Flannel Friday: Ocean ideas

This story, Mitch the fish, is from the lovely Storytiming blog.  I made the story prop bigger to suit my audience a bit better.  Mitch the Fish is a fish who changes colors with the swish of his tail.  He has a cute song he sings and he turns the colors of other things he sees in the ocean.  The full story is on the Storytiming blog.  The fish scene is made out of a box lid covered in paper.  The string you see went around my neck, so I could have both of my hands free to change Mitch's color and be more interactive with the kids.  This was a really fun story to tell, and the kids really enjoyed the fish changing colors. A lot! Sweet preschoolers think of you as a magician when you pull your storytime tricks out.

Another popular rhyme was the 5 Little Jellyfish rhyme from Nikarella.  These were so fun to make!  Definitely use wrapping paper ribbon (twirling ribbon) because it gives the jellyfish some great movement.

Five Little Jellyfish
5 little jellyfish swimming by the shore, the yellow one got lost and that left 4.
4 little jellyfish swimming in the sea, the bright blue one swam far away and that left 3.
4 little jellyfish in the ocean bule, the purple one took a seahorse ride and that left 2.
2 little jellyfish swimming in the sun, the oragne one took a dive and that left 1.
1 little jellyfish swimming all alone, it was time for him to go home and that left none!

I had a giant sea shell that I brought out for this song.  I held it to my ear and pretended it was telling me about the creatures in the ocean.  The idea was to pass out the ocean animals and when I called a particular animal, those children would hold them up and show me their animal's "movement."  Well, since the audience is a large daycare, this didn't work out as great as it might in an audience with more parental help.  Sooo, in the subsequent tellings, I kept the props with me and after singing the sea shell's song, I held up the ocean creature and we all did the movement together.

Sea shell, sea shell, sing a song for me
Tell me about the ocean
Tell me about the sea.
In my ocean, there's _______.

In my ocean - there's a seahorse (bob up and down), a whale (make a big "thwack!" with your hands for a tail), a fish (fish face), an octopus (octopus arms), a starfish (arms like a starfish), and a shark (chomp, chomp!)

Fried ham, fried ham

This book is full of fun songs for sing alongs and the fried ham song, in particular, made me want to share and have fun with school age groups.   If you aren't familiar with this song, you sing it in different ways to make it terribly silly.  It goes "next verse same as the first, Texas accent makes it worse (or, underwater makes it worse; or, opera voice makes it worse.)" I gathered images of the items (some Microsoft Word images, some Google images) and turned it into a poster via Microsoft Publisher.  I've done it with a field trip and a class visit and success!  The best part of sharing this silly poster was the kids easily started volunteering their own ideas for singing it - including pirate accent and with dentures.  HA!