Liz At The Library

Last week my dad helped me lead Story Time while the librarian is on vacation for three weeks. This week, my mom helped me read and sing to 0-4 year olds. She is a former ESL (English as a Second Language) teacher for elementary school children, and also has a public relations background. Essentially she's great with kids and an extrovert! It figures that she's a Leo.

Liz, my mom, is pictured above with the list of songs and stories we did for Story Time. She inspires me to be organized.

Ari was busy reading while we were getting ourselves ready for our 10:30am performance.

My friend Leah drove down to Brooklyn from upstate NY with her step-daughter Kinneret, age 2, to join in on the Story Time fun. She also took all the pictures of us reading, singing and being silly.

I was in a rush this morning, and therefore hastily selected my books. My mom's two books were a hit. They were:

Eric Carle's "From Head to Toe"

This is a great book. It goes through a list of animals and things they can do with their bodies. For example "I am a giraffe, I can bend my neck. Can you do it?" And then then the kids bend their necks in response.

Her second book was called "Barnyard Boogie." She got it second-hand at a thrift store up in Nyack, NY. That's where she gets the majority of her books and toys for the kids.

This is a fun book. It's actually a book and a puppet show all in one. Each page becomes a different animal. On one page the puppet mouth is a duck, and on the next it becomes a moose. The words to book are rhythmic and can be made into a song if the reader likes. Here's my mom reading "Barnyard Boogie" to the kids.

Then I decided to bore the kids to death by reading them a book about how penguins grow!

Boring! Ari loves this book at home, but I should have realized it's more of a one-on-one book and does not work for large groups. Leah pointed this out later.

Here's a picture of me boring the children about the growth of penguins from egg to adult.

Leah was on the job taking pictures!

Here we are singing "The Wheels on The Bus"

We had fun, my mom and I.

After Story Time ended, Leah and I drove over to Borough Park and had some delicious kosher pizza at Mendelsohn's while my mom watched Samara.

So...what songs should I sing next week? Ideas?