Colors!

I added another storytime to each of my sessions this spring. So, now I’m doing two six-week long sessions. Because this was a very last minute decision, I went with the easiest theme I could — colors!

Started off with “Dog’s Colorful Day” by Emma Dodd.

I’ve used this in counting storytime before, but obviously this is a great fit for a color storytime. After each page, the kids named the colors that were on Dog already, reinforcing color recognition and names. I was just commenting the other day that I wish there were more Emma Dodd books, because I love them all.

Next up, a very tricky color book, “Lemons Are Not Red” by Laura Vaccaro Seeger.

This book has cut-out pictures and reveals what color the object is when you turn the page. The kids loved guessing what colors the object really was, and the only one that tripped them up was the silver moon. (I heard white, gray, and moon-colored as the guesses.)

Even though the kids were really sitting nicely, I wanted to shake things up with a song!

Action Song: “Driving Round in My Car” (Tune: Ten Little Indians)
Driving round in my little red car
Driving round in my little red car
Driving round in my little red car
Zoom zoom zoom zoom zoom
Credit: Childhood

I let the kids choose what color we would sing about next. We wound up singing this song for a really long time, but they loved it. My favorite part was when one of the little boys shouted out “baby blue” — it was super cute and we did sing a verse about a baby blue car.

Next, I read “Butterfly, Butterfly” by Petr Horacek.

This book was a real treasure that I discovered one day while shelf-reading our picture books. I will be using it again for bug storytime at the end of May. Lucy discovers a butterfly one day, but when she goes to find it again – it is missing! She then finds a ton of other brightly colored bugs throughout the book. I adore the pop-up ending with the butterfly, and it was a HUGE hit in storytime. I wound up moving the book back and forth for the butterfly to flap at the kids for a few minutes.

Then I moved on to our flannelboard today: “Mouse Paint!”

I found this flannelboard template on Kizclub and tried to make it in time for Mice Storytime this winter, but it didn’t happen. I was very happy that I was able to use it here!

(As a brief note — I did not make the spiraled paint splots and I did not make the dancing mice. Instead, I asked the kids to dance for the mice and we twirled our fingers in the air and I just overlapped the new color over the old. And, I did not make the paintbrushes and instead just used a real paintbrush before putting the color splots on the white piece of felt. I am all for creative flannel pieces, but I am also a big believer in the less pieces you have and the less you move the pieces around — the better the flannelboard works.)

Our second to last book was “Freight Train” by Donald Crews.

This is such a classic, a favorite of mine from childhood! It’s a really good, quick read that is completely engaging. Also, my storytime is a majority of little boys and they flipped out when they saw the train. It was their very favorite part of storytime today. Next, I led the group in a little action rhyme to settle them down after the excitement of the train.

Action Rhyme: “Red, Red”
Red, red is the color I see
If you’re wearing red, then show it to me
Stand up, take a bow, turn around
Show me your red and sit back on the ground
Credit: Everything Preschool — Colors

They had a blast doing this one, but really a lot of them didn’t follow the rules and just stood up every time. I didn’t say a word about it because it doesn’t matter to me a bit as long as they are having fun.

Last book for the day, “Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?” by Eric Carle.

I read this book in big book form, and passed out board books to the kids to have them “read” with me. This is such a rewarding time when I see all the kids with their own books and their parents reading with them. After the kids brought their books back, I sang a song before our goodbye song just to have one last color song!

Song: “Colors We Know” (Tune: Twinkle Twinkle)
Red and orange, green and blue, shiny yellow, purple too!
These are the colors that we know, way up high in the great rainbow.
Red and orange, green and blue, shiny yellow, purple too!
Credit: Everything Preschool — Colors

Our craft for today was one that I took from Sarah’s blog — Awesome Storytime.

It was perfect and the kids came up with some amazing rainbow creations!

Well, that’s it for today. I’m now on a three week storytime break, but I’m still doing my daycare colors storytime cycle and will also be participating in #flannelfriday tomorrow!