St. Patrick’s Day Storytime
Sing: “If You’re Ready for a Story Take a Seat”
Top o’ the mornin’! Does anybody know what that means?
Where in the world would people say “Top o the mornin’!” to you?
It’s Saint Patrick’s Day – a day where we celebrate Irish culture. Is everyone wearing green? Do you think it’s very green in Ireland?
Sing/Clap: “Pease Porridge Hot, Pease Porridge Cold”
Read: Big Frog Can’t Fit In by Mo Willems (talk about how a frog is green to introduce)
Limericks – talk about how a limerick is a special kind of poem or story. Say it sounds a specific way, and read aloud two limericks, 2x each, stressing rhythm –
“There was an old man from Peru,
who dreamed he was eating his shoe.
He awoke in the night,
with a terrible fright,
and found out it was quite true!”
“There was a young fellow who thought
very little, but thought it a lot.
Then at long last he knew
what he wanted to do,
but before he could start he forgot!”
Next we wrote a Mad Lib type limerick together. I wrote out the following skeleton:
There once was a ____ from _________
who liked to _______ on __________.
He/She/They started to ___________,
And continued to ____________,
And finally __________ in the _______!
We had lots of fun shouting out answers and working on rhymes, although we did have to abandon the “from __________” bit since we ended up with a leprechaun from Alabama, which is far too long.
Read: Too Many Fairies by Margaret Read MacDonald
Game: Hot Potato – I ended up playing a track of some upbeat Celtic fiddle (which I grabbed from our collection at the last minute, lucked out!) while we played the game — there were so many kids 40+ that we just passed it around to our neighbors and tried to do things like send it all the way to the back of the room, to the front, to the right, etc. After that was done I noticed kids were wiggling to the music already so I had us all stand up and do a jig which was pretty rad.
Share/Look at: More Life-Size Zoo by Teruyuki Komiya (just showed a few of the bigger/cooler animals)
Sing: “If You’re Irish and You Know It” — told kids that today everyone can be Irish if they want
Verse 1: clap your hands
Verse 2: do a jig
Verse 3: tip your had
Verse 4: do all three
The craft was little green paper pots and yellow cut out coins that kids could glue on/decorate with crayons. I grabbed some gold glitter at the last minute and offered kids “fairy dust” on their heads as well as shamrock stamps on their hands when they came up after storytime. That was one long line. Two surly boys asked for NO DUST but the rest of them (including lots of boys) were super excited to get a few pieces of glitter dropped ceremoniously on their heads. Very sweet.
About the Author
Jen Robinson works as a Children's Librarian in Marin County, California and still can't believe she gets paid to make bats out of coffee filters and read stories to babies. Jen has worked as a Teen Librarian, Virtual Services Librarian, and web designer.