Science Storytimes Week #4: Fizz, Boom, Construct!

We've been busy little scientists this summer! During the past three weeks the preschoolers and toddlers at my library have learned about movement, water, and growth. Our topic this week is a perennial storytime favorite: Construction!

Create your own construction sign here.

For a listing of songs and book used in the first half of this storytime see my storytime blog.

Our centers included:

Building with Legos: I love to incorporate Legos into my programs whenever possible because they are just so darn awesome.They keep kids occupied like nothing else I have ever seen. For this age group I have a small collection of Duplos we received awhile back through the "Read Build Play" program. I put these out our our table for the kids to explore and provided instruction about the benefits of playing with Legos.

Constructing with boxes: We all know how much kids love boxes right? I've honestly done a whole hour long program just letting kids decorate and play with boxes. For the preschoolers and toddlers I saved a stack of boxes and challenged them to see how high they could stack them. When their tower of boxes falls they got to learn a valuable lesson about forces!

Vehicle matching: I set out pairs of construction vehicle pictures and asked the kids to match the pairs. This is practice with the scientific skills of observation. When they identify each vehicle they are using another scientific practice: classification. Unfortunately this center got overshadowed by the boxes and Legos and was passed over by many kids.

Decorate a truck:  To add the A in STEAM the kids used bingo daubers to decorate construction vehicle pictures. Bingo dauber crafts are one of my favorites and I try to use them for our crafts at least once each during each series of storytimes.

How it went:
Compared to last week the kids were a little quieter and shyer during the stories and songs. I broke out the parachute with the preschool group to get the kids a bit more excited. They seemed to love the centers, especially the Legos and boxes. One little girl in particular was having so much fun she got upset when it was time to leave :)

I'd love to hear any questions, feedback or ideas you have to contribute! Thanks for reading :)