Storytime From the Liberry: The Color Brown

My favorite storytimes are the ones about colors. But instead of doing one a year about all the colors, I've decided to focus on one color for a story time, which will give me a chance to talk about a variety of things that fall under one basic theme.

For this storytime, we will focused on the often overlooked and unloved color brown. Things we featured in this story time beside the color were construction, mud, teddy bears, cows, and boxes (to name a few) I opened the story time with the discussion of what things can we think of that are brown and got some great answers like dogs, chocolate, dirt, cookies and shoes. Thankfully poop did not pop up as answer but I guess you could include a book about potty training if you are comfortable with that sort of thing. (Sorry, I will never do a potty training story time, not just that I find it gross but I don't trust myself to talk about it with a straight face!)

Books:

Brown Bear, Brown Bear What do You See? By Bill Martin Jr.
(A necessary evil, most people love this book but it bores me to tears. However it was very fitting)

Tip Tip Dig Dig by Emma Garcia

Moo Moo Brown Cow, Have you any Milk? By Phillis Gershator
A expansion on the rhyme Baa Baa Black Sheep. Can also be used for a storytime about farm animals and agriculture

Not a Box by Antoinette Portis

I think the best reaction I got when I asked what the main character was pretending to be now was a little box excitingly exclaiming "A Box Troll! A Box Troll!"






Activities and Songs:

Two Little Blackbirds with some additonal verses

Two Little Blackbirds sitting on a BED
One named BROWN, the other named RED

Two Little Blackbirds flying by a KITE
One named BLUE, the other named WHITE

Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear- There alot of different version of this song, most of them involving say your prayers which...yeah I rather not use in a public library. So I have a miss-match verison of my own.

Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear, turn around
Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear, touch the ground
Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear, dance on your toes
Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear, touch your noes
Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear, touch your head
Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear, go to bed
Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear, wake up now
Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear, take a bow

I also had a flannel rhyme Five Little Hedgehogs that just didn't get a big response as I hoped when I used it with my group. It got skipped over the next times. Pity, because my hedgehogs were really cute!

I also brought out Little Mouse Little Mouse, Are you in the Red House because the toddlers really love this game/chant! I'm planning to use it whenever I do a color storytime.