Category Archives: Color Knowledge

Go, Go, Grapes!

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Go Go Grapes by April Pulley SayreHip, hip, hooray for April Pulley Sayre and Go, Go, Grapes! A Fruit Chant! How do you make healthy eating fun? With Sayre’s vibrant photos of fruits taken at her local farmer’s market paired with her contagious rhymes:
“Nectarines, tangerines,
hit the spot.
Glum? Go plum.
Or apricot!”

Start your lesson by asking students, “What do you think a mangosteen is? Or a pomegranate?” Read Go, Go Grapes! and see if your kids can discover what those uncommon words mean. Reread the book and encourage kids to chime in (“Fruit is fun!”) Next, play “Cross the Line”: have all the kids stand on one side of the classroom and imagine an invisible line down the middle of the room – or put down tape if your maintenance team won’t go bananas. Say “Cross the line if you’ve tried kiwi,” and go through the fruits listed in the book. If you have time and funds, bring in some fruits for kids to try! (Check for fruit allergies first – some kids are allergic to certain berries.) Take photos of the fruits and have kids use those Logic Smarts to sort the photos – by color, or by which they liked and which they didn’t. With all the gorgeous colors of fresh produce, you can make a “color wheel” using fruits –  challenge kids to eat a rainbow! Go, Go, Grapes, hooray for healthy eating, and super job, Ms. Sayre!

For more information, visit aprilsayre.com.

Rah, Rah, Radishes!

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Three cheers for April Pulley Sayre and Rah, Rah, Radishes! A Vegetable Chant! How do you make healthy eating fun? With Sayre’s vibrant photos of vegetables taken at her local farmer’s market paired with her contagious rhymes:
“Oh boy, bok choy!
Brussels sprout.
Broccoli. Cauliflower.
Shout it out!”

Start your lesson by asking students, “What do you think kohlrabi is? How about fennel? Rutabaga?” Read Rah, Rah, Radishes! and see if your kids can discover what those uncommon words mean. Encourage kids to chime in as you reread (“Go, green bean!”) Play “Cross the Line”: all the kids stand one one side of the classroom and imagine an invisible line down the middle of the room – or put down tape if your maintenance team won’t go nuts. Say “Cross the line if you’ve tried broccoli,”  asparagus, the vegetables listed in the book. Have kids brainstorm vegetables that didn’t make the book. Is a tomato a vegetable? Find out in the back of Sayre’s book! If you have time and funds, bring in some vegetables for kids to try! Take photos of the vegetables and have kids use those Logic Smarts to sort the photos – by color, by part of plant (root, stem, leaf, or fruit), by which they liked and which they didn’t. With all the gorgeous colors of fresh produce, you can make a “color wheel” using vegetables –  challenge kids to eat a rainbow! Rah, Rah, Radishes, hooray healthy eating, and super job, Ms. Sayre!

For more information, visit aprilsayre.com.

Shades of People

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Peach, coffee, cocoa, copper, tan, ivory, rose, almond. So many Shades of People in this gorgeous book by Shelley Rotner and Sheila M. Kelly! I can think of no better book to read to little ones in celebration of Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. I’ve tried reading his biography in the past to kindergartners, only to have it go over many heads. This year, I’ll share Dr. King’s message of peace and acceptance with Rotner and Kelly’s spot-on writing and exquisite photographs, followed up with a fun art activity.

“Have you noticed that people come in many different shades? Not colors, exactly, but shades.” Rotner and Kelly open the door to discuss skin colors in the most lovely of ways, with photographs of smiling children. Children with golden skin, with freckles, with lusciously dark skin, with rosy pink cheeks. “Our skin is just our covering, like wrapping paper. And, you can’t tell what someone is like from the color of their skin.”

So before you read this book, wrap it up in paper so the cover can’t be seen. Hold it up for your kids to guess what the book is about. Can’t tell what’s inside just by looking at the wrapping? Just like a present! And, just like a person! Read Shades of People with your kids and talk about the descriptive adjectives. How would you describe your skin? I’m sort of peachy-ivory – how about you? After you’ve read and enjoyed the book, get out the paint and let kids paint pictures of themselves. Let them experiment with mixing colors to match their skin tones. Even if you only have the basic primaries, it’s a good science and art experiment to add a bit of red and yellow and even blue to white and black and brown. Celebrate all the colors in your classroom!

For more information, visit shelleyrotner.com.

I’m a Turkey!

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When I was little, I had a book with a 45 rpm record (yep, I’m that old) that I loved. It was “A Lot of Hot Water” read by Gordon from Sesame Street. Audio recordings of books have gone through a media transition or two, but it’s still a thrill to hear a good story read aloud by a talented reader. Jim Arnosky has a free downloadable MP3 version of his song “I’m a Turkey“, and my preschoolers this week gobbled it up. Arnosky’s folksy singing style is just right to get little listeners talkin’ turkey with him. The large art and short text in this book make it a fast, easy storytime choice. I’m going to share more books with cds or MP3 versions with my students. I’m sure they enjoy listening to another voice besides mine!

After sharing I’m a Turkey, we stretched by doing the Turkey Jerky. It’s like the Hokey Pokey, except you put your right wing in, your left wing, your tail feathers , etc. After announcing “that’s what it’s all about!”, we gobbled twice instead of clapping.

Next, I gave each student a feather from the craft store. I showed them this turkey decoration (the kind that folds flat to store but unfurls into a kind of fan for show) and we said this rhyme:
There was a little turkey who had lost his tail.
When he saw it was gone, he began to wail.
“Oh woe is me! Please tell me whether
You have found my red tail feather!”
Whoever had a red feather could stick the feather in one of the holes on the turkey. We repeated the rhyme and changed it until all the colors of the feathers were used. It took me less prep time to use the turkey decoration and feathers we already had than to make the bulletin board out of construction paper like I’d originally planned, and the students loved sticking in the real feathers. Having two easy, inexpensive activities to go with a book sung by a fun artist made me very thankful indeed!

For more information, visit jimarnosky.com.

“Press Here” for fun!

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My dear friend’s daughter, Nora, turned one this month, and as a librarian, writer, and ardent-bordering-on-obsessive fan of children’s literature, I felt it my duty to include a book in her birthday bag o’ swag. Which book to choose? Press Here by Herve Tullet. Deceptively simple, it consists of dots and directions on what to do with them. Press the yellow dot and turn the page. Now there are two dots. Press the yellow dot again, and on the next page, now there are three dots. Tilt the book to the left, and on the next page, the dots seem to have slid to the left edge. Clap your hands to make the dots big, bigger, bigger. It is what electronic books wish they could be: it is interactive, delightful,  and requires no batteries.

Considering that I had to pry Press Here from the hands of my 12- and 10-year-old children to put it in Nora’s gift bag, I can honestly say it’s not just for the littlest ones. My kids are no strangers to electronic games and they logically understand the way paper books work, but both of them followed all the instructions on the pages, like shaking the book to make the dots “move”.  For toddlers, this book is magical. For kids who are building their reading skills, the simple text is engaging enough to read again, again, again. Press Here and see what happens!