Monkey Business at the Library

Zac is now 11 months old and we took him to Toddler Storytime at the library today!!! It was his very first time going to the library.

Of course he loved the songs and finger plays and completely ignored the books (because they were being held by the librarian and she wasn't very close to us), looked around at all the other babies and crawled and explored and threw his toys on the floor and lost a sandal and so on. It was fun!

They had a nice little opening and closing rhyme routine, and then I wrote down the books they read and we skipped the paper bag monkey puppet craft and just went outside to crawl in the grass and play with the dogwood blossoms which had fallen.

Opening Rhyme - Ten Little Fingers

I have ten little fingers.
And they all belong to me.
I can make them do things.
Do you want to see?

I can close them up tight.
I can open them wide.
I can put them together.
I can make them all hide.

I can put them up high.
I can put them down low.
I can put them in my lap,
And sit just so.

Closing Rhyme - Thank You

My hands say thank you with a
clap, clap, clap.
My feet say thank you with a
tap, tap, tap.
Clap, clap, clap.
Tap, tap, tap.
Turn yourself around
And take a big bow.

My two cents? I liked Monkey Do! and Good Night, Gorilla. I didn't care for the other two. (The librarian was telling the moms how much she loved Koko's Kitten so you could maybe swap that in for Little Beauty. And the Juliet Kepes version of Five Little Monkeys is greatly superior). Other thoughts are going through my mind of course. Personally, I would have put Caps for Sale in a booklist about Monkeys!!! And there's always Curious George...

It irked me that the librarian told the children that gorillas are "big monkeys" and I know Maria Montessori would have been NOT happy about that either. You can simplify things for young children but you should still try to be accurate. "There are both monkeys and apes" would have been a vast improvement, and is still not too hard for children to understand. Or "A gorilla is a cousin to a monkey" could perhaps be a way to explain it.

Monkey Do!

Good Night, Gorilla

Little Beauty

Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed

Koko's Kitten

Caps for Sale: A Tale of a Peddler, Some Monkeys and Their Monkey Business

The Complete Adventures of Curious George

They did two songs. I didn't much like "The Monkeys in the Zoo" (tune of The Wheels on the Bus) but I thought the Itsy Bitsy Monkey was really cute. And I usually detest the word cute.

Itsy Bitsy Monkey (tune of The Itsy Bitsy Spider)

The itsy bitsy monkey climbed up the coconut tree
(have hands climb)

Down came a coconut that bopped him on the knee
(drop fist from overhead to hit yourself on the knee)

Along came his Mama, who kissed away the pain
(kiss your fist -- I kissed Zac's fist)

Then the itsy bitsy monkey climbed up the tree again
(climb hands again, having kids stretch up as high as they can reach)

Zac's grandma met us there. She also babysits his little cousin several days a week, and was saying she wished she had a collection of rhymes and finger plays and songs, so I am lending her the following:

Plus There's a Hole in the Bucket by Nadine Bernard Westcott and Baa Baa Black Sheep by Iza Trapani, just for fun.