Please and thank you: I can be polite

It's official, I'll be doing a storytime on November 18!  It's a week before Thanksgiving, so I definitely want to hit on the topic, but some preschools where we do storytimes are funny about holidays so I want to make it more about gratitude.  Since that is sort of limiting (and in reality a pretty esoteric topic for little ones), I'm making it on the broader topic of "Please and Thank You!  I can be polite."  Not sure on the capitalization there, obviously.

These are the books, in order:

Mind Your Manners, B.B. Wolf written by Judy Sierra, illustrated by J. Otto Seibold



Gracias/Thank You written by Pat Mora, illustrated by John Parra

Thanksgiving is Here! written and illustrated by Diane Goode

How Do Dinosaurs Eat Their Food? written by Jane Yolen and illustrated by Mark Teague

My thought is, do the wolf book first which is about all sorts of manners (saying "excuse me," not burping!), then the Spanish/English book which focuses on being thankful, which is an obvious segue into talking about the Thanksgiving holiday.  This book is just about the meal without going into any of the historical accounts (true or not), then finishing off with table manners with the dinosaur book.  I think it's a good program, though I need to figure out which book I could do without if the kids are more wiggly and need to do more fingerplays than stories.


In between, we'll do a little rhyme about manners to the tune of "I'm a Little Teapot" and then sing about three nice mice (to the tune, obviously, of "Three Blind Mice").  On my printout, I've included a poem I found in The 20th Century Children's Poetry Treasury, edited by Jack Prelutsky.  The poem is called Thanksgiving and is by Ivy Eastwick.  Not sure I'll be able to share this with preschoolers - it's three stanzas, eight short lines each; maybe it's too much?  I would like to put traditional poetry into all of my storytimes, though, and not just in the written sheet.  I'm going to check on what sort of flannelboards we have, too.  Maybe there's one I could use already made up.

I don't know yet if I'll do this at one of the branches or not.  If I do, there's tons of Thanksgiving books I've pulled for display and I could bring some of those along.  Come to the library and see for yourself!