The Plan
Books
The Artist Who Painted a Blue Horse by Eric Carle
Blue Chicken by Deborah Freedman
I Ain’t Gonna Paint No More by Karen Beaumont
I’m the Best Artist in the Ocean by Kevin Sherry
Extension Activities
Action Song: “This Is the Way…”
This is the way we stir the paint, stir the paint, stir the paint
This is the way we stir the paint so early in the morning
(dip our brush, paint the paper, blow it dry, frame the picture)
Credit: Modified from several other sources.
Folder Story: “Scat the Cat”
I’m the Scat the Cat and I’m sassy and fat
And Miss Katie can change my color just like that!
Credit: Modified from Tell Me a Story, but originally I heard about Scat from Anne at So Tomorrow
Song: “I Know the Colors”
I know the colors for painting fun
Green like grass and yellow sun
An orange pumpkin and white snow
A red rose and a black crow
Blue like a mailbox, brown like an ape
A pink pig and some purple grapes
Credit: Preschool Education, many thanks to K at Storytime ABCs for suggesting this one!
Craft
I came up with this idea on my own. I just had my teen volunteers print off palettes and provided the kids with TONS of materials (left-overs) to put all over. Mostly, we had very crazy-looking palettes, not the kind of control you see in my examples!
How It Went
This was a FUN theme! I was so excited about all of the book choices and I think the kids REALLY picked up on that. (I basically drove around to three different libraries to get the books I wanted; that’s how dedicated I was to this theme!) Twitter came through for me big time with extension activities, and I got to use my Mouse Paint flannelboard again! Also, this was my first time ever using Scat the Cat and the whole room was just…mesmerized by it. I will definitely be looking at more folder stories in the future!
storytime katie 
What a fun storytime! I really like the “this is the way” song, I will definitely be using that one. Folder stories are great, here’s a link to three I like to do http://bit.ly/ILsbsq. Miss Mary Liberry has a great one on her site, too.
What a great theme! As a closet artist I’d love to share this one – thanks.
We were inspired by your post to do an art theme this week – we have some mini watercolor trays that I picked up from walmart five years ago that we use once a year for storytime. The kids LOVE being artists! 🙂
Hi Katie,
This looks great! Been wanting to do an Art Storytime for awhile now and this post has inspired me to actually go for it! How did the kids react to Blue Chicken? I keep pulling it to use for storytime and then never end up using it. Thinking I might just have to make a Mouse Paint flannel board too… 🙂
They were good with “Blue Chicken.” A set of brothers really enjoyed it and asked me to read it again after I finished.
Do you have a master that you used to create the blank palettes for the kids?
I enlarged this tiny template from the Best Kids Book Site (I think) and made photocopies from it.