Color Storytime

This week I was able to lead a storytime all about the colors of the rainbow. Here are the books that we read:

A Color of His Own by Leo Lionni
While elephants are gray and pigs are pink, the chameleon does not have a color of his own. Instead, chameleons change color to match whatever it is they are resting on. One little chameleon desperately tries to have a color of his own by standing on one leaf forever. This works for awhile, until autumn comes and the leaf changes color. Finally the chameleon meets another chameleon and realizes that it might be okay to change colors as long as he has a friend with him.

Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? by Bill Martin, Jr., illustrated by Eric Carle
A group of children look at a series of different animals, all of which are different colors. This story - a real classic - is rhythmic and repetitive and great for storytime. I like to try to get the kids to make some of the animal noises as we read along.

Mouse Paint by Ellen Stoll Walsh
Three white mice, hiding from the cat on some white paper, discover three jars of paint. The mice have some fun with the red, yellow, and blue paint and soon discover that they can make new colors by mixing two colors together.

During storytime we also played a game where the children looked at their clothes and picked out what colors they are wearing. The activity is based on a song ("If Your Clothes Have Any Red"), but I personally don't like to use the song. Instead we just look for colors in our clothing without the song's assistance. If the kids really need to get some wiggles out (likely), I'll add some actions for fun. For example, I might say, "If you are wearing blue, then jump up and down!" Using a more organic, free-form activity instead of the song means that we can have more of a conversation about colors. I'm also not restricted by the colors used in the song, giving me the freedom to point out colors like pink or orange.

Another song / flannelboard / prop story that we did was "Rainbow in a Pot". This is one of my favorite storytime activities!

Rainbow in a Pot

Take some cherries, put them in the pot
Stir it, stir it, stir it a lot.
Pour it out now what will it be?
The prettiest red you ever did see.

Take an orange...
Take a lemon…
Take a lime…
Take some berries…
Take some grapes…

Red and orange, yellow and green,
Blue and purple, colors are seen.
Put them together, what will they be?
The prettiest rainbow you ever did see!

I used a large pot (actually, a plastic cauldron from Halloween) as a prop in front of me, and asked the kids to imagine that they had their own magic pots as we sang the song. As we sang, I would hold up colorful pictures of the fruit in question, printed off of the Internet. I would put the picture in the pot and ask the kids to help me stir. I would then pull out a strip of paper with the appropriate color and stick it up on our board for everyone to see. By the end of the song, we have a beautiful rainbow!


For a craft project, we made colorful paper chains. Each child was given a series of 2x11 inch strips of paper in all of the colors of the rainbow. I put out glue sticks and had the kids and their parents construct their own chains. One could debate the merits of glue versus tape or a stapler for the purposes of this project, but in my opinion the glue sticks work just fine.