I always do one Fairy Tales and Nursery Rhymes Storytime each month in real (not Coronavirus) life. I almost always tell the story using puppets or the felt board. This allows me to make the stories a little less scary if need be, add in more diverse characters in some cases, and even occassionally make the story less sexist (for instance my Princess and the Pea gives the Princess a ninja-like sensitivity to her environment rather than a delicateness).
After the fairy tale is over we get out our Nursery Rhyme Cube. This is just a small cardboard box transformed into a die with a picture of a different nursery rhyme on each side. I got this idea from another Youth Librarian at a conference last summer (thank you!). The kids love it. Sometimes every one gets one roll and sometimes we go around twice just depending on how many children are at my Storytime.
Sometimes the Nursery Rhyme Cube is the end of Storytime, but if the kids seem to have a little more listening energy left, then we read a book based on a Nursery Rhymeor a classic poem or something similar. Some of my favorite examples of such books are:
Three Little Kittens by Paul Galdone
Little Robin Red Breast by Shari Halpern
The Owl and the Pussy Cat by Edward Lear, illustrated by Anne Mortimer
