Music: "P is for Promise"

Visit the Fireflies' Gallery to hear "P is for Promise".

                                 Composed by Jenna Paulette for Fireflies Blog

                            © RED RIVER RANCH ENTERTAINMENT

Recipes: Rainbow Cupcakes

Celebrate this month's Fireflies theme: colors & rainbows, by making these rainbow cupcakes with your child!  


If you have a Pinterest account, follow our monthly boards where we share all the posts from Fireflies!  Here's the LINK.

INGREDIENTS:

3/4 cup self-rising flour 3/4 cup granulated sugar 3/4 cup unsalted butter, softened 2 eggs 1 1/2 tsp vanilla  3 tbs milk red, blue, green, and yellow food coloring

Start by pre-heating your oven to 395 degrees.

DIRECTIONS

In a large mixing bowl, use whisk to beat sugar into butter until creamy and fluffy. The mixture should be light in color.

Slowly stir in eggs and flour, making sure each is thouroughly stirred in. Mix in vanilla.

Stir in milk 1 tablespoon at a time, stirring thoroughly after each tablespoon is added.

Divide mixture evenly into each of the smaller bowls.

Add food coloring and mix well until evenly distributed.
Bowl 1- RED - 8 drops red
Bowl 2- ORANGE - 8 drops yellow, 4 drops red
Bowl 3- YELLOW - 8 drops yellow
Bowl 4- GREEN - 8 drops green
Bowl 5- BLUE - 8 drops blue
Bowl 6- PURPLE - 8 drops blue, 4 drops red


Line muffin pan with muffin cups. Starting with purple, spoon batter evenly into each of the muffin cups, spreadng slightly. Continue, layering, with blue, then green, then yellow, then orange, then red. 

Bake for 20 minutes at 395 degrees.
Makes 12 regular-sized cupcakes.

From Spark Recipes  by Maggiethespy

CLIP Review: Planting a Rainbow

Author & Illustrator:  Lois Ehlert

Ages:  3 - 5 years

Young children will be enthralled with the bold, brilliant colors in this interesting book about how bulbs and seeds sprout and grow. Beginning readers can easily follow the large print on each  page. The simple illustrations show the stages of growth from taking root underground to fully blooming.


Flowers and plants every color of the rainbow are displayed on their correct rainbow color page.  The next time your child sees an actual rainbow, they'll be naming flowers that coincide with each color! This is a lovely book for young children learning about gardens and colors.

See examples of illustrated pages and video below.

Video of Planting a Rainbow by Lois Ehlert

Music: I Can Sing a Rainbow

Theme: Rainbows
Here's a song you might remember from your childhood.

I Can Sing a Rainbow

written by Arthur Hamilton

Red and yellow and pink and green

Orange and purple and blue 

I can sing a rainbow 

Sing a rainbow, sing a rainbow too

Listen with your eyes 

Listen with your eyes 

And sing everything you see 

You can sing a rainbow 

Sing a rainbow, sing along with me 

The sun is yellow, the grass is green 

Look how the sky is blue! 

We can sing a rainbow 

Sing a rainbow, surely you can too

Listen with your eyes

Listen with your eyes 

And sing everything you see 

You can sing a rainbow 

Sing a rainbow, sing along with me

CLICK HERE to listen to I Can Sing a Rainbow

PEN IN HAND: Create a Color Poem

Begin by reading aloud a poem from the book Hailstones and Halibut Bones by Mary O'Neill and illustrated by John Walner.  It is a collection of 13 poems, each about a different color.  It was first published in 1961 and then updated in 1989 with lovely new illustrations.  Each poem is titled, What is (color word)?  The following an excerpt from one of the poems:

What is Red?

  Red is a sunset

  Blazy and bright.

  Red is feeling brave

  With all your might.

  Red is a sunburn

  Spot on your nose.

  Sometimes red

  Is a red, red rose.

When introducing your child to this activity, remember that you are teaching them descriptive words, otherwise known as adjectives.  Depending on your child's experience with parts of speech, you may need to make a list of nouns and adjectives that describe your child's color word prior to creating a color poem.

(color) _________  is (adj. & noun) _________ and (adj. & noun) _________.

  

(color) _________ tastes like (adj. & noun) _________.

(color) _________ feels like (adj. & noun) _________.

   

It is (adj. & noun) _________, (adj. & noun) _________, and (adj. & noun) _________.

     

(color) _________ is (adjective) _________.

BLUE is...

Blue is a beautiful sky and a birthstone ring. 

Blue tastes like cotton candy.

Blue feels like the wet ocean.

It is soft breezes, scented flowers,
and bright stones.

Blue is refreshing.

____________________________________________

For a very young child, simply ask them to describe a color and display their sentence in the middle of a sheet of black construction paper.  They go through magazines to find examples of the color chosen and have your child glue torn pieces of the magazine pages around the descriptive sentence to create a color frame.

CLIP Review: Pantone COLORS

My desire for our color theme this month is to give young children experiences that encourage them to identify and appreciate the many, many hues of God's creation.   

Before I share this month's print communications idea, I want to share my new favorite book on color.  I have already purchased five of these books to give away as baby shower and birthday gifts.  The first one went to my newest grandson, Ryder Joel!

Pantone: COLORS, published by Abrams/Appleseed Books - March 2012, introduces children to 9 basic colors and 20 shades of each.  It features an illustration of a familiar image for pre-schoolers, such as a train, for example, on one page and an array of Pantone Matching System (PMS) colors in the same range (in the case of the train, blues) on the other. The names they use to describe each color shade is familier to children: Pretzel Brown, Grasshopper Green, Taxi Cab Yellow, and Pumpkin Orange “By experiencing each of the colors as an image, then as shades, children are introduced to the concept that one color name can mean many different things in a dynamic way that will thrill parents, educators, and designers.”

According to Abrams/Appleseed Publishing Director, Cecily Kaiser, “Pantone: COLORS is fast becoming an in-house favorite. It’s so visceral, bright and bold, and you just want to hold it and own it.”   


I totally agree!!  I'm crazy about this book.  A must for every home library.
                                                                                                           Deni Corbett

Coming in the next post - Print Comm: Writing Color Poems!

Color-blending Sun Catchers

Blending colors for preschoolers is a fascinating, almost magical activity.  Using songs, rhymes and jingles to help them remember basic ideas related to color adds to the fun! We use large hand movements and body motions in class to go along with our songs and rhymes.  Below is a fun rhyme to act out with your child and/or students while your blending project is drying if you wish, depending on your schedule and time allotted.  Repeated often, this cute little rhyme will solidify their knowledge of color blending and give them a firm foundation to build their color knowledge on in their budding artistic future!

Introducing color blending

Materials needed:

• Sheets of clear acetate or overhead plastic sheets
• Elmer's or other liquid glue
• food color or washable paint in red, yellow, and blue primary colors & white
• Q-tips
• scissors 
• hole punch 
• colorful string/ribbon

        For teachers: Sharpie/permanent marker to put their name on the sheet

1.  Take a piece of acetate or overhead plastic sheet, one for each child, and divide into fourths so each child has four rectangles.  Put two puddles of glue on three of the rectangles and three puddles on the final rectangle.

2.  Add a few drops of food color or washable paint in each of the three puddles of glue as follows: one rectangle will have yellow and blue, another yellow and red, the next yellow and blue. The fourth and final rectangle will have all three primaries: red, yellow, and blue.  

3.  Next add a drop of white to the bottom of each rectangle.


3.  Each rectangle will blend together to make a new color: purple orange, green!  Make sure the children have plenty of Q-tips.  Instruct the children to mix the colors in each of the three rectangles with the two colored puddles so they combine to make the secondary colors. Then they may add white to change the value of the color, or how light or dark the color is.  The white also helps them see color a little better on the transparency. Allow the children to experiment and swish the colors around to their heart's content. 

       

4. Demonstrate in the fourth rectangle that contains all four primaries, by pulling some of each color toward the center and swirling them together.  It's magic!  Now let them try on their own.  This is a quick activity and as soon as they have played with the colors, be sure to put them to dry.  

5.  Now they are ready to learn their rhyme/jingle!  It's so silly; make up movements to go with it and your Preschooler/Kindergartner will be laughing as they follow along:

Blue and red, when they are wed, 

give purple blooms for all instead.  

Red and yellow, funny fellow, 

we now have wiggly orange jello!  

Yellow and blue, what can we do?  

 green meadows sway for me and you! 

Mix them all and take a bow...

It's muddy brown! 

We're done for now! 

by Laura Bird Miller

6.  After the plastic has dried,  you may wish to cut out the outer design of the dried color puddles so it makes an interesting shape or simply leave in the rectangular shapes.  Punch a hole in the "top" and hang separately or punch a hole in the top and bottom and string together like a sun-catcher mobile;  use colorful string or ribbon and hang them in your window!   

Be sure to keep these visual masterpieces for our upcoming 

Fireflies Presents family night. (Information coming soon)

               

Attention all Fireflies Blog readers in the Orlando, FL area!

For summer art camp information go to:  

http://www.laurabirdmiller.com/art-in-the-park/

CLIP Reviews: Color Blending Books

You won't want to miss our second Fireflies' post later today.  Laura Bird Miller presents a visual communications experience for young children; introducing them to secondary colors.  This activity is based on concepts presented in the following CLIP book choices. 


White Rabbit's Color Book by Alan Baker

This is one of several concept books covering the topics; letters, colors, shapes and numbers written by Alan Baker.  In White Rabbit's Color Book, White Rabbit, shows how to create secondary colors by immersing herself into bowls of the primary colors: red, blue & yellow.  A sweet book written with humor, this book is sure to be a favorite.
                                                         2 - 4 years

Color Dance by Ann Jonas


I love Color Dance by Ann Jonas.  Why?
Because in its simplicity, it is full of movement and color.


As a concept book, it illustrates how various shades of secondary colors can be created by mixing the primary colors.  Emphasizing the color concepts, each color word is printed in the color it describes throughout the book while young dancers wave scarves in front of each other to produce new color blends.  

                                                           4 - 8 years

Mouse Paint by Ellen Stoll Walsh

Mouse Paint is the story about three white mice who happen to find one red, one blue, and one yellow jar of paint.   Ellen Stoll Walsh's illustrations are cut-paper collage.  They are simple and delightful and just write for the message of Mouse Paint.
                                                       up to 3 years

Books reviewed are available at your local bookstore or at Amazon.com.  

Click the links below to go to Amazon.com