by Steven Engelfried<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Weekly storytimes have always been one of my favorite things about being a children’s librarian, except for one part:\u00a0 <\/span>fingerplays.\u00a0 <\/span>Yes, I understand the importance of fingerplays for developing motor skills.\u00a0 <\/span>And yes, they foster early literacy skills, vary the rhythm of the session, give kids a chance to participate, and all that.\u00a0 <\/span>And I have a great time with some<\/em> fingerplays.\u00a0 <\/span>It\u2019s just that I always find myself going back to the same old favorites, time after time, year after year.\u00a0 <\/span><\/font><\/p>\n Like \u201cWhere is Thumbkin.\u201d\u009d\u00a0 It can\u2019t be beat.\u00a0 <\/span>It\u00a0has\u00a0a tune even I can sing, it\u2019s repetitive but not too <\/em>repetitive, and you can have fun with variations.\u00a0 <\/span>My favorite version involves using a deep voice for Tall Man, a high squeaky voice for Pinky, a lively \u201czoop!\u201d\u009d after each \u201crun and hide,\u201d\u009d and a curtain call at the end where all ten characters come out for \u201cbows,\u201d\u009d \u201ckisses,\u201d\u009d and\u00a0 <\/span>a group hug.\u00a0 <\/span>And I have a handful of other favorites that I probably rely on way too much.\u00a0 <\/span><\/font><\/p>\n But many of the standard fingerplays just don\u2019t interest me much. Web and book searches turn up endless varieties of \u201cfive little whatevers\u201d\u009d and \u201cmy fingers can do this or that,\u201d\u009d but most just seem lame.\u00a0 <\/span>The kids don\u2019t mind when I repeat, of course, and it does reinforce all those important skills, but I always feel guilty for not continually finding new fingerplay treasures to mix in with the old stuff; the way it works with books.\u00a0 <\/span><\/font><\/p>\n I\u2019ve tried making up my own fingerplays, but these are either as boring as the ones I\u2019ve already rejected, or simply inappropriate for a preschool storytime setting.\u00a0 <\/span>Like the time I tried to create one for a November session, but it just came out all wrong. Maybe because my own children and I had just turned vegetarian and were having a hard time getting excited about the coming holiday:\u00a0 <\/span><\/font><\/p>\n <\/span><\/font><\/p>\n <\/span>\u201cFive little turkeys knocking at the door \/ One got its head chopped off and that left four! \/ Four little turkeys walking by a tree. \/ \u2018Bang!\u2019 went the shotgun and that left three! \/ Three little turkeys wondering what to do. \/ One was stuffed and cooked and that left two! \/ Two little turkeys trying to have some fun. \/ The butcher got his carving knife and that left one! \/ One little turkey tried to run and hide. \/ But it was Thanksgiving, so all <\/em>the turkeys died!\u201d\u009d\u00a0 <\/span>Probably a good thing I never tried this one with any\u00a0kids besides my own.\u00a0 <\/span>And in the end I guess I\u2019ll stick to my own standards, but on the rare occasions I hear someone say \u201cI just found a great new fingerplay\u201d\u009d I\u00a0always take notice.\u00a0 <\/span><\/font><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" …..Like the time I tried to create one for a November session, but it just came out all wrong. Maybe because my own children and I had just turned vegetarian and were having a hard time getting excited about the coming holiday: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Five little turkeys knocking at the door \/ One got its head chopped off and that left four! \/ Four little turkeys walking by a tree. \/ \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcBang!\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 went the shotgun and that left three! \/…. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":"","_members_access_role":[],"_members_access_error":""},"categories":[38,36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-programming-ideas","category-slice-of-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=116"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}