Storytime Anytime-Giraffes

So am I the only one impatiently waiting for April the Giraffe from Animal Adventure Park to give birth? I mean I have been watching YouTube for weeks now and all she does is pace around her stall and occasionally lick the camera. Oh well, I am sure that the birth will eventually happen at 2:37 in the morning and I will totally miss it anyways.


Since I have had giraffes on the brain I decided to hold a story time in honor of April's impending delivery.

Warthogs can waltz, lions can tango, and chimps can cha cha cha, but how can Gerald the giraffe dance with that gangling neck and spindly legs? Gerald feels left out and embarrassed until a kindhearted cricket explains that anyone can dance if they hear the right song. With a renewed self-esteem Gerald leaps, twirls, and twists at the annual Jungle Dance.

The author definitely lays on the moral of loving yourself and "dancing" to the beat of your own drummer a bit thick. Despite the schmaltziness the rhyming text is fun and little ones will looooove the delightful illustrations. I mean who wouldn't be amused by a bunch of colorful jungle animals doing a variety of complicated dances.




                                                                    

Boba the Baboon wants to take a photograph of all of the giraffes, but Geri is so short that she doesn't fit in the frame. What follows is a series of farcical stunts designed to raise Geri to the height of the other giraffes. When dangling Geri from tree branches, filling her up with Helium, placing her on a teetering stack of turtles, etc. all fail Geri sadly offers to sit out of the picture. Fortunately, a wise caterpillar has been watching the hi-jinks from a nearby rock and offers a sensible solution to the problem.    

When I first saw The Short Giraffe I assumed that it was going to be another bully/self-esteem story. Geri is the only giraffe without long legs and a super long neck and the rest of the herd mocks her short stature. There is nothing wrong with this type of story (they are important to tell), but there are a lot of them.  What made The Short Giraffe so refreshing is that none of the other giraffes really care that Geri is different. The herd accepts her just the way she is and, in fact, the entire story is about them wanting to ensure that Geri is included.            

OK, it wasn't just April that inspired me to have a giraffe-themed story time. Recently, our library purchased the book, I Am Not a Chair by Ross Burach, and I knew immediately after reading it that I wanted to share it with my story time kids. If you have not read this hilarious picture book yet go to your library or book store and pick up a copy today.  As you have probably guessed from the title and the cover, poor Giraffe keeps being mistaken for a chair. Sat on by a stinky skunk, squashed by a hippo, used as a perch for a flock of birds, and finally trapped by a hungry lion will Giraffe ever convince the other animals that he NOT a chair! I ADORED this book and judging by the laughter when I read it the kiddos did too.

There's a Giraffe in My Soup is another wonderfully silly picture by Ross Burach (He is obviously a huge fan of giraffes. Do you think he is watching the live stream of April?). In this highly amusing story a young boy finds a giraffe in his soup and when the waiter returns with a new bowl it has an alligator in it. Each subsequent bowl of soup brought by the increasingly exhausted waiter has a different wild animal in it.


To cap off story time the kids made a giraffe craft. I covered cardboard paper towel tubes in yellow construction paper and also cut out the head and ears. The kids drew the faces on their giraffes and glued the head and ear to the tube. Then came the fun part of finger painting orange spots on the giraffes. It is always fun to see how differently the kids' crafts turn out. Some had thousands of tiny little spots like freckles, others had one or two spots, and then there are the kids who basically just painted the whole giraffe solid orange.  If you do not want to paint you could always color spots with markers or crayons or pate on paper spots.

Now you have some fun books to read and a craft if you get tired of watching the Animal Adventure Park giraffe cam on YouTube.