Color Storytime, Friday, September 23 @ 10:30

Books

Pete the Cat and His White Shoes by Eric Litwin. Everyone's favorite cat in everyone's favorite story!

 Lemons Are Not Red by Laura Vaccaro Seeger. It took me a few pages to pick up on the right rhythm for this: Page One: Read with astonishment: Lemons are not red. And then point out that this is a MAGIC color book and something is going to happen to that lemon when you turn the page. Turn the die cut and -- the lemon is yellow! The apple is red! Next page: Here is some blue grass. Wait a minute! Is the grass blue? Turn page. The grass is GREEN. The sky is blue. 

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Wow! Said the Owl by Tim Hopgood. Owl stays up into the day to see --- COLORS! and WOW is what he has to say. If you have ANY talent with the paint brush at all, paint along while you talk.

Vincent Paints His House by Tedd Arnold.  Amazing -- a readable book about Vincent van Gogh painting! Vincent had a French accent -- I don't know what the Dutch accent might sound like.

Butterfly by Petr Horacek.  Such a young crowd, I picked short ones.

Duckie's Rainbow by Frances Barry. They were very appreciative of the beeeautiful rainbow.

I Ain't Gonna Paint No More by Karen Beaumont. I paused at the end of each couplet of this funny rhyming readaloud, I Ain't Gonna Paint No More! by ever humorous Karen Beaumont for the children to guess the finishing rhyme: "So I take some red and I paint my...HEAD"  They weren't very good at guessing last year.  I'm going to try painting on a figure on the paper this time.

One by Kathryn Otoshi. How do you stop bullying? You just do.  A simple, perfect book.

My Blue Is Happy by Jessica Young. This wonderful book is a great link between colors and the emotions we have feel. It's as wide open as the sea, leaving lots of room for discussion. For example, her friend loves pink -- makes her think of tutus and ballet. But it makes her think of itching mosquito bites! A great chance for interaction.

Songs

• Bumping up and down in my little red wagon. I had the wagon filled up with the big pom poms, and when it went zooming uphill, I tilted them out all over the floor.  After we sang the song, I asked the kids to "Put the BLUE one in the yellow pail, put the GREEN one in the yellow pail" and that worked out OK in a crazy kind of way.
• "Red, red, pat your head/ Blue, blue, touch your shoe/Yellow, yellow, wiggle like Jello/ Purple, purple, make a circle/ Green, green, wave and be seen/ Black, black, "Quack, quack, quack/ Pink, pink, give me a wink/ White, white, stomp with all your might/ Brown, brown, spin and sight down."  Everybody just did all of it no matter what they were wearing!
• Different colored matchbox cars. Line them up on the edge of your table and start singing this chant: Down around the corner at the used car lot, there were ? used cars, all waiting to be bought.  Along came ?, all alone, he picked out the red one and he drove home.
• Holding onto the matchbox cars, I put up my flannel traffic light, we did: 

"Green says, “Go!” (march quickly)

Go go go! 3x more
Yellow says, “Slow...” (march slowly)
Slow slow slow... 3x more
And red says, “Stop!” (stop and freeze)
Go go go! 3x more

Slow slow slow... 3x more And STOP!  but we didn't really count we just did it and mixed things up.

• Using the scarves, to The Wheels on the Bus, we did:

The fish in the sea go swish, swish, swish (wave scarves side to side)

Dolphins in the sea swim round and round (scarves in circle)

Sharks in the sea go snap snap snap (back & forth quickly -- Max lookd ferocious)

Waves on the sea go up and down (waves up and down)

The swimmer on the sea floats so gently, so gently, so gently, the swimmer on the sea floats so gently (scarf on face, arms stretched out.) 

• Five green and speckled frogs, which I do as a clapping song too.

Craft

Cellophane collage
Hah! I just set the craft tables with white paper and put the cellophane shapes in the middle. (Thanks, Monica, for getting out all those yellow circles.) "Figure it out!" while I went to search for disappearing glue sticks. That gave them enough time to experiment for a bit.

Matisse Suncatchers

Tissue paper squares/scraps plus sequinsfeathersstring on contact paper to create collages. This technique is nice because the objects are repositionable. The kids fool around with their creations more than if they’re intent on gluing.

Plays
Disco Ball.

Brown Rabbit's Shape Book by Alan Baker makes for a great storytime opener.  I have a box wrapped in bright green paper with a big bow on it, and a brown rabbit puppet.  Brown Rabbit opens the box and, just as the book says, finds four colored balloons.  I blow them up and release them by turns to go whizzing over the heads of the audience. VERY good. 

A Clown Magic Coloring Book by Haines' House of Cards, Inc., with the pages that go from blank to colored as you fan them.