Storytime: Orange/Pumpkins

Age: 2-5 years
Time: 25 minutes + play and craft

I'm trying to have one ST a month about a specific color - October is great for orange! It ended up being mostly a pumpkin theme...

1) I use the same opening and closing songs each week. Click here to see what I do.

2) Autumn Orange - Christianne C. Jones

Big bright pictures, all describing orange things in the fall. This was the perfect book to open my orange-themed storytime!!

3) The Little Orange House

This is on Scholastic's site. When I asked the kids if they wanted to see inside the house, they were SO into it. I opened it up and watched their faces light up as they realized what I'd made. :) Even the parents liked it!

4) Pumpkins - Ken Robbins

This was a great one for showing the life cycle of a pumpkin, as it uses real photographs. I did paperclip a bit in this book, just the jack-o-lantern and Halloween stuff at the end. It felt like it was getting long, and we'll do more Halloween-themed books in a few weeks.

5) The Very Hungry Pumpkin

This idea came from someone at a recent youth services meeting for my co-op. Apparently there's a book out there called the Chocolate Chip Ghost, and this little flannel story is similar.

Once there was a little orange pumpkin who was VERY hungry. He ate a banana and turned... what color?...

Continue with other colors and foods like lettuce, strawberries, grapes. For the last one I said he was ready for dessert and ate a chocolate chip cookie! They had a good giggle about that one, then we brainstormed ideas of foods he could eat to become orange again.

6) Five Little Pumpkins flannel

I liked how Abby made this non-Halloween version!

Five little pumpkins, sitting on a gate
The first one says "Oh my it's getting late!"
The second one says "Brrr there's frost in the air!"
The third one says "Aww we don't care!"
The fourth one says "Let's run run run!"
The fifth one says "Are you ready for some fun?"
Then whooooo went the wind (kids helped me blow!) and out went the lights
And the five little pumpkins rolled out of sight!

7) Ring Around the Pumpkin
I didn't have a real pumpkin yet, so I put a blow-up jack-o-lantern on the floor and we sang a version of Ring Around the Rosie:

Ring around the pumpkin
Orange, big, and round
Pumpkin seeds, pumpkin seeds
We all fall down!


8) It's Pumpkin Day, Mouse! - Laura Numeroff

The kids had fun making the different faces along with the pumpkins in this little board book. I also read it in my baby storytime this week.

9) I use the same opening and closing songs each week. Click here to see what I do.

10) Playtime/Craft

I brought out the blocks and instruments again, as well as the fake leaves to throw around. For the table activity I put red and yellow paint in small ziploc baggies, which the kids squished until they turned orange (note: you need twice as much of yellow than you need of red!). Then the grownups used Sharpies to draw a jack-o-lantern face on the bag, kind of like our last book.

Other orange/pumpkin ideas:

Piggies in the Pumpkin Patch - Mary Peterson

An Orange in January - Dianna Hutts Aston (didn't fit in October...)

It's Pumpkin Time! - Zoe Hall

The Runaway Pumpkin - Kevin Lewis

Pipe cleaner/beads pumpkin craft (I almost used this, but wanted to really focus on the color orange this time instead of just pumpkins)