Storytime: Under the Sea

Scribbles had a fantastic storytelling session at Big You Little You this week, with lots of reading, singing and dancing about to an underwater theme. I always like choosing a theme when planning a Storytelling session, so that I can add a bit of structure and make links between stories, activities and crafts. A theme allows for a lot of imagination, for both the storyteller and the listener. I have a large collection of puppets to use for storytime, as they are a great way of keeping children engaged in the story, so I sometimes choose a theme around a certain puppet. As I was excited about taking my new Folkmanis Octopus puppet out and about for the first time, I decided to go for an Under The Sea Theme.

Storytime started in our usual way,with a few songs and rhymes, including ' one, two, three, for, five, once I caught a fish alive...' and ' row, row, row your boat' . Our first story of the day was Secret Seahorse; a short under the sea tale by Stella Blackstone that introduces us to lots of sea creatures and encourages the children to search the pages for the hidden seahorse.

After The Secret Seahorse, we moved on to a book about mermaids, by Usborne Books, then on to The Hole at the Bottom of the Sea for a little boogie! This CD singalong book is the latest in the collection of excellent audio books from Barefoot Books. With a funky Jazz soundtrack, this book certainly gets everybody up on their feet!After looking through the book and deciding on dance moves for each creature ( just use a lot of imagination) we all got up on our feet and danced our energy out.




After we were all danced out, it was time for a craft activity to finish off our session. Crafting is a great way to end a session, as the children can use their imagination and build on what they have learnt throughout the session. There is a great Secret Seahorse activity in the Barefoot kids section, if you get stuck for ideas.

Instead of the seahorse activity, we decided to create our own paper plate octopus. This craft activity was really cheap, easy for younger toddlers and quite quick if you do not have a lot of time. All you need is a pack of paper plates ( cut in half), scissors, glue, crayons and whatever crafty bits you have available, including long strips of paper for those wobbly legs. The great thing about crafts like this is that they do not have to be perfect ( like our 3 legged octopus below) but can be very colourful and creative.

Hope you all have some fun Under The Sea!