Hello friends! Welcome to Storytime with The Met. My name is Christina and I'm so
glad to see each of you. While the Met is closed, we hope you'll join us for a
story and an activity every Thursday at noon. So let's get started! We'll begin
with our storytime song just as we do at the Museum. It goes to the tune of "This
Old Man." we'll start on a count of three: one, two,
three. Welcome friends, get ready get set, for Storytime at the
Met, where we love to read and sing and look, at works of art and picture books.
We'll use our eyes to look and see, we'll use our ears to hear stories, now we'll
take a seat and give a "shhh." let's begin with our first book. Great! Our story for today
is called Noah Chases the Wind. It's written by Michelle Worthington and
illustrated by Joseph Cowman.
Noah knew he was different. He could see things that others couldn't like the
patterns in the dust that floated down on Sunbeams. He could smell the green tang of
the ants in the grass. Where do you see grass? Where do you smell grass? He could
feel when a big storm was coming before the leaves on the trees even started to
tremble. How do you feel when a big storm is coming? Can you feel it?
Noah liked to find out how things worked, where they came from, and where they went.
When he couldn't understand, it hurt his head and his heart.
His room was overflowing with books of every shape and size on every subject he
could imagine. Noah loved books more than he loved toys. Do any of you like
books? I do! His favorite books were about
science, especially the weather. They taught him why rain clouds looked so
angry, why the air buzzed before lightning struck, and why his skin turned
darker in the summer sun. Yet search as he might, none of his books
could tell him what he really wanted to know. Noah knew where the wind came
from, but where did the wind go?
His mother was usually more helpful than his books but she didn't know either. "Why
don't you try finding the answer for yourself?" she said. Noah sat quietly with
his back to the trunk of the biggest tree and waited for the wind to come. How
do you know when the wind will come? Before the leaves on the trees even
started to tremble, Noah felt a stirring deep inside. He stood his face to the sky
and felt the whooshing wind build and blow his hair into his eyes. Does the
wind ever blow your hair into your eyes? Noah took a deep breath. Can everyone
take a deep breath with me? He was ready to chase the wind.
He followed the wind as it whistled down his street blustering around buses and
bicycle and whipping wrappers from the gutter. He chased the wind as it glided
over fountains, under bridges, and between people on the sidewalk. What do you see
when you go outside? Do you see people on the sidewalk?
He raced the wind as it picked up speed, building with the breeze from the beach
and the heat from the highway, growing into a gale that lifted noah off his
feet. Wow!
Each stream of air became a different color and Noah was lifted high above the
clouds. He floated on a blue billowing breeze as the wind whirled and twirled
around him in a never-ending ribbon of rainbow. The wind never stopped moving,
not even for a second. What colors do we see here? Let's look. I see red, yellow,
green, blue, some orange, some purple--we have the whole rainbow. Until eventually,
slowly, the blue breeze sank to the ground and Noah could feel
the familiar grass underneath his feet. With a brush of Noah's cheek for goodbye,
the wind was gone. Noah sat still until the sun sank below
the tops of the trees and his mother called him in for dinner.
"Where have you been?" she asked. Noah gave her one of his most loving smiles and said, "I
know where the wind goes." The end! Thank you so much for reading along with me. I
hope you enjoyed those words and those pictures. You know, all this talk about
wind reminds me of a print that we have in The Met's collection.
It's a Japanese woodblock print and it shows a view of the sea and the sky with
kites flying in between. I look at the print and I wonder, what would it feel
like if I could step inside? What would the wind that we see feel
like on my body? What would it smell like? What would it sound like? When I look at
the print and I see the people, I wonder, what are they thinking? So, if you want to
continue to find wind in your own life and think about how we can be creative
with the world around us, I have an activity we can try it together, making
our own miniature kite. So you'll need a few things. You'll need some paper, it can
be bigger than this, we can cut it down, or it can be about this size. You'll need
scissors and glue. You'll need some sort of string or twine, and popsicle sticks,
or some other sticks or straws that you could use.
This is the kite that I made. So I made it by putting these popsicle sticks
together and gluing them down on piece of paper. Then I cut the paper so that it
would go around the edges to make a diamond shape like we see here and then
I decorated it. I added some streamers and I added a
tie on the back so that I can attach the string and go outside and try it in
the wind. So I'm looking forward to going out in the next windy day and seeing
where the wind goes. Thank you all so much for joining us for storytime today
we look forward to seeing you sometime soon and have a great day.