Green Wrap-up

Well, we have finished our second Color Week.  Here's how we started it, with our color basket.  We played with colored rice, with colored water, and with stickers (see our sensory activities here).  We read several books.  We wore green shirts and talked about green things in nature.

Also this week, we watched a couple of green-themed videos on YouTube.  (They're my secret weapon for getting her hair done.)

First, Tee-Hee Town's Green song.  She wasn't sure about this one at first, but as the week passed, she came to like it more and more.

Naturally, one can't talk about green without thinking about Kermit the Frog!

And we found a funny parody of "It's Not Easy Being Green" sung by Oscar the Grouch.  It was awesome:

Do you have any other GREEN videos we should check out?  Can you think of any other amazing ways to celebrate GREEN?

Green Books

This week we requested and read several books about Green and Green things from the public library and our home library.  We read:

Green, by Laura Vaccaro Seeger

"Green" talks about things that are... green.Various types of green.  There were die cuts in the book but they weren't really noticeable (mostly because everything was green).  Toddler was not impressed.

Green Eggs and Ham, by Dr. Seuss

Classic.  It took her a page or two to get into it, but then Jo started to try to "read" along with the rhymes and repeating phrases.

The Little Green Witch, by Barbara Barbieri McGrath

Cute version of the little red hen story.  Would be cute to read again around Hallowe'en.  I don't think toddler really "gets" this story yet.  We'll try it again during our Red week with a typical little red hen story.  I did like how this one ends, though. ;-)

Green Wilma, Frog in Space

Story of a green frog just trying to catch a fly when all the sudden it is scooped up into a space ship and the little alien that belongs in the space ship gets left behind.

Meet Mr. and Mrs. Green, by Keith Baker

Two crocodiles? alligators? and their adventures together going camping, eating pancakes, and going to the fair.  It's three stories in one and we broke it up rather than read the whole thing through.

The Green Bath, by Margaret Mahy

I read through this one prior to introducing it to my toddler.  It's about a boy who is disappointed when his friends get to go to the beach and he has to take a bath, but then he ends up at the beach and all over the world having adventures in a green bathtub.  I got through about a page and a half with my two-and-a-half.  Older kids might enjoy this one more.

Grandpa Green

This story takes you through a topiary garden in which a man has sculpted plants to tell his life story.  My toddler liked looking at the pictures in this one.

Green as a Bean, Karla Kuskin

This was not an exclusively green book, but had you think about "if you were green, what would you be?" "If you were square?" "If you were bright?" It was a creative book and toddler enjoyed hearing it.  I would like to revisit this one in a year or two and do some creative activities and play around some of the ideas it talks about.

Go Away, Big Green Monster!, by Ed Emberly

This is a great book for a green unit! ... if you get a full book, that is.  We heard this book at a story time at Hallowe'en last year and I thought it would be great for our green week. Unfortunately, the book we received through inter-library loan was missing at least half of it's pages, which really ruins the book because of the die cuts -- the purple hair wasn't purple, and we never ever saw the big green monster.  It was very disappointing, because my toddler was really excited for this one just based on the cover.  So, if you can get a copy with all the pages, I highly recommend it.  (There's also Nighty Night, Little Green Monster by the same author, same die cut concept, also very cute and would be perfect also.)

Did we miss any great books about the color green?

Green Sensory Activities

1. Colored rice in the sensory bin
The night before our Green Week, I dyed some rice.  We're working on the concept of keeping the rice IN the bucket.  She enjoyed using her scoop and the shapes from her shape sorter.  Another time that we played, we used her measuring cups and spoons, which she thought was a lot of fun.

2.  Frog themed water play
No pictures of this one - I set it up just as my knitting student was coming over.  It was a big, flat container with green colored water, green water beads, and the frogs and turtles from her bath toys.  She also used her measuring cups and spoons to scoop and pour water.  Jo played and splashed while I taught my lesson.  I put down a towel but she easily over-splashed.  Later when we played, I put down several towels.  Jo discovered that sitting on a package of paper towels was the perfect height so that she could dip her feet and splash in the water.

3.  Stickers
Jo worked on this one over the course of the week.  I pulled out a bunch of stickers from my stash and put them and a green sheet of paper on a cookie sheet.  Jo would peel the stickers off their paper and stick them to the green paper.  We talked about the different things she was sticking that were green.

What else would/did you do with the color green?

Color of the Week 2: Green

Week two of our Colorful Summer!  Our color of the week is GREEN.  We started out our "school" day on a green blanket and sang a few of our favorite songs (this week included several verses of the Wheels on the Bus) and then we pulled out the basket.  Jo was all set for "Yellow Things!" and was surprised to see that the contents of the basket had changed to green.  (I filled it the night before with toys and other things from around the house.)

Our basket contained the following things:

• balls of various sizes and compositions
• frogs and turtles and other bath toys
• Duplos
• Little Pig #2 and his house
• hair clip
• bead necklaces
• scarf
• chip clip
• measuring cups and spoons
• cube
• wind chimes
• plate, cup, saucer, fork, knife, and spoon from her play dishes
• shapes from her shape sorter
• scoop from her sand toys
• crayon
• letters from her LeapFrog Fridge Phonics
• plastic bugs
• play phone

Overall, counting each object as one, there were 75ish objects in the basket.  She enjoyed wearing her scarf, building with the Duplos and counting various objects.  We pulled objects from the basket several times over the week for other activities (look for another post!) and she returned to look through the basket several times.

Stay tuned for more about our Green Week!  What would you put in your green basket?

Yellow Wrap-up

We have enjoyed our first Color Week. In case you missed a post, here's how it started. We played with colored rice, in the pool, with lemon cloud dough, and with stickers (see our sensory activities here). We read several books. We ate bananas, wore yellow clothes, and looked for yellow cars.

Also this week, we watched a few yellow-themed videos on YouTube.  I like to put them on while I fix her hair because she stands relatively still and will look in the direction of the screen if I need her to face this way or that way. We watched "Color Y-E-L-L-O-W yellow song", recommended by Play-Create-Explore.  It wasn't long before we were singing along.

Being big Sesame Street and Muppet fans, we watched "Yellow Submarine," which she thought was fun.

Finally, her favorite yellow video was "Color Songs for Kids - Yellow Color"  (I get a little bugged by the fact that the puppet starts out with a character voice but doesn't sing with one, but that's just me.  Other than that, it's fine.)  It has a great beat and my toddler loves to dance to it.

Do you have any other YELLOW videos that we should check out? Can you think of any other amazing ways to celebrate YELLOW?

Yellow Books

As part of our Yellow Week, we read several books with the color yellow as a focus or with yellow ducks, as that was one of the popular things in her yellow basket.  As I kind of decided to do a Color of the Week program on Sunday and start it on Monday, I didn't have as much time to request books from the library, so I also started requesting Green books at the same time.  I'm a week or so ahead in terms of requests and am compiling a list of color related books so that I can request them as we approach that color.

Yellow Ball, by Molly Bang

Toddler liked this one.  It has only one word or short phrase per page, so it's super fast, but she liked pointing out the yellow ball in each scene and talking about what happened to the ball.  This was probably her favorite of the set.

The Girl on the Yellow Giraffe, by Ronald Himler

This was a cute idea - it follows the journey of a little girl who rides on a yellow giraffe scooting toy but instead of the everyday world we see, she interprets things as a magical.  2.5 year old wasn't very impressed though.  Maybe for a 3yo?

Guess Who, Baby Duck, by Amy Hest

Toddler liked identifying the baby duck in each of the pictures and discussing what she was doing.  Not much plot, but it was ok.

Quick Duck, by Mary Murphy

Another quick story.  This is a good one for prepositions, which is something my 2.5 yo is working on acquiring.

Dimity Duck, by Jane Yolen

Toddler and I both enjoyed the illustrations in this book.  I read the book to her and then she read it to me.  (Her version mostly consisted of "Little duck in the water." Turn page.  "Little duck in the water."  Turn page.)  Much more wordy than the others, but a very cute story.

We also requested "Little Yellow Pear Tomatoes," "10 Little Rubber Ducks," "One Little Duck," and "Henry and Pawl and the Round Yellow Ball" from our library circuit, but they didn't arrive before our yellow week was over.

Did we miss any good ones? Share your YELLOW book suggestions with us!

Yellow Sensory Activities

We had a lot of fun during our Yellow Week!  Here are some of the things we did:

1. Colored rice in the sensory bin

The night before our Yellow Week began, I dyed some rice (I use Learn-Play-Imagine's method and let it sit overnight).  She enjoyed scooping with with a shovel from her sand toys and a cup and teapot from her play dishes.  I also would hide small things (giant paperclips, big buttons, plastic bugs, etc.) under the rice for her to find.  Later in the week, she used her Duplos in the rice bin.

2.  Yellow things in the kiddie pool

We pulled out our little kiddie pool this week. It's just the right size for one little kid.  We put it in the shade and she just splashed in her clothes so that I didn't have to put sunscreen on her.  She played with her ducks and her balls and her scoop from her sand toys in the water.  (We also blew bubbles because that's one of her all time favorites.  Those didn't have anything to do with the color yellow, though.)

3. Yellow cloud dough

We used the Lemon Cloud Dough recipe on Paging Fun Mums.  I made the mistake of using "baby" scented lotion -- it was sitting unused in my cupboard and I figured, "why not?"  I'll tell you why not: the scent was almost overpowering and no amount of lemon juice could make it lemon scented instead of fake-o baby scented.  Toddler didn't care, though. She made sure Dolly got to play, too.  We played with this with all our cookie cutters, not just the yellow ones.  She asked for me to form various shapes and letters.

4.  Stickers

We also stuck yellow stickers to yellow paper.  I took some time this week while Jo was playing at the park with her daddy to prepare stickers for the other colors.  I have TONS of stickers (thank you, dollar stores...) and I peeled off the background sticker part and cut them into individual stickers and pre-sorted them by colors.  It would be a better use of her color identifying skills to have her find the yellow stickers herself, but she would also be more likely to wander off with a full sticker sheet and stick all colors of smiley faces to my piano bench.  (I know this because we tried that approach.)  Instead, I put the colored sheet of paper and the individual yellow stickers on a cookie sheet and she sat and peeled and stuck.

What else would/did you do with the color YELLOW?

Color of the Week 1: Yellow

Week one of our colorful summer has just finished and our first color is YELLOW!

After breakfast and our usual morning routine (which included a yellow cup and plate at breakfast and a yellow shirt), we put a blanket (yellow) on the floor and sat down together. We sang a couple of songs and did a couple of finger plays (her current favorite is "Open, Shut Them"). Then I told her that I had something fun planned for us and pulled out my picnic basket. The night before, I went through her toys and other things in the house and pulled out everything yellow and put them in the basket. She was very excited to see what was inside! When she opened it, she first encountered this piece of paper:

(Little girl holding a yellow piece of paper with the sentence "Our color of the week is Yellow" written on it.)

She wasn't too interested in the paper, but I read the words to her and then we placed it out of the way. She loved seeing some of her familiar toys in the basket. As she pulled items out, we would talk about what they are and that they are yellow.

Picnic Basket full of things that are the color yellow

Here's what was in our yellow basket:

• Little Pig #1 and his house
• a little teapot and a plate, cup, saucer, fork, knife, and spoon from her play dishes
• cookie cutters
• a scoop from her sand toys
• Duplo blocks
• ducks and other bath toys
• bananas from her play food
• balls of various sizes and compositions
• shape sorter pieces
• letters from her LeapFrog Fridge Phonics
• plastic bugs
• big buttons
• giant paper clips
• a hair clip
• a chip clip
• a crayon
• a lion
• a giraffe
• an Easter chick
• a fuzzy bee
• a star bracelet
• a star shaped balloon weight

Overall, there were 75 items in the basket (counting each Duplo as one, etc.)

She built a tower with the Duplos and had a great time cramming the ducks into the teapot (and having me get them out so she could do it again and again).  Over the course of the week, we pulled things out of this basket to use in our various activities (look for another post!) and she returned to the basket to look through it several times.  By the end of the week, she was asking to play with her "yellow things!"

Stay tuned for more about our Yellow Week!  What would you put in your yellow basket?

Color Weeks

Well, it's early June. The traditional school year is coming to a close for most students, but for us, a new learning journey is just beginning. Jo will officially have her half birthday later this month and I've been looking for ways to structure her day and add more types of learning opportunities. I started a new Pintrest board a couple of weeks ago that I dubbed "Sensory Summer" and I filled it with a bunch of hands-on activities and variations that we either haven't tried yet or enjoyed and would like to do again. As I was filling that board, I came across Play Create Explore's color of the week series and loved the idea, so I've decided to take it on. In fact, I discovered it Sunday night and had us started Monday morning! Jo knows some of her colors, especially yellow, blue, and pink. She calls red "pink," orange "yellow," and green and purple "blue," which makes sense. (It's amazing that we learn the color divisions used by our culture at such an early age, as they are rather arbitrary and subjective. Brains are cool.) I thought that doing a "color of the week" would be an excellent way to give her more opportunities to look at, talk about, and think about colors.

We are following the progression of colors set up on Play Create Explore (why reinvent the wheel?) as I like that Jessie includes black, grey/gray, brown, and white in her colors but has them dispersed through the other colors (that way you don't do all the bright colors first and get sick with the non-vibrant ones at the end. Each week I'll share how we introduced the color, our different sensory activities, and the books we read relating to that color, plus any other resources for that color that we used.

Have you done a color of the week series with your children? What was your favorite part? What would you change?