Counting Blessings: Going a Little Buggy

Today's Blessing:  The Art of Sharing

Today was my fourth story time session out of seven that I will be doing for the Fine Arts Center here in Brigham City.  The story theme today was "A Little Buggy."  The kids loved the session and we had pretend dragonflys flying all over the place by the end of the story hour!!  I've decided there are so many cute books, crafts, fingerplays, and games about bugs that I could have filled every week with a different kind of bug theme!  Hmm...maybe next year if I'm asked to do it again?

So here's some cute ideas I found online and shared at the story session today.  The world is full of wonderfully creative people and isn't it awesome they share their ideas on the internet!

For a gathering activity, I had the kids do these buggy play-doh mats.  I love play-doh mats and there are a lot to choose from out there!!  These worked out perfect with my theme today. :)  I found them at http://www.twinkl.co.uk

I can usually fit in three stories during the one hour story session.  Since the story time is sort-of advertised as a puppetry one, I try to tell at least one story using puppets.  Susan Neidert, director of the Fine Arts Center, has a plethora of puppets at my disposal so today I told the silly story of The Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly...which Susan already has a set all put together!  Then I like to tell a flannel board story, and end with a book story.  I found a cute story online called The Bragging Dragonfly and also found a felt set I could purchase to go with it, but I'm too cheap to purchase the set so I just copied it and made my own.  Thank you http://hyenacart.com/stores/playfulpathfeltstories for the idea!

After our stories, fingerplays, and songs, we went to work and made a cute marionette dragonfly.  I found the dragonfly craft idea at http://www.housingaforest.com but I just added strings to turn it into a marionette!  That website has a ton of cute kid ideas!

And then to wrap up the session, I gave each kid a treat to eat on the way home...a butterfly snack!  An idea from http://www.jugglingwithkids.com who apparently got it from Family Fun Magazine (my most favorite magazine ever when my kids were growing up!)

   Isn't sharing great?!