Identifying and learning colors is a huge part of early education, so here’s a few of my favorite elements to use.
Stories
I think “Monsters Love Colors” was the first book I tried my cheat to make felts straight from the book. And these ones turned out pretty good. It involves mixing colors, so I usually have my kiddos, get up and spin around when we mix a new color together. This one is a little longer, so I’d save this one for an older crowd.
Usually when I do color storytime, I use my felts to ask questions about which color correlates to which felt. It’s something I stole from “Dora the Explorer” 🙂 So like for “Penguins Love Colors,” I’ll have all six of my penguins up on my board. With each page, a new penguin will turn a different color, and I’ll ask where the corresponding penguin is up on the board, usually pointing to the wrong one. This one again is a bit longer, so recommended for an older group.
Anything with underwear will always be a hit. “What Color is Bear’s Underwear?” is short and sweet so good for small fries. And hey, underwear, so that’s always funny 🙂
I’ve wanted to do “One Sheep, Blue Sheep” for awhile, and finally did recently. At the end they make a big colorful scarf so I pulled out a giant scarf that Miss Gloria made, and we talked about all the colors in it. Then I wrapped up like 3 kids in it and they got all tangled, so it was a lot of fun.
Rhymes and Songs
I only have a few for this section, but they work out great. I originally got this one from Mr. Larry at King County Library System, and he does a great with the actions too.
Blue is the lake.
Yellow is the sun.
Silver are the stars
when the day is done.
Red is the apple.
Green is the tree.
Brown is the cookie
that’s just for me.
I got this other rhyme from Childhood 101. For this one, I just hold up the color and then we do the action at the end of each line.
Red, red, red, touch your head.
Blue, blue, blue, tie your shoe.
Brown, brown, brown, touch the ground.
White, white, white, take a bite.
Black, black, black, touch your back.
Gray, gray, gray, shout hooray!
The song I usually do is to the tune of “Muffin Man, though I’m not sure where I got it from.
Anyway, the song goes like this
“If you’re wearing RED today
RED today, RED today
If you’re wearing RED today
Would you GIVE HIGH FIVES.”
Then everyone wearing red has to do the action. After that you just substitute a different color and then do a different action (Would you: Wave hello, Spin around, Jump around.)
I’ve also done “5 Little Ants” or “One Little Fishie” with different colors ants/fish on the flannelboard. After each verse of the rhyme/song, we’ll remove (or add depending on the rhyme) one item from the board, and I’ll ask the kiddos what color it is, and we’ll keep going from there until we’re done. It’s also a great way to work on numbers, since we all count together how many animals are left on the board before each verse.
Activities
So there are two activities I usually break out after story time, one requires a lot of prep the other one not so much. Guess which one I usually do 🙂
The harder one is a paint bag. I get a bunch of Ziploc bags Slider style bags, which has that little bit of plastic on the top that creates the perfect seal. I get some yellow paint and some blue paint, and add a little bit to each bag. I then make sure each bag is locked and duct tape the slider down to make it secure. My colors are now secure!
After story time I give a little demonstration about what happens when you mix colors. I give each kid a bag and they squish it to make green. It’s a lot of fun, but it takes a lot of prep and makes a lot of waste, so I haven’t done this one recently.
My new go-to is color sorting. I put out four big bins, each with a different color on them. I then talk about how messy I am and need helping cleaning up. I put out a bunch of ball pit balls and have the kids sort them out, making sure they only take one at a time, and walk to the appropriate bin. Running kids always seem to collide on this one, so make sure kids are walking and that your buckets are spread out across the room.
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