Library Orientation for Kinders

Ahh ... Orientation. The very word makes me smile. I have a quick story for you. As an undergrad at college, I was short a PE class for graduation. So in the spring of my senior year, I signed up for this weekend orienteering class held off campus. It was the only crazy thing to fit into my schedule. So, on Friday, I hop into my car and head out to Timbuktu to find this "off campus" class. Let's just say that what was supposed to be a 45 minute drive ended up taking me 2 hours. I was hopelessly lost on a network of backroads. I had to walk into this Orienteering class late and explain that I got lost on my way!! Needless to say, the professor exclaimed that there was NO way he would trust me with a compass in the deep woods :)

I have to admit that orientation is my least favorite time in the library. Sometimes it can feel like a day in the Groundhog Day movie ... the same thing over and over and over. BUT, there isn't anything as fun as reading to my kindergarterns for the first time.

I love The Library Lion by Michelle Knudsen. It is just one of those books that begs to be read aloud for an orientation! One day a lion wanders into the library. He pads around a bit and then plops himself in the children's story corner. He likes story time soooo much that when its all over, he begins to roar! The librarian hustles out and chastises him, but she does say that he may stay as long as he is quiet. And quiet he becomes. Come to find out, he is a perfect fit for the library. That is until the poor librarian has a bit of an accident.

Miss Merriweather is the perfect quiet librarian and Mr. McBee is such a tattletale ... it is so easy to do completely different voices for them! The story is a bit long, but I have found that my littles CAN sit still through the whole reading. Especially when I get them involved in the action. When the lion roars, I ask them ... "What do you think THAT sounded like?" They always do a little quiet roar because this is our first time together, and they are sure that they must be quiet in the library. So, then I ask, "Is that as loud as you can roar?" Then they roar REALLY loud. They love it and perks them up for the next time that the library roars. After the story, we discuss what it would be like to have a lion in our library. I often ask them, "What would a lion do in our library?" One little boy raised his hand this year and said, "He'd eat me for a little snack." Yes ... Yes ... He probably would! What a great segue into fiction vs. nonfiction. Then we always end our time together with the following coloring sheet. Go ahead and click on the pix. It will take you to Google Drive where you can download it for yourself. Enjoy!