Toddler Time 5-17-17: Colors

Today's theme is colors!

After saying hello, I asked the kids to shout out their favorite colors. Then we read our first (adorable) story, Penguins Love Colors by Sarah Aspinall. In this story, a group of six penguin siblings try to make their mom the perfect Mother's Day gift. Each penguin has a favorite color, and together the family's signature colors make up the whole rainbow. To make it interactive, I asked the kids to identify the color of each penguin on the pages when all the siblings appear.

 

After the story, I passed out colored scarves to all the kids and any grownup who wanted one. 

I encouraged the kids to dance and play with their scarves while we listened to "The Color Song."

(vid to come)

For a second movement song, I played "It's Time to Stand Up" and we all followed the directions. This is a fun one to do with toddlers because just when they think they've followed the last direction, a new one is fired at them. It keeps their brains moving, and keeps them laughing the whole time.

Our second story was Freight Train by Donald Crews. For some reason, a lot of toddlers are very interested in trains. I don't know why, but it is a fact of life. So between the trains and the rainbow colors, this simple book was enjoyed by everyone.

My last, and best, color idea was one I got from a training last year. Before Toddler Time began I taped different colored die cut stars around the room. The kids wondered what they were for all through storytime, and I finally told them for our last song of the day before saying goodbye: I was going to play a song that mentioned colors, and when they heard a color mentioned they had to run around the room and find a star of that color. They absolutely lost their minds about this song, and it was a lot of fun watching them scamper around hunting for colored stars. A lot of them ripped the stars right off the wall and handed them right to me, which was unexpected but really cute.

If you look closely in this picture, you can see the colored stars stuck to the table.

Here is a list of picture books about colors that I displayed:

• Mouse Paint—Walsh
• Lunch—Fleming
• Color Chaos!—Reed
• Color Zoo—Ehlert
• Purple, Green and Yellow—Munsch
• Red is Best—Stinson
• Green is a Chile Pepper—Thong
• Elmer—McKee
• Elmer and the Rainbow—McKee 
• Little Green Peas—Baker
• The White Book—Borando
• Little Blue and Little Yellow—Lionni
• Ain’t Gonna Paint No More—Beaumont 
• Monsters Love Colors—Austin 
• Dog’s Colorful Day—Dodd