Story Time Review

Adding a Little Color 

Week five of our Story time session was spent exploring colors. We read Red,Yellow, Green, Blue by Laurie Rosenwald, Except the Color Grey by Arlene Alda, One Sheep, Blue Sheep by Thom Wiley,  Will  You Wear a Blue Hat? by Rookie Readers and Knock Knock by Anna Clara Tidholm. I pulled the book Butterfly: A Book of Colors by Petr Hoereck, but didn't have time to use it.  I also told a story with props about a polar bear who meets other bears or people and wishes to be a different color. I used a clear plastic "honey" bear and sat it in front of a white piece of paper. The bear was mostly full of plain water. When he wishes to be yellow like the Siberian grizzly I added a drop of yellow food coloring to the water. When he meets the forest ranger in his handsome green uniform I added a drop of blue to make the water green. Then when he meets his cousin the brown bear I added a drop of red to create a shade of brown. Everyone tells him that he is being silly that polar bears should be white to hide in the snow and ice. He wishes again and I added Clorox to bleach the colors out and return him to white. This was fun even if it wasn't entirely successful during the first couple of sessions and he ended up turning a pale shade of purple, the kids didn't really care. The key I found for this to really work is only 1 drop of color and a lot (2-3 tablespoons) of bleach at the end.

We used the song I can Build a Snowman from the CD H.U.M.(Highly Usable Music) All Year Long by Carole Peterson. During the song I added some snowman props to the flannel board while we sang along. We did a rhyming movement activity with some easy star shapes, such as red, red, red touch your head and black, black, black touch your back etc.  For our craft, we used brightly dyed macaroni to create some colorful necklaces.

Next week: We will move out of the "colors" unit and talk about sharks!
Michele Schumann, Children's Librarian

Story Time Review

Purple is...

This week we continued our lessons on colors with an exploration in purple. We read The Perfect Purple Feather by Hanoch Piven, Purple Pride by Chrisianne Jones, Harold and the Purple Crayon by Crockett Johnson, Purple Little Bird by Greg Foley, A Pig Called Pete by Alan Bowater, and Purple: Seeing Purple all Around Us by Sarah Schuette. I had also pulled the book The Purple Kangaroo by Michael Ian Black but we didn't have time for this one.

We used a simple cut-out puzzle of a purple cow and recited the poem, I Never Saw a Purple Cow. Since our craft involved a whole bunch of left-over die cut letters we used them to do The Purple Letter Hokey Pokey. We also had an activity where I recited a poem and the children used the purple die cut letters to follow the directions. It goes like this:
Put your purple shape in the air, Hold it high and leave it there.
Put your purple shape on your back, Now lay it on your lap.
Hold your purple shape in your hand, Now everyone please stand.
Wave your purple shape at the door, Now lay it down on the floor.

You could actually use this poem with any color. Substituting color names as needed. We sang and moved to the song, Mr. Knickerbocker by Greg & Steve's CD, Fun & Games.

For our craft we did the old stand-by tissue paper "stained glass" activity. For a twist on this craft, I used my die cut alphabet letters and cut the word "love" out of purple papers. Reminiscent of the  Robert Indiana, LOVE sculpture in John F. Kennedy Plaza in Philadelphia.  Then when the children completed gluing the tissue paper to the waxed paper we glued the purple paper on the top before hanging them in the window. They turned out beautifully and I told the children that they would make a great Valentine's day decoration to hang up in their windows at home. Check out that pile of snow outside the window! Valentine's Day is still a way off, I hope we have less snow by then.

Next week: Blue

Michele Schumann
Children's Librarian

Story Time Review

Our first class of this Story Time session we talked about the color white. It was a great topic for this time of year with all the snow on the ground and covering everything from trees to sidewalks. We read Black Meets White by Justine Fontes, White Food Fun by Lisa Bullard and Winter White by Christianne Jones with our toddler classes. We added A Penguin Story by Antoinette Portis, and Harry the Dirty Dog by Gene Zion for our Preschool classes. I also told a story with the white board. As we sang to the tune of "Farmer in the Dell" we drew parts of a snowman. So it went something like this: There's snow upon the ground, there's snow upon the ground, Hi Ho it's cold outside there's snow upon the ground. We added eyes, nose, smile, hat, arms, boots and scarf as we sang about each one.

I had some pictures of white things like milk, soap, ice cream and pop corn. I read a riddle about each one and saw if the children could guess what the riddles answer was. We did a little song about following instructions called Make a Circle and danced along. Finally, we made a white things collage. I gave each child a black piece of construction paper and had a variety of white things to glue on like, cotton balls, Q-tips, lace, rickrack, beads, buttons and feathers. For our take home pages we had a couple of worksheets on Hot and Cold.

Next week our topic will be: Purple
Michele Schumann
Children's Librarian