Do you struggle to engage your youngest learners? Never fear! Help is here!
Welcoming early childhood students to your library can add extra sunshine and sparkle to your day! You’re gifted a singular opportunity to introduce them to classic childhood stories, songs, and nursery rhymes, and rewarded with their marvel as they navigate access to a world filled with new materials. As librarians, we have the privilege of shaping their excitement for books and instilling a love for reading at their most formative stages. Need some ideas on how? Keep reading for ten ready-to-use lesson plans for young learners, plus a list of top tips!
The Magic of Early Learners: How to Captivate Their Attention
If you’re new to the world of young students, your keys to success are to exude confidence, emanate wonder, and embrace silliness and fun in your lesson plans for young learners! The delight and excitement you create will ensure your youngest students view your library as the Disney World of the school!
As you plan your lessons, here are some quick tips:
- Keep a quick pace
- Create engaging and interactive activities
- Use lots of props and visuals
- Plan active movement activities (action songs, fingerplays, games) between stories to expend energy and help focus
- Search online for fingerplays that match your theme to reinforce concepts
- Small props or visuals for students increase engagement and participation during songs or activities
- For YouTube songs, consider using just the audio to encourage students to engage more actively with the song’s actions rather than being passive viewers of the screen.
- Of course, being a bit silly, passionate, and dramatic never hurts
- Throw in a simple magic trick to amaze your eager students and you’re a hero!
Library Lesson Plans for Early Learners
Math Concepts:
Embedding young learner guideline skills in your lessons will delight your teachers. Include math concepts like numbers, positional words, measuring, sorting, graphs, patterns, and basic addition and subtraction. Create a graph showing 3 books you’ve read. Students add stickers to signify their favorite.
Phonological Awareness:
Incorporating phonological awareness skills such as listening, rhyming, alliteration, syllabication, onset-rime, letters, and vocabulary can be easily threaded throughout library lessons. Play alliteration games using pictures. Ask if the picture starts with the letter you choose. Read Goldilocks & the Three Bears, then clap the words Goldilocks, porridge, and bears for syllabication.
Themed Topics with Activities, Books, and Songs
To get you started, here are ten weeks of lesson plans for young learners, including fabulous books and engaging songs to sweep your students off their feet! Plus, discover some bonus songs at the end that are sure to keep your youngest students entertained and engaged!
Alligators
Activities:
- Alphagator Make an alligator & letters. Have students feed it letters corresponding to the story.
- Guess What’s Green: print pictures/make slides of green items (grass, peas, alligators). Give students clues to guess the items.
Books:
- The Watermelon Seed (Pizzoli)
- Beware of the Crocodile (Jenkins)
- Crocodile Hungry (Sumner)
Songs:
- Alligator Jump – create movements/use egg shakers
- 5 Little Monkeys Swinging in the Tree – visuals
Fireflies
Activities:
- Turn out the lights. Play Fireflies. Shine a flashlight all around the room. Have students follow your ‘firefly’ with their finger light fireflies.
- Light-Up firefly puppet Use with The Little Squeegy Bug
- Watch ‘Fireflies Spectacular Dance’
Books:
- The Little Squeegy Bug (Martin) – positional words
- Among a Thousand Fireflies (Frost) – positional words
- The Very Lonely Firefly (Carle)
Song:
Bedtime
Activity:
Letter B Beginning Sounds Game – show pictures/slides of a variety of objects and ask, “Does this start with the letter B sound?” – alliteration
Books:
- Everyone Is Yawning (Bijsterbosch)
- Llama Llama Red Pajama (Dewdney) – rhyming
- The Squeaky Door (retold by M. Read) – patterns & sequencing
- Are You Ready For Bed? (Saltzberg)
- Froggy Goes to Bed (London)
Songs:
- 5 Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed – printables – counting & subtracting
- Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star
Sharks
Activities:
Books:
- Shark in the Park (Sharratt) – rhyming
- The Three Little Fish and the Big Bad Shark (Geist) – patterns
- Chomp (M. Paul)
- How to Spy on a Shark (Houran)
Songs:
- Slippery Fish / Slippery Fish song en Espanol (una sardina)
- Baby Shark – printables
- We’re Going on a Shark Hunt – listening
Pizza
Activity:
- Watch and discuss Acrobatic Pizza Making from 1:41-3:12 Make a giant pizza! Crust: tape white posterboard together. Sauce: red butcher paper. Cheese: cut lots of white paper in thirds lengthwise. Toppings: print full-page pictures. Sit students in a large circle. Unfold the crust, roll out the sauce. Give students handfuls of cheese to sprinkle on, then several toppings. Pre-teach to not really touch the pizza! Pretend it feels warm in the oven, smell it, hear tummies grumbling and the ‘ding’ – then pretend to eat it. – sequencing
Books:
- Pete the Cat and the Perfect Pizza Party (Dean) – alliteration & adding
- Pete’s a Pizza (Steig) – narrated on Discovery Education by Chevy Chase – sequencing
- A Pizza With Everything On It (Scheele)
- The Little Red Hen (Makes a Pizza) (Sturges) – patterns
- Hi Pizza Man (Walter) – positional words
Songs:
- I Am a Pizza (call & response song)
- Pizza Party
Fire Safety
Activity:
- Print pictures of firefighter and police tools (vehicles, hats, badges, dogs, uniforms, etc) and play a ‘Who uses this?’ sorting game. – sorting
Books:
- Fire Drill (Jacobs)
- The Wheels on the Fire Truck (Burton)
- Five Little Firefighters (Graham)
Songs:
- Drive the Fire Truck – pair w actions and use scarves
- Fire Truck – they love the chorus
- Stop, Drop, and Roll – sequencing
Spiders
Activities:
- Fun Spider Facts
- Feed the Spider: for smaller ECSE classes. Toss rather than catapult. – counting & colors
- Video: Spider Spinning Web – Close-Up
Books:
- Walter’s Wonderful Web (Hopgood) – shapes
- The Very Busy Spider – for craft stick puppets
- Bear’s Scare (Grant)
- Aaaarrgghh! Spider! (Monks)
- Stunning Spiders (Rustad) – for the pictures
- There’s a Spider on the Floor – tie white yarn around plastic spiders to put on each body part – listening & rhyming
- Itsy Bitsy Spider – Put one arm up for the spout. Use the other hand as a spider
Owls
Activity:
- Click on each ‘owl’ for an audio recording of their call. Pair calls with visuals. Discuss what the calls sound like. Not all owls whoo-whoo! – listening
Books:
- Owl Babies (Waddell)
- Wow! Said the Owl (Hopgood) – colors
- Little Owl’s Night/Day (Srinivasan)
Songs:
- Owl
- One Little Owl – counting
- The Owl Song
- Mr. Owl – add actions
Dental Health
Activity:
- Print clipart pictures of a tooth – 4 per page, laminate, and cut. Glue a pom-pom on the end of craft sticks. Before the lesson, use a yellow dry-erase marker to color on top of the teeth so the students can use the ‘brushes’ to clean them.
Books:
- The Crocodile and the Dentist (Gomi)
- My Toothbrush is Missing (Thomas)
- Alan’s Big Scary Teeth (Jarvis)
Songs:
- Brush Your Teeth
- The Goldfish Song – add actions
Animal Baths
Activity:
- Search for pictures to print or create slides to discuss how animals bathe (pigs, dogs, tigers, elephants, horses) and animals who use helpers to get clean (sea turtles, eels, giraffes, chimpanzees)
Books:
- Dog’s Colorful Day (Dodd) – colors
- Hogwash (Wilson)
- Ten Pigs (Anderson) – counting
- Harry the Dirty Dog (Zion)
Songs:
Plus, My Favorite Wiggle Songs:
- Going to the Library
- Wheels on the Bus
- Do As I’m Doing
- Usher’s ABC Song
- All the Fish
- Dance, Freeze, and Melt
For more interactive songs, check YouTube for Eric Litwin’s ‘The Learning Groove’ and you’ll be set for years!