This week went by so fast! I guess the lead up to SRC always goes by in a blur. Anywho… this is my second contribution to Flannel Friday (well, in my case I suppose this, like last week, is a quasi-Flannel Friday). At the end of last year I bought myself an ipod touch. I use it for all sorts of things in the library: taking pictures/videos on the fly, notes, making bibliobop mixes, and of course storytime.
Being a huge geek, I’ve developed a mild app obsession. I stumbled across this rhyme in my office neighbor’s (the Amazing Shelley Sutherland) storytime files, I found a rhyme/guessing game that uses animal sounds as clues.
I should say up front, I’m not the best animal-sound maker. My elephant and horse always sound the same, but nothing like the actual animal. That’s when it came to me, “There’s must be an app for that!”
Lo and behold… There is! Actually, there are several “animal sound” apps. So I downloaded a couple to test them out at storytime. The two I chose are AnimalChatter ($.99) and AnimalSounds (free). I’ve tried them both, and while neither software program works perfectly, they both did the job.
Here’s how I did it:
Pick an animal, any animal!
With the ipod facing me, I said this rhyme:
There is someone in my garden,
Someone I cannot see.
There’s someone in my garden
Whoever can it be?
Then I played the sound. When the kids guessed the sound, I turned the ipod around, and showed them the picture on the screen.
Shake me to hear me howl!
The rhyme gave me enough time to find the next animal.
It took a little practice and planning, to get to the point where I could switch animals quickly while talking. But that goes for any flannel board. After a few tries, the transitions were pretty smooth.
The kids went wild! Maybe a little too wild. Luckily I planned it for the last activity before the good-bye song.
Genius! I love having another excuse to whip out my iPhone at work too. Would love to see more ideas like this. It’s OK not to use flannel, although this is probably the opposite end of the tech spectrum.
Wow! Very fun idea. Look forward to reviews of these or any other apps you use for storytime.
LOVE THIS. Am downloading now!
Love this idea! I’m always looking for excuses to use my iPhone at work, and this is a fantastic way to do it. Thanks for sharing!
My pleasure. I wanted to include reviews of the 2 software programs I used (and possible android apps), but I only had a few minutes to write the post. Let me know if this would be useful info, and I’ll write edit the post soon.