"l" is for lollipop

Happy holidays, folks. I've been sitting on this entry for a while now; the holidays have been hecka busy and I'm only getting around to writing about last week's storytime. Everybody's busy, right? Right.

It is the holiday season, though, huh? For lots of folks, anyway. Holiday-themed storytimes are a staple this time of year, but I decided against doing one. Not just because I am wary of overly-themed Head Start storytimes, but because the Christmas (used synecdochally) season is kind of a weird one. For kids (and thus in my world, kid lit), Christmas focuses to a varying extent on presents. I am certainly not going to utilize Christmas as anything but synecdoche, for the obvious reasons. This is not true across the board but many books do focus on gifts (or a specific cultural tradition) and I did not have the time this year to find non-inclusive, non-present-heavy books. Not lazy, busy. They are there. But so.

And presents... well, presents are tricky. Many kids take them for granted, particularly as you slide up the socioeconomic scale. But there are kids for whom presents are not necessarily a big (or easy) part of the holiday season, or for whom they play a much smaller part of the season relative to their peers. Things can be tough. This is not be self-aggrandizing or "look at how sensitive I am!," rather to say that I always try to make my storytimes fun for everyone. If something is iffy for some kids, I'd rather cut it. I'm only beginning to begin, though, and thus might be a little sensitive to some things that later on I won't think twice about. But that's where I am today, and so we just went for a fun (as always), non-seasonal storytime, with no quiet books. Double down on the silliness, full speed ahead!

1.  Opening:  Hello Song [with Gareth]
2.  Song/Activity:  Open Them, Shut Them

3.  STORY: I'm a Shark / Bob Shea
4.  Fingerplay: The Itsy-Bitsy Spider
5.  Stretch: A Sailor Went to Sea

6.  STORY: Z is for Moose / Kelly Bingham
7.  Song/Activity: The Wheels on the Bus
8.  Fingerplay: Chocolate

9. STORY: Pete the Cat : I Love My White Shoes / Eric Litwin
10. Song/Activity: This is the Way We Shake Our Shakers [tune: Here We Go ‘Round the Mulberry Bush]

11.  Closing:  The More We Get Together [with Gareth]

How did it go? Find out tomorrow soon!