Bedtime Math came to our youngest patrons this month as we held a "March" of the Stuffed Animals. Each child at Storytime Saturday (and again at our Thursday Storytime) brought in a stuffed animal to help us do some simple but fun math activities.
To start, we read some books about stuffed animals.
Knuffle Bunny by Mo Willems told of a stuffed animal who got left behind and a small owner who had to find a way to make herself understood.
Tell Me About Your Day Today by Mem Fox was about sharing bedtime - and stories - with friends. In
The Woods by Paul Hoppe, a child loses his stuffed bunny and has to go find it - in the woods! Lastly,
Me...Jane by Patrick McDonnell
told the story of the life of Jane Goodall, including her young adventures with "Jubilee", her stuffed monkey.
We counted all our stuffed animals, then sorted them by number of legs, and by long tails and short tails. See the bar graph we made with Post-it notes to show the amount of animals in each group?
Next, we got ready for our parade by making flags to wave as we "Marched". We decorated the front
and back of paper, then squished three milkshake straws on top of each other to make a long flap pole. The flag was attached with tape - so it would wave. And it did!
And then we marched - out the library door and down the path, marching to a John Phillips Sousa tune, parading our stuffed animals and waving our flags. It was so much fun, I didn't even get a photo!
The Bedtime Math Program provided stickers and certificates, and paper tangrams to take home to make more animals. Thanks, Bedtime Math!
