week 9: return of the alligator

Another week, another grievous instance of this author forgetting his bag of storytime tricks at work and therefore not having Bianca along for the ride. Thankfully Ms. Amy had an old friend on hand who stepped up to help us sing "We Wave Hello Like This" and "We Wave Goodbye Like This." (Spoiler alert: it was Al the Alligator, who is a very popular storytime guest star).

So I know I said I was going to read The Three Little Pigs this week... well, maybe next week. I had some last minute second thoughts: mainly that, relatively speaking, it is so small. But the immediate future holds Three Little Pigs, I swear. Instead I chose The Three Billy Goats Gruff, a storytime favorite.

I cut Two Little Redbirds/Dos Pajaritos because, well, no little redbirds. OK, technically no little redbird puppets. We could always use our imaginations (and do!) but since the established pattern is to do to fingerplay with the puppets first, I just substituted... something... else.

We also read I Will Not Read This Book by Cece Meng, which I like maybe more for a one-on-one context. It is a silly, clever cumulative story, and many of the kids were giggling right along. So OK, fine. It's good stuff. But I think it would be dynamite one-on-one, that's all. We also had to cut the GABGM! puppet story because that was in the back of tricks. So we got to do Icky Sticky Bubblegum instead, which never fails to be super-fun. We finished with Don't Let the Pigeon Stay Up Late, then everyone got to say goodbye to Al the Alligator. Hooray!