An animal sounds storytime may lead to bizarre dreams involving the animal See & Say (no longer with a string attached), but it’s a definite crowd pleaser. You may get tired of oinking and baa-ing, but the children sure won’t!
Snip Snap may not show up in a search for animal sounds picture books, but it’s such a fun book to read aloud that I couldn’t resist including it (the crocodile does, indeed, snip snap). Snip Snap includes toddler-appropriate suspense that ends with the children taking charge of a scary situation. If you’re into audience participation, you can encourage your audience to chime in when you read “You bet they were!” Even if you don’t (I didn’t), you’ll have some yell out, “Yes!”
Nothing at All begins quietly enough; the horses neigh, the cows moo, and other animals make their voices heard. However, the scarecrow says “nothing at all” (this phrase is repeated). That is, until a mouse crawls into his pants. It’s showtime! The scarecrow sets out on a wiggly jiggly dance until the mouse is mercifully freed. The silly scarecrow elicited genuine laughs with his crazy dance.
Bark, Georgeis one of my all-time favorite picture books; I hardly need an excuse to include it. George oinks, moos, and makes other nondog-like sounds until his harried mother takes him to the vet, which ends with surprising results.
It doesn’t matter if you encourage audience participation or not. When you read, “No, George! ____ go ____. Dogs go _____,” you’ll hear oinks, moos, and woofs. Feiffer produces delicious suspense when George moos, the vet reaches “deep, deep, deep down inside of George,” you turn the page, and everybody sees a very surprised cow (and flipped out mother) on the next page. This morning’s group was in a very good humor, so this was a huge hit. Lots of belly laughs!
My animal sounds storytime always includes a rousing rendition of “Old MacDonald Had a Farm.” Leading the song with puppets adds a further dimension, and the puppets act as great cues for the animal noises. If you choose to present this with a male puppet acting as Old MacDonald, make sure you practice changing puppets on the other hand. The songs moves surprisingly quickly when you have to manipulate and change a variety of puppets on one hand.
Since I have enough “the ___ says ____” type of books, I usually don’t include fingerplays/action songs that involve animal sounds. We did the “Silly Dance Contest” song on Jim Gill’s The Sneezing Song and Other Contagious Tunes CD after reading Nothing at All (because the scarecrow does a silly dance when the mouse creeps into his pants). Our other action songs were wiggle (not Wiggles) songs that are set to familiar tunes.
Books Mentioned:
Bergman, Mara. Snip Snap! What’s That? New York: Greenwillow Books, 2005.
Cazet, Denys. Nothing at All. New York: Orchard Books, 1994.
Feiffer, Jules. Bark, George! New York: HarperCollins, 1999.
CD Mentioned:
Gill, Jim. The Sneezing Song and Other Contagious Songs. Chicago: Jim Gill Music, 1993.
Did I miss your favorite animal sounds story?