoes with colored shoes.  

Then there's a neat twist at the end, when the last little ghost finds the refrigerator empty, so she looks in the freezer.  I usually let the kids know that she found some ice cream, ask them to guess what flavor, then show the decorated ghost and they all get that it was chocolate chip ice cream. 

For the food props, you can use real food, toy food, or if you don't have either, just print out a picture. Actually pictures might work even better because you can stick them to the board, though I've never tried it that way.

The humor and surprises in this story are right on target for two and three year olds, but it's also engaging enough for ones and surprisingly fascinating to four and five year olds as well.  And for toddlers it's has just the right level of Halloweenishness, with the least scary ghosts ever.   

From Head to Toe with Puppets, Spanish, and Participation

Book:  From Head to Toe  by Eric Carle

Puppets:  Giraffe, Gorilla, Monkey, Horse, Crocodile, and/or a few others

Props:   Animal Signs in Spanish (optional)

Presenters:   Two  (though it works fine with one)

Audience:  Family Storytime (mostly 3-6 year olds)

We try to slip in bilingual stories from time to time during our Family Storytime, and Eric Carle books seem to work especially well for this.  From Head to Toe is an especially fun one because it also gets the kids up and doing stuff.

For our two-person version, Sheila led the kids in trying to do the stuff that the animals do, while I provided the animal examples with puppets from behind a backdrop.

First the animal appears above the backdrop, and names itself:   "I am a Crocodile."  Then I hold up a sign with the word in Spanish, while Sheila says the word in Spanish and prompts them to repeat it.

Then I say what I can do:   "And I can wriggle my hips."   And the puppet wriggles as well as a puppet can, which isn't that well, but good enough.  Meanwhile, Sheila demonstrates that for the audience, prompting them to do the same.  And that's the pattern we follow for all of the animals.  I played around a bit with the puppets, having them peek out from different spots before they're entrance, but tried not to overdo that because it can get too distracting.  

And that's really all there is to it.  Once you've got the signs made, the puppets in order, and an audience, you're all set.  We did make a few adjustments to the animals in the book.  We skipped Buffalo and Camel, partly because we just needed to shorten the whole thing, but also:  we don't have those puppets.  We don't have a Donkey either, but liked that movement (kids put hands on the floor and kick feet out....yes, kind of wild, and we had to give the "don't kick your neighbor" warning, but it was fun), so we substituted a Horse.          

There are many variations to this approach.  You can do it just this way, without the Spanish words, and it works fine.  And if you're puppets don't exactly match the animals in the book, you can substitute freely, as we did, and still be true to the story.  You can also do it as a one-person story, which I've done many times in solo storytimes.  With that approach, I have to rely on the puppets and the words to show the kids what their actions should be, which goes okay, but it's even better when you have that second person to demonstrate the human way to move like those animals.  Oh, and I have to make sure I don't forget:   You can read the book, show the pictures, have the kids do the moves, and it's also excellent.