Nuts To You!

The Children's Department workroom is a busy place right now, gathering books and puppets and crafts to
prepare for the fall lineup of preschool storytimes. We're trying out a new system this fall where we all collaborate on our storytimes, and each programmer is assigned to collect all the stories and materials we will need
to choose from to create our own storytime programs on that topic. There are large bins to fill with stories, crafts, and songs. It's a programmer's dream!

Speaking of gathering, have I mentioned my latest obsession with squirrels and gathering nuts? I was assigned the storytime called, "Squirrel Tales." Now, this is new for me so I naively said, "Are there really enough books about squirrels for a whole program?" Let alone fingerplays about squirrels! Well, as I soon discovered, there is a plethora of things to choose from in the storytime world of squirrels!

I found books: "Nutty Nut Chase", "Those Darn Squirrels", "Nuts to You!", and "Little Squirrel's Special Nest." Fingerplays: "Five Little Squirrels", and songs: "Frisky Squirrel", "A Squirrel Song", and "Fall is Here." I have no less than three squirrel crafts to choose from and large acorns cut for a creative movement gathering song.

About this time, I left for a vacation with my family in the Smoky Mountains. I was still thinking about squirrels, but how could I avoid the subject while hiking out in the beautiful mountains there? As we were hiking a couple miles straight up the side of the mountain (in 93 degree heat, no less), we heard a squeal from the hikers behind us. I thought it might be a black bear, native to those woods, but no--it was just a couple ordinary squirrels!

Squirrels! They're everywhere! I took the opportunity to start a round of Squirrel Songs with my young nieces and nephew (which also gave me a chance to sit down and rest). I would have been happy to whip out my newly discovered squirrel fingerplays right then and there, but people seemed more interested in hiking.

So I returned from vacation with a new-found passion for sharing the joy of squirrels with the children of Massillon. My manager said to me, "How about blogging something about your obsession with squirrels after researching materials for story times?!? "

Me, obsessed? What does she mean?? Just because in my purse I have a glove finger puppet with 5 little squirrels attached (I meant to work on that at home!), I'm labelled obsessed. Just because I've stuffed the squirrel storytime bin in the workroom to the brim, I'm out of control! Hmph! Well, maybe she has a point...

Hope to see you at our preschool storytimes for the week of September 20th for SQUIRREL TALES!