[eaturcheese]

Lucky! You get to do storytime!

As part of my curriculum, I teach The Hungry Caterpillar and Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do you see? by Eric Carle. They cover very basic English and would be best for your younger kids. I think his books also have games you can buy to complement the stories. Have you tried any Dr. Seuss books yet?

I love The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales. They are humorous interpretations of traditional children's stories, and even adults have a good chuckle. I used to do this as part of a speech team activity where we would pick stories and perform them for elementary school classes. That author, Jon Scieszka, also wrote The True Story of the Three Little Pigs, as retold by the wolf.

I think the biggest part of story time is the performance. It's not just a story for the kids who are attending but a show. A lot of the interest is created by your voice, your facial expressions, and your reactions to the pictures and story. You can also ask questions and try and engage them more by getting them to say some of the dialogue (i.e. Little pig, little pig, let me come in? Not by the hair of my chinny-chin-chin!). Some stories are better than others for this.

Today with my 10-11 year old 5th graders I did a chant. It was a bit dull (Do you have a blue shirt? No, No, No, I don't), but me doing simple gestures and making an idiot of myself with weird voices was enough to get them to join along. It seems to work with all the ages I teach, but maybe they're laughing at the tall, fat, curly-haired white lady dancing in front of them.

All in all, have fun with it.