Love

Last week the theme was Love for Valentine's Day. We also learned the sign language for "I Love You" and "Kiss", as well. A great website to learn simple sign language appropriate for pre-verbal children is Baby Sign Language. 

Books:

Toddler Books:

Love Monster - Rachel Bright
Counting Kisses - Karen Katz
All Kinds of Kisses - Nancy Tafuri
The Biggest Kiss - Joanna Walsh
Kiss Kiss! - Margaret Wild

Preschool Books:

Love Monster - Rachel Bright
The Pout-Pout Fish - Deborah Diesen
Catching Kisses - Amy Gibson
Dinosaur Kisses - David Ezra Stein
The Biggest Kiss - Joanna Walsh
Kiss Kiss! - Margaret Wild

Rhymes/Fingerplays/Songs:

Two Little Lovebirds:

Two little lovebirds, sitting on a hill,

One named Jack and the other named Jill,

Fly away Jack, Fly away Jill,

Come back Jack, Come back Jill.

Two little lovebirds, sitting on a hill.

One named Jack and the other named Jill.

Source: Memory 

*It is easy enough to swap out "blackbird" for any other type of bird to make it appropriate for sing-aloud at Toddler storytime.

Five Valentines

Five hearts we made for Valentine's Day,

"I Love You" is what they say,

I'll give one to my _____ today.

(countdown to 1)

Source: The is a variation, with some minor changes that I have made, to one that we had in our flannel drawer.

*I used the sign for "I Love You" every time we said it in this rhyme.

H-E-A-R-T (Tune: "Bingo")

There is a shape and it means love,

And heart is its name-o,

H-E-A-R-T,

H-E-A-R-T,

H-E-A-R-T,

And heart is its name-o.

Source: One of my Library Assistants came up with this. I made some tweaks, and used Velcro to put the 5 letters up on the flannel board. We took one letter off each round until we were clapping 5 times instead of singing the letters aloud. It was a lot of fun! If the kids are older, you can have them make a heart shape with their hands or teach them the sign for heart.

My Friends

My friend the ____ (animal) taught me to _____ (action).

Giraffe = Stretch

Elephant = Stomp

Zebra = Run

Snake = Slither

Monkey = Jump

Lion = Roar

Source: "My Friends" by Taro Gomi. 

*There is a flannel of this story in my flannel drawer. I did not like the actions or the flannel animals for this particular flannel story, but I LOVED the flannel animals we had in our zoo flannel folder. I used the idea but swapped out the animals and made up my own actions to go along with it. It's easy enough to change the animals to fit a particular theme or the flannels you have on hand. 

*I also used this as a good stretching activity for my Preschoolers. We went through the animals once, putting the animals up on the board one-by-one. Then I went back through them a second time, taking the animals off the board but repeating the actions. We stretched like a giraffe at the very beginning and at the very end to add a wiggles-out element to the activity.