Storytime ABC's: March 2014

Saturday, March 1, 2014

Leprechaun Fun with Colors!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

(It is one of my favorite holidays to share with my little ones!)

Let's celebrate a little "Wearin' of the Green" together!

In the past, St. Patrick's Day has been a tough storytime to plan for our littlest storytime friends. Most books about St. Paddy's Day and Leprechauns are long and wordy and difficult to share in a large group. But a few years ago, I decided to focus more on the idea of shamrocks and rainbows.

Then ~ quite by accident ~ everything else started falling into place...

My favorite St. Patrick's Day program is our puppet show featuring:

Shaun the Leprechaun

He is a tricky little guy
but he does teach us how to be a Leprechaun

Today, I want to share our Leprechaun Fun!

The children loved it!

As mentioned before, I enjoy making new versions of "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?"

Here is my Irish version:

Leprechaun, Leprechaun, What Do You See?

Isn't he a friendly wee guy?

The first thing our leprechaun sees is a BLACK hat.

For the story, I place the hat upside down so that the
other items appear to be coming out of it.

Our first item "flying" out of the hat is a RED ladybug.
(She has a happy face but it is hard to see ~ dang that photographer! LOL)

Here's our ORANGE sun...

A YELLOW star...

A GREEN leaf...

A BLUE bird...

A PURPLE butterfly...

By this point, someone usually yells,
"It's a RAINBOW!
If no one does, then I would ask what we made
while making the ASL sign for rainbow.

Then I continue the story with:

"Purple butterfly, Purple butterfly, what do you see?

I see lots of children looking at me.

Children, Children, what do you see?

We see:

a RED bird,

an ORANGE sun,

a YELLOW star,

a GREEN leaf,

a BLUE bird,

a PURPLE butterfly

Up above us ~ flying across the sky!

We see a RAINBOW!

And what does a Leprechaun hide at the end of a RAINBOW?

His Pot of GOLD!"

Here's our wee Leprechaun's pot of GOLD!

At the end of the story, our board looks like this:

I forgot to mention that my story this week was made for the Magnetic Board rather than the Flannel Board. You could easily adapt it for the Flannel Board by adding felt to the back of the items rather than a piece of magnetic stripping or by cutting your own items from felt.

The pieces were made by my "cut paper technique" ~ which is essentially layering different colors of construction paper ~ to add fun details. These are quick and fun items to make.

Following our storytime, we usually make our own black hat so that our friends can pretend to be Leprechauns at home.