Singable Stories

What better way to promote STAR (sing, talk, and read) than to have a story time where you sing the songs? This was for my baby and toddler story time.

The first book that I sang was What A Wonderful World (based on the song by Bob Thiele & George David Weiss and as sung by Louis Armstrong). This is a beautiful song! The book's illustrations (by Tim Hopgood) are bright, beautiful, and vibrant and follow a happy boy's journey as he smells roses, rides in a hot air balloon, rides an elephant, admires a rainbow, says "how do you do" to a bird, swims with the dolphins, and rides a horse in a herd of wild horses. The only drawback is that this tune can be hard to sing. I lost my place in the song/tune for a few times, but nobody seemed to mind.

The second book that I sang was Row, Row, Row Your Boat by Jane Cabrera. This is a familiar melody and the both the parents and children enjoyed singing this song. However, the lyrics in this book are not the same as the traditional lyrics. Together, the children, parents, and I squeaked when we saw the swimming mice, chattered when we saw the monkeys swig, trumped with the elephants, snapped with the crocodiles, roared with the lions, growled with the tigers, cooed with the doves, and barked at mommy dog. Jane Cabrera is the illustrator of this book as well and the pictures are both whimsical and inviting. 

The third book that I sang was Baa, Baa, Black Sheep written and illustrated by Jane Cabrera. This was also a familiar melody that was easy to sing. However, the lyrics are remarkably different. In this retelling of the nursery rhyme, the sheep gives the little girl wool for a hat, mittens, and a pile for the kittens. Her wool feathers bright-blue eggs in a bird's nest. She gives some more wool for a shepherd, Bo Peep, and lots of small sheep. Her wool also creats a beard for a pig, a wig for a pig, and a tea cozy for a pig. At the end of the story, she has given away all of her wool! The little girl and the other recipents of the sheep's wool use some of the sheep's wool to make her a hat, a scarf, a coat, and boots. As the little girl states, "Sorry we took it all. Sorry it's all gone. Until your wool grows back, please put these on."

The fourth book that I sang was Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star by Jerry Pinkney. His illustrations are absolutely amazing! Everybody recognized the first verse of Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star and sang along with me, but did you know there are actually five verses in the song? I didn't know that either. But everybody sang along as best as they could for all of the verses. This would also be an excellent one-on-one read aloud because so much action is happening in the illustrations throughout the book. You could ask the child questions about what was happening during the wordless illustrations throughout the book. If you are going to read this in a story time, I recommend paper clipping the pages without words together, so you can get to the verses of the song more quickly. 

I didn't receive Today Is Monday by Eric Carle in time to use it for this story time, but it is a wonderful book to sing! I sang it during a food and nutrition story time that I put together for a local school. If you want to know how to sing it, you can watch the You Tube video here.