Color Books Go Home!

The children were so excited--they got to take their color books home today. After more than two months of working on them, this is a big day for them. Each day after we would finish a page they would always ask if they could,"take it home and show their mom?" Sorry Dad, they want to show mom first.

I will tell you every year I struggle with a cover. This year I gave them a piece of paper that said, "My Color Book." I had different color watercolors out and I let the children watercolor them however they wanted. Some colored the whole paper, some just a small area. After they were dry, I stapled them together and off they want.

I hope everyone enjoyed them!

All Right With White!

We worked on our last color this past week; wonderful white. I forgot my camera on Tuesday so I don't have pictures of the children painting the first picture for the color book, which was.....a snowman--of course.

Snow seems to be the center of our discussions for the color white. We even got some snow yesterday--right on time!

Our first page was our snowman. We painted it using cotton balls. I think they had more fun with those soft cotton balls.

Our next page was an igloo. I had cut out some igloo shapes which the children glued to the paper. I then had some white circle stickers and some paint with Q-Tips which the children could use to make snowflakes. I let them decide if they wanted to use stickers, paint, or both. The majority of the children wanted to do both types of snowflakes.

Our sensory tub contained a mixture of cotton balls, white feathers, and cut up pieces of white straws. I had the children use tweezers to take out the white straw pieces and put them in a cup. They really did well with this.

They also really enjoyed playing in this tub. I plan to put lots of different colored straw pieces in it this week to let them play in it.

The color books go home this week. The children are so excited. They can't wait to show their families all the fun pages they made.

Keen on Green

I know, it's a corny title, but I was looking for a rhyme.

We did the color green at school last week and of course we had lots of fun with it!

Our color book pages consisted of painting an evergreen tree and giving a frog green spots. For the evergreen painting I thought it would be fun to paint with pieces of evergreen trees. I went out and collected some pieces of a Blue Spruce, a White Pine, and two others I don't know the names of. One branch had long needles, but they were much more coarse then a White Pine. The other tree had some nice branches. This is actually the branch used most. It was softer and was able to paint better.

I showed the children what they would be painting and said they could use whatever tree piece they would like. I passed around the different pieces so that they could feel them. The Blue Spruce was met with lots of complaints--"OUCH, it's picky!"

During painting time we found that the Blue Spruce was too difficult to paint with. The White Pine ended up like a wet noodle and wasn't too fun. The long, coarse needle tree didn't cover enough for them. So the winner was tree number four. It covered the best and was easy to work with. I must say, though you had to use a whole hand type of "brushing," so it was messy.

The second page was just to put some green dots on a frog and color him. I had the green circle stickers which they used.





Here are our pages:





Some other fun green events: I had our green rice out from last St. Patrick's Day, this was fun, but, of course, rice is everywhere.



Secondly, we talked about blue and yellow making green when mixed together. To help demonstrate this first I had given everyone color windows to show them. The next day I had brought in blue and yellow ice cubes. We put them in the water table and watched them melt during the day and make green water. The AM class watched but did not touch. The PM class was a little more adventurous and played in here a little more--ooo cold hands.





After our break we will do the color white and then make the cover. Almost time for the books to go home!

Brown, Brown, All Around

http://www.hanammarbles.com/html/onyx/multi_col_%20brown_big.htm

Our color this week was brown. I'm not sure if it's me, but this color doesn't come as easily as the others. They like to call this color black, even though they identify black correctly. I keep trying.

Our first page for the color book was a acorn. My plan was to find some acorns outside and "marble" paint with them to make our acorn picture brown. Well, too little too late. I looked all around for acorns. We have some oak trees at the end of the street that are always full of acorns, so I thought for sure there would be some lying around. I plowed through mounds of leaves, but did not find one acorn--the squirrels beat me to it.

So I put on my thinking cap--what to do, what to do? I thought about raiding the wooden beads as there are lots of different shapes, but wasn't happy with the idea. Then I found some tissue paper squares and thought that would look neat--no brown. So I thought I would cut up some tissue paper--no brown. Finally, I saw my 500 brown bags and decided I would cut them up into squares and use them. The children painted the acorn with glue and put on the squares.

The second page was "Spot" the dog. I had cut out small brown circles-ovals and the children glued on spots then colored.

Here are the brown color page patterns:

My favorite idea this week was for the sensory activity. I decided to have "worms in brown mud." I cooked up some spaghetti--which I left in the refrigerator at home. Mrs. T was great enough to have some Ramen noodles in her cabinet that she cooked up quickly for me. Then I added brown paint to the noodles to make it look like we had some worms in mud. Well, I think I may have sold the idea too well. I got words like, icky, gross, ooo, "do I have to touch it," etc. I was shocked. I explained over and over again it was just noodles in paint. I thought for sure they would love this. They liked fingerpaint, why not this? Oh well I tried. Everyone at least touched it, but no one really "got into" it. Maybe it will leave a lasting brown impression though.

Purple Murple

This title is a shout out to my helper, Mrs. T., at school. She just loves to say purple murple. I hear it quite a lot during purple week. Plus, she was a good sport when I gave her a purple paint shower this week so she deserves some recognition. Thanks Mrs. T!

Purple this week. We had lots of fun with it. For the first page of our book we painted a purple pterodactyl. My plan was to get to the fabric store and buy some fabric with a good texture to it. Well, sickness hit at home and I was unable to trounce about. I got lucky and found some heavy fabric in our closet at school and used that.

I wanted to give the pterodactyl a "leathery"skin type look. I took the material and had the children use the rollers to roll some purple paint onto the fabric. I then had them press and rub their picture against the fabric to get the print of the fabric on their paper. It was pretty fun--first time I had ever done this. They thought it was great that they were putting a piece of paper with no color on it against some fabric and it was turning purple when they pressed it.

The second page was a picture of Ernie from Sesame Street holding some grapes. I had precut some grape shapes. The children glued the grapes on and then colored the picture.







Our other purple fun went along with our good foods discussion. I had drawn a "bowl" on a big piece of paper--so I'm not the best artist. Then I had put out purple stamp pads so that the children could use their fingerprints to make grapes in a bowl. Again--lots of fun. You will notice the afternoon class got REALLY into this activity. I tried to stress that they clean their hands when they were finished, but I'm sure we'll be finding purple handprints on toys for the next couple of weeks.







Here are our purple pictures:

Only a few more colors left. Next week we're on to brown.

Back in Black

Oooo, what a dark week we had: Halloween and the color black--scary, scary.

This week, trying to incorporate some Halloween activities, get ready for our parent program, and discuss the color black, didn't leave me much time for extras. Here is what we did:

The first page of our color book was to paint a black kitten. What better way to do black than with a black Halloween kitten. I wanted the kitten to look like it had fur, so I got some rubber basting brushes and that is what we used to paint with. This was the first time I ever did this activity. It looked better when the paint was thinner, as you could see more lines representing fur, but we are painting with preschoolers here, the more the better!

The second page of the book was a bit harder. For this page we made a black bat. To make our bat black I give the children strips of black paper and they had to rip it into pieces and cover the bat. Ripping is very hard for them. They want to PULL the paper apart and when it doesn't work they become frustrated. I try to help each one individually to get the hang of it and then let them try on their own. Some of them did great, some were done after a couple of tries.

Finally, on Halloween, we made a black spider web at the end of the day and put our black spider in it. This was one of the best parts of the day.



Here are our cat and bat pictures:





Onward to PURPLE!

Beautiful Blue

I know, I know, I'm a bit behind. We are working on black this week and I haven't even posted our blue. We went on a field trip to the pumpkin patch last we so our "blue" experience was a little short. Anyway, here is what we did.

The first page of our book was a whale. Since blue is associated with water alot, I decided we would water color our whale. Some decided the whole paper had to be blue, some thought just the whale. They all did a great job.

Continuing the water them, I had the water table filled with water. First I had put some blue items in the table. Then we went over to discuss how to make the water blue. The first response for both classes was to stir it. So we stirred and stirred, nothing happened. Then some of those "brighties" remembered adding food color to the yellow icing and they suggested that.

Adding the food color was quite fun. We could have done this all day. The patterns each drop left in the water were beautiful. But, we added some color, mixed it up and off they went. I think out of all of them I only had 2 that were REALLY wet. They LOVED this though. It's amazing how far basters can shoot water.

Then we real quickly did our second page which was to decorate the clowns outfit with the blue stickers and color him in.

Here are the book pages:





This week were into black. Also trying to do some Halloween activities. It's good black is a common Halloween color.

Outrageous Orange

Before I begin, I just wanted to take a second and say: Yes, I am still here! Life is just moving at the speed of sound here and I'm having some time management trouble. Every time I think I have everything down, something else happens. I thought I would have TONS of time when my youngest was in school all day! Can someone tell me what happened?

So this past week we were working with the color orange. Since we do the color red, followed by the color yellow, I always follow with orange, seems logical.

I had taken our bean bin and added anything orange I could find in the room. Yes, I am still picking up beans. I actually crushed one yesterday.



We began by experimenting with some color windows. I gave each child a red and a yellow color window. We put them together to see what we would get--ORANGE.



So what did we paint this week for our color book? A picture of a pumpkin of course. I had the children marble paint the pumpkin. The had so much fun scooping out marbles and shaking the box.







The second orange page was again a coloring and sticker page--all of our second pages are. We added orange stickers to fall leaves and then colored.

Here are our pages:

Halloween is right around the corner,so we incorporated a Halloween craft with the orange. What was it? Fingerpainting. We fingerpainted a piece of paper orange. I had wanted to give them a glob of red and a glob of yellow to mix and get orange. When I checked the box I thought I had lots of red fingerpaint, but it turned out I had 6 containers of orange fingerpaint and 1 container of red. I tried to do the red and yellow, but the red was a bit-aaaaa--hard. So I ended up just giving them orange paint to slosh around. They did really well. I only had one little boy that painted with one hand and covered a small portion of their paper. The rest of them dove right in. Actually, the best part was squirting the paper with water and spreading it all around!









When the paint dried I cut them out in jack-o-lantern shape and then I let them glue on pieces to add a face. We got lots of unique jack-o-lanterns with some great character.







I just wanted to share two other fun things. Check out this picnic. Yes, it did take about 15 minutes to clean everything up, but boy did we eat well.



Also, I got out the pattern blocks today and they were a HUGE hit. They really did well too. I thought some of the patterns might me a little difficult. What was I thinking?



This week we are sailing into BLUE.

Hello Yellow

Our color last week was the color yellow. Our whole day on Thursday was pretty much devoted to this beautiful color. (I must admit it holds a special place in my heart.)

Our painting project was to roller paint a sun yellow for our color book. This was my first ever experience roller painting, (I know there is probably lots of gasping going on right now). Anyway the children did GREAT. I think they were more efficient roller painting than they were brush painting. I had envisioned paint splashed everywhere and oozing over the sides of the containers, but, no. They had a good time.

The next color page was a tropical fish page. I again had the children put yellow dots on the fish and then color. I still had some that were not sure of that coloring thing. We'll keep trying.

Our book pages:

Our final yellow project was our yellow buses. We made these last year for the first time and they were a big hit. The spreading of the frosting was the hardest part. Just an FYI, we used Honeycomb cereal for the wheels, Rice Chex for the windows, Graham Crackers for the bus, and frosting to make it yellow. I have a peanut allergy in the class so I checked with Mom and all of these ingredients were good for him to have.









Next week we will mix the red and the yellow--oh what fun!

Fun With Red

Our color for the past week was red. Whenever we do colors I try to have them experience them in different ways. We also create a color book to go home at the end of our color fun.

On Tuesday we all wore red to school. I always think it's so cute when everybody is wearing the same color. Our play time included some fun with pom poms. I had a large container of pom poms and red bowls. I wanted the children to find the red pom poms and put them in the bowls. I actually wanted to use our new tweezers for this activity, but I had put them in that "safe" place, and am having trouble finding them. They did really well with this, then we started making pom pom soup. Yummy!

We had out the sand table where I had hid red blocks so as they scooped and poured, they would come across the red blocks.

I also have a color box which I made last year. I attach the color of the week to the box and ask the children when they find something of the color for the week during any time during they day, they should put it in the box and we will examine our treasures later in the day. Since this was new, our box wasn't overly filled, but some of them did add items they found.

For the color book we completed an apple and an apple tree. I had them do easel painting for the apple. They were so excited to paint. (I was a bit disappointed with the paint, when it dried it looked more pink than red--oh well.) The second page was an apple tree. I use some stickers for fine motor skills and then had them color. I was really surprised only about 2 from each class did well with the coloring. I will incorporate this every week.

These are the patterns I use, in case anyone is interested.

When we do our pages for the color book I also try to incorporate name recognition. I have all the children's names on the back of the papers. For our painting day, I had their paper ready and helped them to "write" their name with their finger. On apple tree day, I had their paper on the table with their name up. They had to find their name and complete the correct paper. I also did have them trace their name again with their finger.

Another activity we do every day is find the color in the room. After story time we go on a little hunt to see what we can find in our room that corresponds to the color of the week. This can get a little loud, but they love it.

We even had our snack helper bring is a great snack of watermelon, strawberries, and berry juice. It was a fun kick off to our color weeks.

Plump Little Apple

Guess what? I finally came up with a craft. I guess my brain is starting to think in school mode, it's right around the corner.

I know apples are a common fall and beginning of school theme. I have seen some great ones out there while I was surfing the web. I came up with this one the other day.

You will need:

2 paper plates

hole puncher

paint

yarn

popsicle stick

green construction paper

tacky

brown marker

newspaper

Take your two paper plates and put them together so that they puff out; bottoms of the plate out. Here is a tricky part: using the hole puncher go around the edges to punch holes into the two paper plates together, they will need to be sewn together later. I marked two holes with a pencil so that I would be able to line up the holes later.

The next step is to paint the bottom of both plates. I painted mine red as we do different things with apples when we talk about red. But, apples can be many different colors so feel free to improvise.

After the paint has dried, give the children a piece of yarn. I always wrap one end with masking tape to make it easier to "sew" with. Let the children sew the two plates together.

When there are about 3 holes left, let them crunch up some paper and stuff the apple. (This step is not totally necessary as the apple will still be 3D-ish without the extra stuffing.)

The rest to the apple needs to be sewn together now. The children will probably need some help holding the two sides together. When all the holes are sewn, tie the end off. (You will see one side of my apple is crumpled. This comes from different sewing techniques. When going up and through you have a nice smooth apple as you will see on one side, when go around you will get some crumples. I always leave this up to the children.)

Take a popsicle stick and let them break it in half, color with a marker. I put tacky on both sides of one end of the stick and glued it between the two plates.

The final step is to add some leaves. I cut two leaves from green paper and glued one leaf on each side. In our room we like to hang things from the ceiling. These apples would be one of those projects. Remember, they may look good, but don't eat them!

Who Said Red?

At "skill time" today I had some fun with the book called "Who Said Red?," by Mary Serfozo, illustrated by Kieko Narahashi.

This book mentions the colors throughout. When we got to a new color all the children had to get up, find that color somewhere in the room, then come back to the reading rug. It was fun, but loud. I reread the book again after the game, so they could actually hear the story too.


*Sorry no pictures, too busy.*

Color Fun

Even though we have finished with our formal color exploration, I like to have activities throughout the year at different times to reinforce our skills.

I spent this weekend at the dining room table surrounded by flyers, circulars, and weekend adds--all weekend. I wanted to cut out pictures with different colors for this project. The trick was trying to find enough pictures for each of the colors.

Yesterday I made little "mats" for each child. The mats were separated into different parts. Each one had the color name, in the color, along with a little color dot.

Today I put out all the pictures and glue during free time. The children were to look through the pictures pick one out, determine it's color and glue it in the correct space. Some of the children finished the whole thing, while others did a few then went on to other things.

I Know My Colors!

After our break, I decided we would have a couple of color review days and finish up with our Me Book color page. Today was the making of our color book page. (The Me Book is a book that is created for each child during the school year. We make different pages for it throughout the year.)

The children make what I call a color caterpillar. The heading on the page is "I know my colors."

I have circles cut out of the nine basic colors we discussed. I sit with each child and ask them if they can tell me the names of the colors. Sometimes children find it very easy to "point" to the color you ask them, but "telling" you the name is a little different.

After they tell me the names, I give them all the circles and have them glue them down to make a caterpillar, then use a marker for eyes, feet, and antennae. It is really cute to see all the different caterpillars you will get.

The children did great. Out of all 14 children there where only 2 that mixed up black and brown--I was pretty impressed.

Color Books are Going Home

Well, this is our last FORMAL week for color activities. We finished the cover of our Color Books on Tuesday. I got them stapled all together and will send them home on Thursday. For the cover I had all the colored stickers we used while making the books. I asked the children to find a certain sticker when I asked for the certain color. They did really well. The colors that I found were still a little vague were brown and black. I wasn't too surprised with the brown, but I WAS surprised with black.

I am hoping to play a game with them on Thursday, I didn't get to it on Tuesday. I have a bag of different colored blocks. I am going to have them pull a block from the bag, tell me the color, then find something in the room of the matching color. Lots of fun!

We will continue different reinforcement activities through the year: games, mentioning of the colors A LOT, a page for their ME BOOK, etc. When we come back in January we will be starting shapes during our skill time. For now, we've conquered the first task and have advanced to the next level--how's that sound for the video game age:).

White Like Snow

The final color we do for our books is the color white. This week was that color. I think the color box ran it's course. I had one child the whole week find me something white for the box--and white is everywhere.

Mother Nature helped out with white quite a bit today. It was snowing! Just a snow shower, but it was sure coming down. Of course, that was the end of the day for me. Once they saw the snow it was like I had fed them two pounds of sugar. Yelling, running, just general mayhem ensued. Thanks Mother Nature!

Since coloring with a white crayon is a bit "useless" the first page of our color book involved painting a white snowman. Just a small one to have something white in our book. Our second page was to add white stickers to a snowflake. All the colors are in. When we get back from break we will make the cover and send the books home.

We had some great fun with shaving cream today. I always love shaving cream play. The room and the children smell so good. It was quite funny though. It was the first time we have done shaving cream this year. I got out the can and sprayed some in my hand and asked the children what they thought it was. One person said cream, one said cleaning stuff, and the others weren't sure. Then, I spread it on my face and the light bulb came on. They all knew what it was then, but they wanted me to go wash--I guess I didn't look too good.

I was going to bring marshmallows for snack but forgot them this morning--THANK GOODNESS. I don't think we needed any energy boosters. I got lucky though, our snack was graham crackers and sliced apples. We talked about the inside of the apple being white.

For the remainder of the year we will practice colors as a whole with games and activities. We had a great time enjoying all our color play--OFF TO SHAPES!

Green Like a Frog

Those color books are coming along nicely. We only have one more color before they get to go home to mom and dad. This week our color was green--had lots of fun with this one.

First of all, we had to do the ever popular mixing of Play Doh. They all got some blue and yellow Play Doh and we made green--they love this activity. I think they're sad when we don't have colors to mix. The best part came today. In The Mailbox, Aug/Sept. 2002 Kindergarten issue, they had a great activity that the children really enjoyed. It was a wonderful way to have fun with science, along with creating green. Each child got a baggie with one blue and one yellow ice cube inside. I had made the ice cubes and filled the bags at home. I also put some Duct tape over the top so they couldn't open the bag. I asked the children if they knew what was inside, how does it feel, what will happen if we play with these, what color will the water be? It really was great fun! My only issue--which I need to put my thinking cap on for--was that some of the children broke their bags. I thought about them opening the bag, but breaking it didn't occur to me. If anyone has ideas for next year, I would love to hear them.

For green our color box got a lot of action--there's lots of green in the room. We colored a green frog and decorated a turtle's shell with green for the color book. We also did some green watercolor painting.

I didn't have to bring a special snack in as our birthday boy today brought in cupcakes with green sprinkles--all avenues covered. Great fun this color week!

Brown Like Mud

I know, mud? I couldn't come up with something else? Probably, but they sure do know what I am talking about when we talk about mud.

So this week was brown. We have lots of brown. Brown was everywhere so it was very easy to have many different things to show them; windowsills, doors, chairs, teddy bears, blocks, etc. They were really good at finding it.

Our color book consisted of a brown acorn and then our manipulative page was Spot the dog. We had to glue brown dots onto Spot.

Our big experience with the color was the chocolate pudding play. If you are a neat person--do not attempt this. I forewarned my aide, and I even asked for parent volunteer to be in the class with us.

So first we all made the pudding together--I learned my lesson from the blue. We got to see the light brown powder, and smell that great chocolate smell. Then we added the milk and everybody helped stir. Wow, even though we put in white milk, the brown got a lot darker.

Finally I used three different tables with no more than 5 children at each table and one adult at each table. Then each person got a "glob" and they were good to go. Well for about the first couple minutes, the only thing that touched that stuff was the tip of the pointer finger. Then I said taste it, so the finger got a little deeper. Then I asked if they could draw something in it--and we were off. There was one little girl that would rub it all around, then rub her entire face, like she was washing herself. Clean up took us a little while. I had buckets by the table and we called one child at a time--leaving the messiest for last. We only had to change one shirt. Cleaning the table cloths was quite a task though.

We had a great time with out brown, but if you try this, be ready.

Black Like the Night

Appropriately, this week our color was black. I actually had more difficulty with this color than I anticipated. First I was trying to think of a way to "experience" black. We don't have black Play Doh, couldn't find black sorting objects, DID have a black puzzle, but the closet is low on black objects. Then as I was trying to put black items in the color box, I found many things with some black here or there, but total black was few and far between.

For the box I found three hand puppets: Shamu the whale, a black bear, and a black spider. We did have some fun with the spider. I'm not sure if the color box is getting old or if they had trouble finding items, but I was the only one to add items this week.

For our color book we colored a black kitten. Our manipulative page is a black bat that the children do paper ripping for. I give them the shape, we cover it with glue, then they rip black paper into pieces to cover him and make him black. This is VERY difficult for many of the children, but also very good for their development. They actually try to pull the paper apart and become frustrated when it doesn't happen. The activity can take longer than our usual manipulative activity. Because of that and our parade, we were a bit off schedule. So we will be doing the black bat on Tuesday morning.

Our snack was--again had trouble--raisins. I know they are not literally black, but they give a good black appearance. I thought about Oreo's, M&M's, or chocolate chips, but I didn't want to add to the sugar content for the week. I guess I could have done black olives, but I'm not sure how many would have been eaten.

So, this week I learned that next year for black I have some extra work to do to be ready, and maybe some shopping to do!

Purple Like Grapes

So this week was purple. One thing I've learned this week is that our room is not big on purple items. Our color box was very empty this week--and believe me I was searching.

One thing I try to do when doing purple is allow them to have purple and blue next to each other. I find they confuse these two colors very often. So we did a sorting activity with blue and purple bears. Then we also did Play Doh mixing and that helped them to see that blue is used to make purple. They love the Play Doh mixing--we mixed the red and the blue so now we have purple Play Doh.

For our color books we gave Ernie purple grapes. I have a picture of Ernie holding grapes and they have to glue purple ovals down to make his grapes purple.

Today we created some beautiful purple creations with lots of odds and ends that I found in the closet. Plus we used lots and lots of glue. Hopefully these will be dry by Tuesday. I'm not sure if the table will be clear of glue by the end of the year. I tried. They had a great time with this though. It was totally an individual project just letting them explore. For some of them just having fun spreading the glue was the major attraction.

Our snack today was Halloween cookies with some purple in them, along with purple grapes. I know they are actually called red grapes, but they look purple enough to me. The real purple grapes look more black, and they have seeds. Even our leader brought some snack with purple--we had colored goldfish that included purple and purple juice. Boy were we full when snack was done.