The Youth Services team at ImagineIF Libraries plans and implements early literacy programs for babies, toddlers, and preschoolers in Kalispell, Bigfork, and Columbia Falls. Our goal in every Storytime is to connect with young children and their caregivers through books, songs, and interactive activities that foster early literacy and social emotional skills.

Explore the Storytime Schedule

Get your hard hats ready! It’s time for a Storytime all about Tools and Construction. We built roads and cities, pounded with play hammers, and learned that even if your tower takes a tumble, you can always build something bigger and stronger!

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Books Read:

Little Excavator

by Anna Dewdney
ISBN: 9781101999202

Snakes on the Job

by Kathryn Dennis
ISBN: 9781250214003

Bigger! Bigger!

by Leslie Patricelli
ISBN: 9780763679

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Songs & Interactives:

Five Little Nails Fingerplay

Five little nails, standing straight and steady
Here I come, with my hammer ready
Bam, bam, bam that nail goes down
Now there are just four nails to pound
(repeat until all fingers are down)

Old MacDonald Had Some Tools

Old MacDonald Had some Tools E-I-E-I-O
And with those tools, he had a hammer, E-I-E-I-O.
With a bang, bang, here and a bang, bang there
Here a bang, there a bang, everywhere a bang, bang
Old MacDonald had some tools, E-I-E-I-O

Other verses:
A saw that went see-saw
A screwdriver that would twist, twist
Pliers that pinch, pinch
A drill that went ZZZZ-ZZZZZ

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Activities:

Dramatic Play Picnic in the market stall

This week our play kitchen transformed into the perfect picnic spot for our construction worker’s lunch break! We had baskets full of fruit and vegetables for color sorting practice, along with a toy grill and all the fixings for hot dogs and hamburgers.

Construction Site Sensory Tub

We filled our sensory tub with a mix of assorted beans (pinto, cannellini, and black beans) and then added construction vehicles, tools, and road signs. The kids had a blast driving mini excavators, cranes, and dump trucks through the job site! They worked together to build roads and transport materials where they needed to go.

Process Art:Decorating Hard Hats

Each child received a plastic yellow hard hat upon arriving to the program. We had a variety of stickers available, along with paint sticks so that they could decorate their hats however they fancied! We intended for parents to help write their child’s name on the hat, or the first letter of their name, so that the kids could then trace over it and practice their letter recognition.

Gross motor practice: Hammering Golf Tees into pumpkins

This activity was surely the HIT of the day! Children arrived to stations set with hammers, golf tees, and a pumpkin. Then they got to experiment with how to hold/use the hammer.

Pattern recognition with snap cubes

As part of an ongoing effort to incorporate more math activities into storytime, we created some simple pattern sheets and encouraged kids to copy the patterns with snap cubes. This provided practice in pattern recognition and sequencing, and also supported fine motor development as the kids snapped cubes together and pulled them apart.