Our first story for the day was A color of his own by Leo Lionni. The poor chameleon in this book has to change color to match whatever he is sitting on. When he decides to stay on a green leaf to be green forever, he finds that leaves don't stay green for long. Luckily, he meets another chameleon who shows him that changing colors isn't always so bad. This book is great for the kids to participate and tell you what colors the chameleon has changed to. If possible, a big book version would be nice as the format is a little small. The illustrations are simple enough though that even in the smaller format it can easily be seen by all of the kids.
The second book that we read was Knock! Knock! by Anna-Clara Tidholm. In this story, you knock on several different colored doors to see what is inside. The children see all different things behind the doors such as a baby drumming, monkeys swinging, bears headed to bed, and more! Before each door the kids can call out 'Knock, knock! Who is there?' Also, with each door they can tell you what color it is, though there is a 'yellow' door that in our copy of the book that looks rather orange.
Our final story was Pete the Cat: I love my white shoes by Eric Litwin. This is a new book that I really love. I turned the story into a flannel board so that I could expand on the colors used in the story. In the book, Pete is walking in his new white shoes that he loves so much he sings a song about them. He happens to step in a few piles of things (strawberries, blueberries, and mud) that change the colors of the shoes. (This was the part I had planned to expand on and have him step in peas, oranges, etc., but we ran short on time.) The kids really enjoyed this book and even the parents we singing along!
As it is almost October and the leaves around here start to change different colors, we sang a song about the leaves while waving some scarves around. I think that this was another one I got from PUBYAC, it goes to the tune of London Bridge:
Autumn leaves are falling down, falling down, falling down
Autumn leaves are falling down, all over town.
Watch them as they whirl and swirl, whirl and swirl, whirl and swirl
Watch them as they whirl and swirl, all over town.
They fall gently to the ground, to the ground, to the ground.
They fall gently to the ground, all over town.
Take a rake and rake them up, rake them up, rake them up
Take a rake and rake them up, all over town.
We also used our scarves as we sang Shake your scarves from Johnette Downing's The Second Line album. This is a nice simple song for scarves (the album has several) where the kids dance the scarves up and down, in and out, and on their knees and hands.
To end our scarf fun we said:
Dance your scarves up
Dance your scarves down
Dance them to your side
Dance them all around
Dance them on your tummies
Dance them on your head
Dance them on your shoulders
And put the scarves to bed
We ended story time with the song Boots from Laurie Berkner's Victor Vito album. This song followed Pete the Cat well with a footwear theme. The kids wear different colored boots (colored is used a bit losely, some of the boots are 'frog' and 'rain') and do different things like stomping, jumping, and running while wearing the boots.
Our craft for the day was a Tissue Paper tree. We make these frequently in the fall, they always turn out so nicely. There were several colors of tissues paper square for the kids to glue on the tree. For the trunk they had a large tongue depressor and there where two smaller wooden sticks for branches. The craft really pulled together the colors theme and the leaves from A color of his own as well as from the scarf songs.
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