No Name Calling Storytime

Last week (January 24-28) was No Name Calling Week, http://www.nonamecallingweek.org/cgi-bin/iowa/home.html. Bullying and cyber bullying has been in the news a lot in the past year, especially with so many high profile suicides of young people who have been bullied because of their gender, race, sexual preference, size, and any other nonsensical reason. As a librarian in a public library, I don’t get a chance to talk about these topics with kids, but I feel libraries offer a great resource to kids who are being bullied and/or their parents. We have a lot of BOOKS that can be used for bibliotherapy. I decided that I would see what I could do to help curb the problem, one little step at a time. So, after a simple search of bullying as a keyword, I found that there were enough books to put together a storytime for preschoolers about bullying. There is also a book list, linked here from the No Name Calling Week website that would give some suggestions. However, for my storytime here is what I used (this does not include the regular songs and rhymes that we do, just the thematic ones):

Books I Read:
Stolen Smiles by Thierry Robberecht
Emily’s Sharing and Caring Book by Cindy Post Senning and Peggy Post
The Peace Book by Todd Parr

Others that I like:
Henry and the Bully by Nancy Carlson
Kersplatypus by Susan K. Mitchell
Enemy Pie by Derek Munson
Yo-yo man by Daniel Pinkwater


Fingerplay:
Found at http://www.thebestkidsbooksite.com/ under friendship

Two Little Friends
Two little friends are better than one,
(hold up fingers on right hand, one on left)
And three are better than two
(three on left, and two on right)
And four are much better still.
(four on right hand)
Just think!
What four little friends can do!

http://www.thebestkidsbooksite.com/funfingerplay.cfm?fingerplayid=198

Matching:
I almost always do a matching game with preschoolers. In this one I took different hearts and cut them in half. On one side I wrote out numbers 1-6. On the other side I put dots on each half from 1-6. (but this could be done with colors or lower and upper case letters) During the storytime the kids helped me match the correct number and to the correct number of dots. Of course, it is not as simple as putting 1 and 1 together. I have to match the items incorrectly and this always gets the kids screaming, “no that is not right”, after a few wrong match ups, I at last get it right. This continues until all hearts are matched correctly.

Craft:
The ever popular Friendship Bracelet/necklace made out of fruit loops or equivalent generic cereal. Most bracelets never left the library, let alone given to a friend, but it is the thought that counts.