Infant & Toddler Time – Colors!

Colors are EVERYWHERE!  We read books about colors and color mixing today!  Here are the stories, activities and songs we shared about our theme.

Stories

 

During our infant and toddler storytimes, we read Maisy’s Rainbow Dream by Lucy Cousins and The Artist Who Painted a Blue Horse by Eric Carle.  (I abridged Lucy Cousin’s book a bit for the infants).  In Cousin’s story, Maisy falls asleep and dreams in technicolor – she dreams of a red ladybug, an orange fish, a purple butterfly, a blue clock…all of the colors of the rainbow are represented in this book of vivid colors.  In Eric Carle’s classic we are introduced to a young artist who exclaims:  “I am an artist and I paint a…”  Of course each page highlights an animal the artist has painted in bold, unpredictable colors.  His final painting is a masterpiece – a polka dotted donkey!  This was a big hit with both the infants and the toddlers.

During toddler storytime,  we also explored color mixing with a flannel story inspired by Ellen Stoll Walsh’s book, Mouse Paint.  The story begins with three white mice who usually play in front of a white wall (that way the pesky cat can’t find them).  We find out what happens when they go on an adventure and run into three cans of paint – one blue, one red and one yellow.  (Refer to the flannel board story section below for the entire tale!)

Flannel Board Story

INFANT STORYTIME

Little Boy Blue

Little boy blue, come blow your horn.

The sheep’s in the meadow, the cows in the corn.

Where is the little boy who looks after the sheep?

He’s under the haystack, fast asleep.

Will you wake him?

Surely not I for if I do, he’ll surely cry.

Credit:  Illustration by Clara M. Burd for her book –  

“Mother Goose and Her Goslings”

INFANT & TODDLER STORYTIME

 

Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?

We took the book by Bill Martin, Jr. and turned it into an interactive flannel board story.  The infants and toddlers were attracted to the colorful animals and enjoyed identifying both the animals and the colors.  I used a handheld flannel & the regular flannel board for both age groups.  By doing so, the children and I could identify the color of each animal prior to placing it on the larger, standing flannel board.  The kids loved it!

Brown bear, brown bear, what do you see?

I see a red bird looking at me.

Red bird, red bird, what do you see?”…

(Repeat until you’ve gone through all of the animals – yellow duck, green frog, blue horse, purple cat, white dog and goldfish.)

 TODDLER STORYTIME 

Mouse Paint (abridged version of Ellen Stoll Walsh’s book)

The story begins with three white mice who usually play in front of a white wall (that way the pesky cat can’t find them).

One day they decide to take a chance and go on a wonderful adventure.  They scurry through the park and find three cans of paint:  a red can, a blue can and a yellow can.  Of course they start to wonder what it would be like to be another color.  So the first mouse jumps into the red can and when he comes out, he is red.  The second mouse jumps into the blue can and when he comes out he is blue.  Finally, the third mouse jumps into the yellow can and…you guessed it!  She comes out yellow!  They were so thrilled…they thought it was magic!  But then the blue mouse turned to the yellow mouse and said, “You look so bright and sunny!  I want to be yellow like you!”  So he jumped into the yellow can of paint, but when he jumped out…he wasn’t yellow, he was GREEN, BECAUSE BLUE MIXED WITH YELLOW MAKES GREEN!  The yellow mouse was so excited that she decided to jump into the red can to see what color she would become.  When she jumped out, she realized she had turned ORANGE, BECAUSE YELLOW MIXED WITH RED MAKES ORANGE!  Well the red mouse wanted to join the fun so he decided to jump into the blue can to see what color he would become.  When he jumped out he saw that he’d turned PURPLE, BECAUSE RED MIXED WITH BLUE MAKES PURPLE!  All three mice were so excited at their discovery that they spread the word about color mixing to everyone in the neighborhood (except that pesky cat).  THE END!

  

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