Car Storyhour, Truck Storytime, Friday, June 2 @ 10:30

Storytimes about sheep, cows and pigs are all very well in their place, but when we want to get excited at storytime (and we so often do) we pull out the tales about THINGS THAT GO!!! 

Books

• Moo!  by David LaRochelle.  Suie me, I just love this book, and it's a great performance piece.
• My Truck is Stuck! by Kevin Lewis.The creator of Miss Spider gives us a funny rhyming book about a stuck truck. Why is it stuck? Why is there a big hole in the road? And what is he hauling anyway? I never knew until I checked out the author's website at Daniel Kirk  that the owner of the stuck truck had a very strong Southern/country twang. Note:  One mom mentioned that she's read this so many times she's memorized it.  Might be time to find an alternate.
• The Babies on the Bus by Katz.  A nice singing book.
• Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus! by Mo Willems. Doo be dooo dooo, the bus driver says, "Don't let the pigeon drive the bus!" in his deep voice. And then the pigeon whines and begs for the rest of the book. Whining and begging. 
• Number One Sam. Pizzoli. We can't all come in #1: Sam loses his winning spot when he decides to save the baby chicks instead.  Yay Sam!
• Seymour Simon's Book of Trucks.  Not a book for reading, but I showed them the pictures and asked if they knew what it was.  Next time, I'll narrow the choices down to six or maybe frame it like this: If you could be a truck, which one would you want to be?
• Old MacDonald Had a Truck by Goetz. OK. Maybe not great.
• Little Blue Truck by Alice Schertle.  A little like the Big Turnip, but who cares about the Big Turnip when you can read about little blue trucks! 
• Sheep in a Jeep by Nancy Shaw. This very rhymey book is a fun readaloud.
• Ride, Fly Guy, Ride! by Tedd Arnold. *Fly Guy is always a hero in my book! When you're not giving him as a first favorite to beginning readers, remember him for storytime. Big plots + brief text = great deliver.
• Toot Toot Beep Beep by Emma Garcia or Trucks: Whizz! Zoom! Rumble! by Patricia Hubbell. This cheerful books rhymes and rumbles down the road with about one verse per page. There's no story whatsoever, but the ring of the words rhyming through the pages will amuse.
• Stanley's Garage by William Bee
• Down by the Station by Jennifer Riggs Vetter.  All transportation means are mentioned in this simple, cute book.
• Trucks by Mary Lindeen. All the books in the Blastoff series have great pictures and short texts. Three year old boys eat these up. 
• Songs

• Motor Boat, Motor Boat.  The finest song ever written for storytime.
• THE WHEELS on the Bus (of course!)
• WHERE is Thumbkin, but the fingers are: racing car, (it zooms) dump truck, big van, helicopter (it twirls), and freight train. I went over this first: "What if your fingers were..." and the kids were really into it!
• WINDshield wiper WINDshield wiper WINDshield wiper. (Make motion, bending arm at elbow. "Oooh, there's a light rain, just a drizzle" Slow tempo, and then "It's raining harder!" pick up tempo)

More cute car songs

• Dedicated to 3-year-old Quin

  5 little ducks ran in the parking lot

  1 fell down and he went plop.

  Mama called the Big Duck and the Big Duck got hot!

  Always hold hands in the parking lot!

  (4 little ducks, etc.)

  
  
  

  For this one, teach the kids how to go vroom vroom vroom (shift gears), and teach them how to talk in their radios as dispatchers (and what a dispatcher is) 

  5 Big Trucks. 
  Five big trucks go vroom vroom vroom                           

  They hit the road going zoom zoom zoom. (Add screech & exploding sound effects, and crash one car.)    

  The announcer calls out, “Come on back!” 

  But only 4 race cars  are on the track.

            4 race cars go vroom vroom vroom                           

  They hit the road going zoom zoom zoom.     

  The announcer calls out, “Come on back!”

  But only 3 race cars are on the track.

            3 race cars go vroom vroom vroom                           

  They hit the road going zoom zoom zoom.     

  The announcer calls out, “Come on back!”

  But only 2 race cars are on the track.

             2 race cars go vroom vroom vroom                           

  They hit the road going zoom zoom zoom.     

  The announcer calls out, “Come on back!"

             1 race car goes vroom vroom vroom                           
  

  It hits the road going zoom zoom zoom.     

  The announcer calls out, “Come on back!”
  But no more race cars are on that track!

  
  I used a hook & ladder firetruck, a garbage truck, a backhoe, a dump truck, and a tow truck. I went over them first with the children (which was good because evidently in England tow trucks are called transporter trucks), and then I hung them from my clothesline. I took them off as they went away and handed them off to the children, talking about where they were going (to put out a fire, dump some stinky garbage, etc.) Don’t forget to get out your imaginary bullhorn when the dispatcher yells.

Game

I hung up this flannel stoplight, "I see these hanging up all over town, I'm not sure what the lights mean." We identify the colors and then the kids tell me I've put them up wrong.  I ask them what the lights mean, and we get to "Green go, Yellow slow, Red stop stop stop."  Then we run in place for a while, freezing, slowing down, and speeding up.  Until I get tired and goof up, and they all goof up too from watching me and it's a funny end. 

Craft: 

Matchbox Cars and Me

I really like matchbox cars. They’re so cute, so small, so infinitely variable. It’s all I can do to keep from collecting them myself, and I hoard away all the lost ones left in my library.

 I didn’t see the point of a craft involving toilet paper rolls that might be made to look like cars, when the world is so full of matchbox cars. Instead we did this: 1. We did the Game
To the tune of "Down Around the Corner at the Bakery Shop". You CAN do a flannelboard, but I just use matchbox cars. INFINITELY preferable.)

Down around the corner at the used car lot
There were 8 big trucks all ready to be bought.
Along came (call on a young patron), all alone,

She hopped in the green one and she drove home.

2. Then we sang our goodbye song (waving our hands in the air because we couldn't clap, we were still holding the cars.) 

3. I made zig zag roads out of cardboard and stretched them across the road, with a tunnel in the middle. They played on this. Give them the duplos and building blocks to make houes.

4. While they were doing this for a while, I built a ramp at one end with a lightweight dry erase board held up off the ground by a stool.  I taped it to the table, and many moments of happiness followed as the kids zoomed their car off the table onto the ground. Dunno why this was so fascinating, but it was a cheap thrill indeed.

Painting with Cars

Just painting with matchbox cars is fun, but this week I got a shipment of letter stencils from Oriental Trading, and I brainstormed using the letters for a little experiment in blank space. The moms helped pick out a letter for their children, attached them to the pages with just a tiny piece of double sided tape, and then let the kids have at it.

I must admit some of the children were a bit bewildered. Two boys refused to get their cars “dirty” and I had to produce paintbrushes for them. But the rest seemed to have a good time and made some very nice pieces to take home.

Follow this art class up with A CAR WASH!!!

Craft for VPK:  Magnets attached to tongue depressors "drive" the car around the landscape.

10 Ways to Play with Toy Cars

I spent quite a bit of time after the kids painted with their matchbox cars cleaning paint off those tiny tires. What a dork I am! I could brought in a pan and had the kids given them a car wash! Next time!