Blue, Blue, Blue, Blue Wednesday

Monday was the big candy, costume day and I figured we may have some overtired and oversugared kids. So....today is Blue Day. We really had a great time! Cynthia was Bunny Blue and had the kids boo hoo hoo with her on each page.

Opening: Who Wore Their Hair Today?

Baby Bear  brings in our letter of the day..... B.

Book: What's the Matter Bunny Blue? by Nicola Smee

Fingerplay: Two Little Bluebirds

Mother Goose: Little Boy Blue
I like to use the big Mother Goose poster sets by Kim Faurot.

Book: The Artist Who Painted a Blue Horse by Eric Carle
Love this book!

Action Song: Baby Beluga

Book: It Looked Like Spilt Milk by Charles G. Shaw
Always a hit in storytime. We use the big book version.

Closing Song: Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear

Craft:

Blue Squish bags that Cynthia and I made ahead of time. We used blue hair gel and duct taped it into freezer ziplock bags. Kids can fingerpaint and squeeze their color.

Not Very Mellow Yellow

Yellow was the color of this weeks storytime. Bright sunshine, lemons, bananas, and buses! We read:

A Good Day by Kevin Henkes   using stuffed animals and a feather to act out the story using props. Just LOVE this book!

We sang "Oh, Mister Sun" by Raffi and had the words printed on papers around the room for those who do not know the words.

Baby Bear checked out the box with yellow items and brought our letter of the day.

"Lemons Are Not Red" was the next book. I thought it would be a good choice, but I think it was too small for our large group , and not engaging enough.
The school bus driver came in so I jumped to the bus book before telling everyone about the BIG SURPRISE............

School Bus by Donald Crews

After our rhymes, stories, and songs we had a big surprise.......a school bus! Everyone went outside and took their turn walking up the big steps and finding a seat on the bus. We took a trip to the park and the highlight was crossing the railroad tracks. The bus driver told everyone they needed to be silent when we crossed and the toddlers took it very seriously.

The bus driver was soooooo nice and everyone got a big kick out of riding the bus.

World of Color

Cynthia always gets the attention of our group by rattling her woven shaker and singing "We're going to hear stories, stories, stories, we're going to hear stories, in the story circle".



Today's storytime was the first in our color series. After our Storytime Song and Who Wore Their....Today song, Baby Bear introduced the letter of the day and a clue. We used the letter F for fall and talked about the colors outdoors. Then Baby Bear pulled out a box of color crayons as a clue to today's colorful stories.

The first story was "Dog's Colorful Day" by Emma Dodd. I read the book,Cynthia had the flannel board version, and applied the spots as dog got messy.





Next we did an action song to the tune of Row, Row, Row Your Boat:
Roll, roll, roll, your hands, slowly as can be.......words are on the song sheet picture.


Second book was "What Color is Your Underwear", a lift the flap book that is a fun book to use, but was not quite as funny to the toddlers as it was to our Head Start group.



We passed out scarves and everyone stood up for colorful scarf waving action song that ended with the scarves being thrown in the air.




We finished the storytime with that wonderful classic "Brown Bear, Brown Bear" by Bill Martin Jr. and told it on the flannelboard.



After our "Teddy Bear Turn Around" closing song, we stamped hands with a leaf stamp, and proceeded to the tables for a dog coloring sheet. Many of the dogs had a LOT of colorful spots!

Wouldn't change a thing. Worked very nicely, perfect craft for toddlers, fun books, just enough action and movement.

 The new "Storytime Suggestion Song" went over well as did our new staging area on the rug.

Next week: the color RED!