observed

i don't think that i mentioned (or maybe i did) that as part of my "new librarian" training i had to be observed doing a story time. now, i have become a lot more comfortable in my story times with the little ones, but i was still apprehensive about being observed. who likes to be observed? not me. but anyway, the woman who is charge of observation is the sweetest lady ever and i like her a lot, so i knew it couldn't be that bad.
my class of 16 two and three year-olds came in, fifteen minutes early. and it was great. i was totally ON. here's what we did:
1. greeting my friend monkey, the monkey puppet
2. farmer nat (lift the flap book in which kids guess which animal farmer nat will be visiting)
3. "touch your nose" game (i especially like the part where you touch your knees then pretend you have to sneeze)
4. where's spot (the kids have actually memorized which animals are hiding where. all from last week! these are smart pre-schoolers)
5. itsy bitsy spider (so easy ... and yet so entertaining)
6. five little monkeys (with puppets)
7. stretch break, with game "head and shoulders"
8. brown bear, brown bear by eric carle
9. zookeeper sue (surprisingly similar to farmer nat, but in a zoo)
10. i'm a little teapot (i wasn't crazy about this. didn't go over as well as i'd hoped. i will not pretend to be a teapot in the future. i mean really, i am nothing like a teapot. i am not short and stout. i am more tall and lean. what kitchen items are tall and lean? a rubber spatula maybe? i don't think that would make a good song.)
11. charlie chick (pop-up book, oh how i love pop up books)
12. it looked like spilt milk (who doesn't like guessing what spilt milk looks like?)
13. wheels on the bus song (with oversized book)
14. goodbye song
whew ... i did a lot of stuff. oh, and somewhere in there we sang if you're happy and you know it. anyway, after the children left the observer told me that she thought i did a great job and that i am a natural with children. yay! then i admited to her about how nervous i get and she said that everyone gets nervous before storytimes, even after they've done them a million times. oh, and this part is the best, then she said that she had never seen zookeeper sue before and she loved it because zookeeper sue is such a positive female role-model. so true, too often women are excluded from careers in zoology.
and that, my dear blog readers, was my morning. not too shabby.