Includes more than forty selections, including action songs, chants, tongue twisters, musical games, and audience participation tales. Whether you are working with preschoolers or high schoolers, a story stretcher is a great way to create immediate rapport with your audience and within your group. These "two-minute miracles" from storyteller Naomi Baltuck will have children and adults, singing, moving, laughing, and begging for more. For each stretcher, she has included music, hand motions, tips for telling, or other personal touches developed during the countless times she has used it to hold the attention of her audiences. Time lengths and target audiences are also included so that you can select the best stretchers for every situation. Naomi has gathered these gems from her own childhood, from other storytellers, as well as from her children who bring home new activities from camp. Tried and true, these stretchers are a wonderful way to bring together family, friends, classes, Scout troops, and audiences everywhere.

“Rising above the usual singsong name-checking, Vestergaard celebrates not only the jobs these machines perform but also their marvelous mechanics.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review) Sixteen boisterous, rhyming poems — each one highlighting the job and personality of a different vehicle, from a backhoe to an ambulance to a snowplow — invite young children to meet their favorite trucks face-to-face. Cheerful illustrations show each one in action, digging (or dozing, or dumping) away. Engaging visual details like an anxious turtle crossing the street just ahead of a steamroller are sure to keep preschoolers poring over the pages as they consider the question, “Trucks as far as eyes can see. . . . Which truck would you like to be?”

Two mice have fun playing on a teeter-totter, but as more and larger friends join them, it becomes increasingly difficult to stay balanced.

Includes 450 lesson plans for use with 90 titles.

Activities for 90 different children's books, covering time, art, cooking and snack time, creative dramatics, housekeeping and dress-up, music, movement, block building, science fun, nature study, library, mathematics (math fun).

A collection of ideas for activities to use in conjunction with over 90 children's books.

Librarians and educators can shake up storytimes, help children stay healthy, and encourage a lifelong love of reading with Dietzel-Glair’s easy-to-use resource. Demonstrating exactly how to use children’s books to engage preschool-age children through movement, it’s loaded with storytimes that will have children standing up tall, balancing as they pretend to walk across a bridge, or even flying around the room like an airplane. Presenting hundreds of ideas, this all-in-one book is divided into six sections: “Art” spotlights titles that are natural hooks for art or craft activities alongside ideas on how to create art just like the character in the story, while an appendix includes art patterns that can be used as coloring sheets; “Games” includes searching games, follow-the-leader games, and guessing games to enhance the books in this section; “Movement” features books that kids can jump, stomp, clap, chomp, waddle, parade, wiggle, and stretch with; “Music” chooses books perfect for activities like shaking a maraca, singing, dancing between the pages, and creating new sound effects; “Playacting” lets kids pretend along with the characters in these books, whether it’s washing their face, swimming with fish, or hunting a lion; “Props” encourages storytime leaders to bring out their puppets, flannelboard pieces, and scarves—these books have enough props for everyone in the program to have a part. Each chapter includes as much instruction as possible for a wide range of motions. Pick and choose the amount of movement that is right for your storytime crowd, or do it all!