Paints and Colors

These past two weeks I've had preschool visits at the library. Two different preschools in the area took field trips to the library and requested a storytime and tour. Over the two weeks I saw over 300 children and completed the same storytime about 12 times. This is an annual visit and every year I'm exhausted afterwards, but so glad that the schools choose us every year as one of their very few field trips.

This year I put together a great storytime with a colors/paint theme that I knew I could jazz up to the extreme. I really wanted these kids to leave the library filled with excitement and the desire to go home and beg their parents to bring them back.

A quick note on my plans...I always over plan. I prepare more materials then will normally fit in my 30 minute format because each group of children is different and has a different dynamic so I want to make sure I have ideas and options for every possibility. 

Books:

Opening Activity:
Little Mouse Flannel Game

Discuss the number of houses and color of the houses with the children and explain that there is a mouse hiding under one of the houses that we MUST find! Hide other flannel pieces under the remaining houses that relate to the theme of the storytime. Only call on "quiet hands" to help you decide which houses to look under.

Song:

"Dance, Freeze, Melt" by The Learning Groove from Rockin' Read

This is a song that I've had huge success with for all ages. It's really easy to learn and it incorporates counting and "freezing", which most preschoolers LOVE. Children dance (for 8 counts), freeze (for 8 counts), then melt to the ground. This is repeated with jumping, twirling, and flying in place of the dancing verse. Perfection.

Jazz It Up Moment #1:
This idea came from Amy over at Catch the Possibilities, Amy is a good friend of mine and I often pick her mind for some good Jazz It Up moments and together we came up with this activity. 

Give every child a paintbrush and have them follow along with "I Ain't Gonna Paint No More" by Karen Beaumont. 

As the little boy in the book paints various body parts encourage the children to pretend to paint their own body parts as well. This encourages body part identification, good listening skills, and gives the opportunity to talk about pretending and imagination.

Jazz It Up Moment #2:
Retell "Mouse Paint" by Ellen Stoll Walsh using small paint cans and different colored mice. 

Start with three white mice and put the other colored mice in the paint cans ahead of time (Blue Can: blue and purple mice, Red Can: red and orange mice, Yellow Can: yellow and green mice) for sneaky removal later. Basically this works very simply: as you put a white mouse into a can, you pull out the appropriate colored mouse it changes into, and then do it again as you continue to mix your colors. At the end have the children help you turn the mice back to white by using their "magic". Have the children shout a magic word and then pull out the white mice at the very end.

It works best to complete this activity if the cans are on a book cart and high enough that the children can't see inside the cans. You don't want to ruin the mystery of the story by letting the kids see into the cans. If done right this story mystifies the kids and really blows their little minds with all the "magic" you've done. This is also a great activity to use for color mixing.

The paint cans are available at any home improvement store for a very small amount of money. The mice were originally made as finger puppets, but I have never used them that way.

What Went Not So Great

• "I'm the Biggest Artist in the Ocean" went so-so. The children enjoyed the giant fold-out in the end, but it was a little slim on plot and the children just weren't that into it. I got a lot of, "that was a short one!" after finishing the book. They enjoyed seeing the various sea animals, but the whole concept of art and painting went over their heads. I could have taken the time to discuss the book more, but I was crunched for time. (I only read this in a handful of the storytimes as a quick filler.)
• The paintbrush activity with "I Ain't Gonna Paint No More" was a bit of a fail. I found that the kids were so distracted with having their very own prop that they didn't catch on to the rhyming aspects of the story, in fact they didn't pay that much attention to the book at all. I enjoyed that we could practice body identification and holding a writing utensil is a great early literacy skill. If I do this activity again I'd read the book first without the brushes, then read the book a second time and introduce the brushes then. That way I could take the time to discuss it and hit all the positives of this activity: writing, body identification, rhyming, and prediction skills.

What Went Right

• Little Mouse is always a HUGE success on so many levels. I've been using this as an opening activity for years for a reason.
• Books: "Press Here" and "Pete the Cat"
• Song: "Dance Freeze Melt"
• Jazz It Up Moments: "Mouse Paint" and encourage the children to use their "magic" to help me