Wednesday, July 18, 2012

K Club-Music

Background
The idea for this program came out of a presentation by staff from the Kalamazoo Public Library at a conference last year.  They do a family story time with special guests.  I thought that this sounded like great fun (while I was mentally making a list of who could come to one at our library).  I had also had been looking for a way to add some sort of programming that is just for kindergartners.  We seem to do a lot of programs for young kids and for older kids, but sometimes we have to work harder to find ones for those middle kids.

What is K Club?
K Club is a Kindergarten story time (we include those going into or leaving Kindergarten).  It is a summer program since many of our Kindergartens are full-day programs.  Every program has a theme and some sort of special guest.  We read stories and do a craft, still working on our early literacy skills.

The Books
In today's program, we read 2 books:
  • Berlioz the Bear by Jan Brett
  • I Know a Shy Fellow Who Swallowed a Cello by Barbara Garriel (we also had the props that were in the 2009 Get Creative summer reading program manual)
The Special Guest
For our first special guest, I did luck out.  I convinced my brother, who is a local high school band teacher, that he really wanted to do this (or at least that I would owe him for his help).  He brought a trumpet, a trombone, and a tuba with him to demonstrate the different sounds and to play music on.  The trumpet was handed around the room so all of the kids could push the valves.  He was a big hit!

The Craft
Discount School Supply sold a great kit with all of the pieces included (it was definitely better than anything that I would have come up with using paper towel tubes and rice).  Other than setting out parts, there was nothing for me to prepare.


Afterthoughts
The music theme was great.  The kids almost had more fun with the special guest today than reading the books.  I had asked him to talk for 5 minutes or until the kids got squirrelly and he was still going at 15 minutes with the kids paying attention.  I did start to wonder what other music programs I could do with this age group as they really got into it.

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