Color Your World

There are a ton of books about colors! Last week for Tales for Twos, our theme was colors.

We read Dog's Colorful Day by Emma Dodd- too cute! I found a picture of the dog online and printed it and drew a larger version, so as I read the story I could add the colored spots to the dog. I also printed a dog for each child and provided the spots to take home!

We also read The Artist Who Painted a Horse Blue by Eric Carle. I love this book because it shows familiar objects that any child would recognize in different colors- as he sees them and as a child might see them. Here is a review of the book which speaks to the importance of it better than I could:

Every child has an artist inside them, and this vibrant picture book from Eric Carle will help let it out. The artist in this book paints the world as he sees it, just like a child. There's a red crocodile, an orange elephant, a purple fox and a polka-dotted donkey. More than anything, there's imagination. Filled with some of the most magnificently colorful animals of Eric Carle's career, this tribute to the creative life celebrates the power of art.

We did Hokey Pokey Colors with crepe paper streamers- you put blue in, you put blue out, you put blue in and shake it all about, etc.

We finished with Red Car, Red Bus by Susan Steggall. Great book for colors, patterns, sequencing and more. It would be great to print out the vehicles in the book and use them as manipulatives while you read the story and afterward use them to make up your own pattern. Perfect, simple, free activity! (Didn't have time to do it in our program)

I gave everyone materials to make a "color book".

Easy Peasy Halloween Picture Bingo!

There are a lot of free Bingo card generators online, but I like the dltk-kids.com one. You can do words and pictures or just pictures. You can choose the number of squares. You have lots of options.


I made these simple 3X3 Halloween Bingo cards with just pictures on the site and printed them. They also generate the call cards. I laminated the bingo cards and I printed the call cards on a transparency so I could use an overhead projector to show the little ones the picture.

Of course, we had to use candy corn and Halloween M&Ms for markers! Easy to do and lots of fun! Great for parties, classrooms and at home!

Step Backwards!

Did you know they celebrate Backwards Day on January 31st?

Well, I decided last week's Preschool Pretend & Play theme would be Step Backwards because I saw some cute picture books. One was the AlphaOops! The Day that Z Went First by Alethea Kontis and the other was Previously by Allan Ahlberg. Also, Mirror Mirror: A Book of Reversible Verse by Marilyn Singer was very cool, but I did not use it for this program.

I used AlphaOops! last time for our Crazy Alphabets theme, so I didn't use that book either!

So, I started out by setting up the storytime room backwards. It was kind of funny because the parents and kids sat down on the carpet the normal way so their backs were towards me. Then I greeted everyone with "Good-bye! Thanks for coming! You did a great job today!" It took them a little while to catch on. One little boy starting walking out the door! It was funny!

We danced to Laurie Berkner's "I Really Love to Dance"- we walk backwards in that song. Then I read Tell Me the Day Backwards by Albert Lamb and part of Previously. We danced to our "Penguin Song" as usual.

Then we did some sequencing!
I passed out envelopes with 3 sequencing cards in them. These were printed from the book Make and Take Sequencing Fun. The adults and children talked about the sequence of the cards and what would happen if we went backwards! We had 3 different sequencing envelopes for them to try.

We read Silly Sally by Audrey Wood which the kids loved! And we ended with The Wiggles' "Monkey Dance" because we jump to the front and back!

The craft was silly animals made from different parts of animals!

Apples and Oranges - Harvest Time!

We read Pumpkin Harvest by Martha E. Rustad which is the perfect length and just the right amount of information about pumpkins for two- year-olds.

Then everyone got a pumpkin on a stick for our The Pumpkins Are Here song and activity from The Mailbox Magazine. It goes like this to the tune of The Farmer in the Dell:

The pumpkins are here, the pumpkins are there.
The pumpkins, the pumpkins are everywhere!
The pumpkins are up, the pumpkins are down
The pumpkins, the pumpkins are all around!
The pumpkins are in, the pumpkins are out
The pumpkins are all about!
The pumpkins are low, the pumpkins are high
Now all the pumpkins wave good-bye!

We read Apple Harvest by Martha E. Rustad as well!

We did a Apple Tree fingerplay:
Way up high in the apple tree (two hands in air)
Two little apples smiled at me
I shook that tree as hard as I could (shake)
Down came the apples (hands come down)
UMMMMMM!UMMMMM! Good! (rub tummy)

Crazy Alphabets

I usually get my ideas for storytimes from books as I catalog new books. That's exactly what happened with Crazy Alphabets. I saw two new books that were hilarious!

Z is for Moose by Kelly Bingham is adorable. Moose so much wants to be in the alphabet book and is a little impatient. The crew decides to use Mouse instead of Moose on the M page and Moose sort of loses it! There are tons of alphabet books, but this one stands out for me.