Our first week of fall storytimes! I have really missed seeing everyone! This week, we talked about art and colors, specifically mixing colors. Before we got started, I turned on the bubble machine and sang “hello bubbles” and “one
Our first week of fall storytimes! I have really missed seeing everyone! This week, we talked about art and colors, specifically mixing colors. Before we got started, I turned on the bubble machine and sang “hello bubbles” and “one little, two little, three little bubbles”
Opening song: We hit our knees together (Mother Goose on the Loose)
Opening rhyme: Two Little Dickey Birds (I like to have them make their “birds” flutter around before we say “Stop!” and start the rhyme.)
Book: Mouse Paint, by Ellen Stoll Walsh. (E COLORS WALS)This book is just perfect for a discussion of primary colors and mixing colors. Add in the humor of the white mice hiding from the cat on white paper, then taking a bath in the cat’s water dish?–priceless! I love books that teach concepts without being didactic–and this is one!
Activity: If you have a [color] mouse, stand up. My predecessor made these amazing mouse finger puppets. Every once in awhile I love to pass them out and do “Hickory Dickory Dock” as a fingerplay with them. Since we were talking so much about colors, I handed them out and had the kids stand up as I called the color of their mouse before we did the rhyme.
Book: Color Kittens, by Margaret Wise Brown. (E COLORS BROW)I thought that this was a good fit with Mouse Paint because it featured two cats mixing colors. Plus, I think that the imagery Margaret Wise Brown uses to evoke all of the colors is just beautiful. (This was one of my daughter’s favorites when she was about 3 years old–she always loved counting to three when the red rose tree turned to white!) I read this one at the Leesburg storytime.
Book: The Artist who Painted a Blue Horse, by Eric Carle. (E CARLE) I used this one at the Oakland storytime. I asked the kids if they knew “The Very Hungry Caterpillar”. When they said yes, I told them that this book was written and illustrated by the same person–then I explained what those terms mean. Since the book features animals in unusual colors (orange elephant, etc) we talked about what colors those animals *usually* are. Then we decided that artists can paint things either as they actually are, or how they are in our imaginations.
Closing game: rhyme cube (today was the Wheels on the Bus