This Week at Family Fun: Ready for Some Football!!

I feel like I conquered football storytime. This is a theme I have never done before, and I was a little intimidated. The challenges? First-the books. There aren't a lot of great read alouds with a football theme-although it is getting better. The books that do exist don't always appeal to a three year old. I did this for family fun, so I need material that appeals to a broad age range. Second challenge: the other stuff. Do you have football rhymes and flannel board stories in your bag of tricks. Again, not a lot of great ones out there. Well, this is what I did, and we had a blast!! This is Packer country, but you can adapt any of it for your neck of the woods. By the way, can you guess the craft? Yep! Cheese-heads!

Books:

• Hooray for Fly Guy! by Tedd Arnold
• Football ABC by Mark Weakland (Football Colors also a good choice)
• A Big Guy Took My Ball by Mo Willems (no football here, but you can't go wrong with E&P)

Rhymes:

Football Player, Football Player
(based on a rhyme on Bright Hub. Adapted by Shawn Wolf)

Football player, football player, throw the ball
Football player, football player, try not to fall
Football player, football player, catch the pass
Football player, football player, run really fast!
Football player, football player, hit the ground.
Football player, football player, big TOUCHDOWN!

Football player, football player, Lambeau Leap!

GO PACK GO! (you get to yell in the library!)
by Shawn Wolf

When the players run out of the locker room,
Everybody yells, “GO PACK GO!”
When the band’s big drum goes BOOM-BOOM-BOOM,
Everybody yells, “GO PACK GO!”
After they sing “Oh say can you see”,
Everybody yells, “GO PACK GO!”
When the quarterback yells, “hut 1-2-3”,
Everybody yells, “GO PACK GO!”
A big touchdown, six points for our team,
Everybody yells, “GO PACK GO!”
When we win, the whole stadium screams,Everybody yells, “GO PACK GO!”

We ended with a round of "Give me a P. P!", etc. I made letter cards to spell PACKERS, and I used helpers to hold the cards. I gave them the wrong letters, and of course the kids had all sorts of fun telling us we had the wrong letter.

Have fun!

This Week at Family Fun-Take Me Out to the Ballgame

Can you only appreciate these if you are from Wisconsin? If you've had a brush with the Milwaukee Brewers, you may have seen the Klement's Racing Sausages. We celebrated fun ballpark food this week, and I have never had so much fun with a craft! 

Eloise at the Ball Game by Lisa McClatchy is the perfect introduction to ballpark fun, and The Pigeon is a hit at any storytime. We had crazy fun poppin popcorn (crumpled paper) in our parachute to the Barenaked Ladies' Popcorn from Snacktime.

Another great choice for baseball storytime--Bill Thomson's illustrations
in Baseball Hour are spectacular.

This Week at Family Fun: Wild and Woolly Wisconsin

We have a beautiful museum in town that prominently features mammoth remains that were found locally along with a mammoth replica. I wasn't too surprised that Pinterest was not flooded with woolly mammoth crafts, but we had fun creating this one. We started out with a mammoth coloring page copied onto brown construction paper. To make the tusks, bend a white pipe cleaner and lace it through a hole at the base of the trunk.

Our local yarn shop gave us some wool from a farm in the area. The kids had so much fun with the wool, and it totally makes the project. (If you don't have access to sheep, you can purchase wool roving at craft stores in the yarn section.) 

My genius coworker added the "glacier" which allows Woolly to stand up and shows the connection with the ice age.

I was so happy to finally be able to share Mammoths on the Move by Lisa Wheeler--an awesome non-fiction picture book with rhyming text. And who doesn't love caveman talk? We had tons of fun with Me Want Pet! by Tammi Sauer.