I'm a Baby Follow-Up

Book: I’m a Baby, You’re a Baby by Lisa Kopper
Puppets: 3-5 animal pairs (one big, one small)

Presenters: 1

Audience: Toddler Time (1 and 2 year olds)

Here’s a nice simple book to do with a puppet Follow-Up in a Toddler Time. The book has simple, bright pictures of babies and animals, plus the catchy title refrain. And some vocabulary, as it provides the names of baby animals. Not that a one or two year old needs to know "foal," but it’s a good book for calling attention to the way picture books build vocabulary.

The Follow-Up just requires puppet pairs, with one big and one small. After reading the book, I say: “Now let’s see if we can name the babies of some other animals that I have in my bag.” So you can pop out the grown-up, make its animal sound, then pop out the baby and give the name. I didn’t have big-little puppet combos for all, but beanie babies or even juggling penguin beanbags work fine. And if the snowy owl parent has a barn owl baby, we just don't worry about it.

For a Follow-Up like this I only need a handful of examples. It reinforces the concept and pattern of the book, plus the visual impact of the puppets captures most of the toddlers’ attention, which is one reason I usually place these midway through the program, just in case I’m losing too many by then. It also models book follow up ideas for the grown-ups; they may not have puppets, but can do the same thing with pictures, stuffed animals, or even just with words.

Dog, Cat, and Ham

Story: "Why Dogs Chase Cats" (from The Knee-High Man and Other Tales by Julius Lester)

Program: Family Storytime

Presenters: two

Props: Dog Ears; Cat Ears; Ham; Tree
Video:  How to Tell Why Dogs Chase Cats with Puppets

I’ve been doing “Why Dogs Chase Cats” for years with puppets. It’s a great solo story, easy to do because there are only two puppets. The characters have distinct personalities, and the action, especially when they keep taking the ham from each other in increasingly quicker snatches, is perfect for puppets. When I do puppet workshops I call it a “surefire” story that’s especially good for tellers without a ton of puppet experience. The language and spirit of Julius Lester’s telling in The Knee-High Man and Other Tales, where I first learned the tale, is just right.

For our “Dogs” Family Storytime, though, Sheila and I acted it out, and it turns out that’s just as fun. We just used simple cat and dog ears, a pink paper ham (pretty tattered by the time we were through with it), and that’s about it. Acting it out, we could get more active with the chasing, going in and out behind our backdrops and having a few near misses. We have a nice cut out tree that comes in handy for many stories. In this case we put a step ladder behind it and I (as Cat) climbed up and teased Sheila (as Dog) while I ate that delicious ham.

Our only real problem came on our 4th and last performance, when we decided to switch roles. That was fun to do, since it’s such an easy story to remember…plus I always did both as a solo puppeteer, and I missed being Dog. But we were so confident that we didn’t even walk through it with the reversed roles (we should know better, I know), so only realized mid-story that Sheila actually isn’t quite tall enough to see over the tree once she’s on the step ladder. So she was stretching and hopping on the ladder in order to peek out, and the tree was pretty teetery for a good part of all that. But it all worked out. Cat ate the ham. Dog chased her. And dogs have been chasing cats ever since.

Program Summary: Dr. Seuss Celebration

K-2 Book Adventure Program Summary: Dr. Seuss Celebration

Our February “K-2 Book Adventure” program was all about Seuss. We had 100 or so kids, mostly 5-8 years old, and 50 or so grown-ups. Terri, Sheila, and I presented. We built it mostly around two stories, with miscellaneous Seuss stuff in between. I wanted to steer clear of the best known Seuss stories, knowing the kids would get their fill during Read Across America Day a couple weeks later.

Seuss Facts: To start the event, and at three other interludes, we did quick “Seuss Facts.” I put on my Cat in the Hat hat, Terri leads the kids in a drum roll, and PowerPoint slides frame the facts. We tried not to overwhelm them with information…I really wanted to talk about how Marvin K. Mooney Will You Please Go Now was aimed at Richard Nixon and how And to Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street inspired John Fogerty to write “Looking Out My Backdoor” for CCR, but those were more parent-y things I guess. So we went with: 1) the 25+ rejections before Mulberry Street was published; 2) the challenge of writing a book with 50 words (Green Eggs and Ham), showing the 50 words in alphabetical order...not sure if the kids got the point, but it pleased me somehow; 3) the books written as Theo. LeSieg; and 4) the Geisel Award. These interludes had some visual elements and worked as transitions between stories. And I was especially pleased that most of the Geisel Award books that we had on display did get checked out after the program.

“What Was I Scared Of?”: A fun act-out of the “pale green pants” story. Details are in a separate post.

“A Gallery of Seuss Creatures”: We scanned five or six creatures from his books, along with a line or two from the book. Such as this quote from If I Ran the Zoo: “I’ll go to the far-away mountains of Tobsk / Near the river of Nobsk / and I’ll bring back an Obsk /A sort of a kind of a Thing-a-ma-Bobsk / Who only eats rhubarb and corn-on-the-cobsk.” And show the picture. This was a fun way to highlight Seuss’ verbal and visual creativity and get the kids curious about some of the books they may not have read yet.

Fox in Socks: We picked three of the tongue twisters from this one, using scanned images from the book to set it up. We each read the long tongue twisty section, then called on a child to try one phrase, such as "...a tweetle beetle bottle puddle paddle battle muddle." Then all the kids tried it. PowerPoint worked neatly here, as we could show the full scanned page, but click to highlight the shorter phrase.

Hop on Pop: We always need to get them on their feet at about the 30 minute mark, but I was stumped for a Seuss stretch for a while. Hop on Pop was the best I could come up with. We had them stand and hop to the refrain from the book: “Hop, hop, we hop on pop.” Then it was “what else can we do?....Jump! So it’s: Jump, jump, we jump on a stump.” The idea was to get them moving, plus rhyming at the same time. I’m not sure it was especially successful, but they stood up and they moved around, and that was good enough.

“The Sneetches”: Another three person act out, with details in a separate post.

We finished with a simple craft: decorate a white bag as a "Cat in the Hat" hat (or any kind of hat, really).

School Promotion: Every month we visit either the K, 1st, or 2nd grade kids at each of our two elementaries to promote the event in a 15-20 minute presentation. This time we did the first bit of "The Sneetches," though without the "Star Off / Star On Machines" and with just Sheila and I, no child volunteers. At the first school we also shared some Seuss facts that just weren't exciting enough, so for the second school we scrapped those and did the first part of "What Was I Scared Of" and that was much better.

Previous K-2 Book Adventure programs were: “Dragons,” “Arnold Lobel,” and “Fractured Fairy Tales,” and "Bug Tales." Details for all may follow in separate posts, though it may be a while…

Scary Green Pants

Story: "What Was I Scared Of?" by Dr. Seuss (from The Sneetches and Other Stories)

Props: Green Pants, Bucket, Spinach (green paper), Fishing Pole

Participants: Narrator, Guy, Someone to move the Pants

Audience: K-2

My favorite Dr. Seuss story when I was a kid was also my scariest. It’s called “What Was I Scared Of” but I always think of it as “The Pale Green Pants.” It’s been reissued as a small solo book, but originally appeared in The Sneetches and Other Stories. We acted it out as part of our “K-2 Book Adventure: Dr. Seuss Celebration.” I narrated, using Seuss’ words exactly, minus one section skipped to keep our time tight enough. Terri was the person who goes out on errands and keeps running into a “pair of pale green pants with nobody inside them.” Sheila played the pants by dressing in black and holding a pair of green sweat pants and floating them around. Of course the kids could see her, but they focused on the pants, just as if the pants were a puppet. The interplay between person and pants worked well, as Sheila and Terri played it up with chases and near misses, and Sheila floated the pants out towards the audience too. My only problem was that with Seuss, you really want to get the rhythm and rhyme just right. And the kids were laughing so loud that as narrator, I kept having to stop and wait for the next line. I guess that’s a good thing overall, but still. We also visited a couple of Primary School classes for Read Across America Day two weeks later and re-did this story. A summary of the whole "Dr. Seuss Celebration" is in a separate post.

Jumping, Rhyming Puppets

Book: Jump by Scott Fischer

Puppets: Bug, Frog, Cat, Dog, Crocodile, Shark (optional), Whale

Presenters: One

Audience: Toddler Time (1 and 2 year olds)
Video:  How to Tell Jump with Puppets

Any time I browse through a new picture book and notice that there are lots of animals, but only two on the same page at any time, I think: puppets? If the animal characters are interacting verbally and/or physically in fun ways, even better. Jump is an excellent new picture book with funny little rhymes and a strong pattern that makes the whole thing simple to learn by heart: “I’m a bug, I’m a bug, I’m a snug little bug, and I’m sleeping on a jug, until I see a frog and I…JUMP!” The pattern continues from frog to cat to hound to croc to shark and finishes with whale (who ends the tale). A very nice puppet story for Toddler Time and would probably work just as well with preschoolers.

The puppet handling is easy: each puppet pops out of the bag and chants the rhyme. You could sing it as a song too, but I usually opt for the chant when I can (you would too with a singing voice like mine). Then I just stretch out the “until I see a….” while I’m getting the next puppet out of the bag. The “and I…JUMP!” can be a nice bit of action, with the new puppet attacking and just missing the jumper. Doing this almost in slow motion works best I think, so the audience can see it coming and anticipate. And they can also join in verbally with the “jump!”

For my Toddler Time group (1’s and 2’s) this week, I pretty much stuck to the words on the page. I dropped the shark, just because it was one too many animals for their attention span. And though I don’t have a puppet whale, I was happy to discover that we still had a stuffed animal whale that belonged to one of my kids and we kept around because you never know when you might need a whale for a story (even though it had not been used for almost twenty years). Another slight change: in the book, the animals actually swallow each other, then get spit out by the whale at the end. I had them all escaping each time…it just worked better with the puppets and the age level. Like Jump Frog Jump, this is an easy, action packed puppet story to use even if you haven’t done much with puppets before.

The Best Kind of Sneetch

Story: "The Sneetches" by Dr. Seuss
Props: Many green stars, 1 Star On Machine, 1 Star Off Machine, ball, marshmallow on a stick
Participants: 3 tellers, 6 kids
Audience: K-2nd

I’ve done several Dr. Seuss stories over the years, but never could come up with a good way to do The Sneetches, one of my all-time favorites. Turns out having three people makes all the difference. Terri was a star belly Sneetch, Sheila was plain belly, and each of them had three kids from the audience in their groups. I narrated and also got to be Sylvester McMonkey McBean. Using a narrator for Seuss is nice, since you have to get the words just right and precise memorization is tough. So the Sneetches were free to look snooty (star bellies) or left out (plain bellies) and lead the kids to follow suit, and the narrator can read.

Sheila rigged up a couple of card tables to serve as the Star On and Star Off Machines. With butcher paper in front, a bunch of gadgety things (dryer hose, toy robot, etc.) on top, and appropriately placed "in" and "out" signs they had the flavor of Seuss’ illustrations without attempting to duplicate them. And as the story says, the things really worked. The kids followed Sheila or Terri as they crawled under the table, then either grabbed a cut out star (Star On Machine) or dropped the star they had (Star Off Machine) into a basket. When we reached the point of: "off again on again in again out again, through the machines they raced round and about again," it was pretty fun. I’m not sure all of the kids were holding (or not holding) a star on their bellies at the right time, but it seemed like just the right level of controlled chaos.

The kids and audience settled down enough at the end to hear the satisfying conclusion, that “no kind of Sneetch is the best on the beaches.” I liked that we were able to stick to the words of the story, add just enough visual elements (stars + machines) without spending a ton of time, and involve kids in the telling. This is a Seuss story that’s a little less well-known than some of his others, so it was nice to introduce it to so many kids (we had about 100). The story was part of our K-2 Book Adventures: “Dr. Seuss Celebration.”

Where are Thumbkin, Pointer, and Ducky?

Fingerplay: Where is Thumbkin

Props: 5 pairs of puppets

"Where is Thumbkin" is one of my all-time favorite fingerplays. I do it the traditional way with a few add-ins for fun: When Tall Man comes out he has a big deep voice (always a crack-up to watch the expressions of three year olds when they make that voice); Pinkie has a high squeaky voice; They all say “Zoop!” as they run away; The finale is “Where is Everybody” so they all come out, and finally conclude with bows (fingers bending), kisses (fingers touching) and hugs (fingers folded). And I haven't changed this for years. No reason to mess with something that fun, I figured.

Then Shannon, who does our Baby Times, got the idea to have puppets come out instead of fingers, and it works great. And best of all, I can still go through the whole finger production, as above. Then use puppets as a follow-up: “It was fun to see those fingers meet each other; now let’s try it with animals.” I’ll have two puppets of the same animal in my bag. They don’t have to be identical, just the same animal. I show the first one, so they’ll know what to sing, and then: “Where is Ducky, Where is Ducky? Here I am! [1 duck pops out] Here I am! [the other duck pops out]. Then the whole “How are you today” business. Which works really well, because the animals interact in the same way that the fingers just did. I’ve tried the ending bit two ways: Either: “Run away….Quack!” (instead of “Zoop!”). Or skip “Run away” altogether and it’s: “Quack, quack, quack…Zoop!” I think I’m leaning towards the second way so far.

One way I haven’t tried yet is to not have matching animals. So it could be: “Where is Ducky?....” and “Where is Kitten?...” and they “quack” and “meow” at each other. Could be a nice twist. I can’t honestly say that I’ve ever been tired of Thumbkin, but it is always nice when you’re able to something new with something you’ve done the same way for so long. “The More We Get Together,” on the other hand, which is my opening song for Toddler Time, now that I get tired of. Sure, Bear sits on my lap and bounces along, but there must be something else I can do to puppetize it…