Morning ring

• Call the children together using their special morning ring signal
• Sing good morning to the children (the children join in)
• Say a short prayer of gratitude
• Tell the children that, as it is Wednesday, the Wednesday helpers have a turn to tell news
• Ask the children what the weather is like today – decide together what the weather feels like
• If the sky is blue ask the children if they know what colour it is. If they don’t know, tell them. Show them the blue on your clothes. Ask the children to look for blue around the classroom
• Tell the children that today they are going to make blue necklaces for themselves
• The helpers go to the main art activity first. The other children go in groups to the other art activities

Art Activities

Main activity: Blue necklaces made using the paper you cut up

Making blue necklaces

What you need:

• About 5 pieces of paper painted blue with food colour and cut into little squares into
• Darning needles
• Wool
• About 20 washed, used plastic straws cut into 1/2cm lengths

Method:

• The children string on a piece of plastic straw and then a piece of paper, making a hole in the paper with the darning needles
• They continue until they have about 10 pieces of paper and 10 pieces of plastic straw on their string
• They (with the teacher’s help) tie the necklace around their necks

Other activities: Oil pastels, making collages, painting (the children can also paint their box constructions if they want to)

Music: percussion

• Call the children using their special music signal (claps or songs, etc.)
• Say, "Shh! Can you hear the musical instruments snoring? They are all asleep – but we are going to wake them up!" Put a musical instrument in front of each child
• Sit down with your own musical instrument. Say "Wake up the instruments, children!" The children pick them up
• Play the musical instruments while singing the songs and poem about colour you are teaching the children
• To end: say that all the children wearing yellow can clap their hands all the way to the toilet and to wash their hands for tea. Then blue, then brown and so on...

Outdoor play

Comment on the colours in your surroundings – talk to the children about colour. Encourage the children to do the interest/ discovery activity of mixing colours if you have set it up outside. Encourage children to look for insects and to think about whether they are camouflaged well in their surroundings.

Indoor play

Show the Wednesday helpers how to use your stacking sorters. If the children do not want to play with these toys, don’t force them to – just say "Maybe next time?" in a friendly way. Don’t forget to suggest to the children that they could play at the theme and nature tables.

Story time:

• Call the children using their special story time signal
• Tell the story below: "The unhelpful crow"
• Try to find stories about colour
• To end: Tell the children that when you touch their ears they can go to the toilet and to wash their hands for lunch

The unhelpful crow (This story comes from Australia – it is a traditional story told by the Aboriginal people.)

Once upon a time in the dreaming (the Australian people call the time a long time ago "in the dreaming") lived many different birds. They were of all shapes and sizes but none had any colour. They were all black!

A dove (who was also black) was flying along and saw below him some tasty seeds.

He flew down but as he landed he cut his poor foot on a sharp piece of rock. His foot did not get better – no, over the next days it swelled and swelled and got more and more painful. His friends, the other birds, gathered round and tried to comfort and help him. But he just got sicker and sicker and his foot swelled more and more.

Only one bird did not come to try to help and that was Crow. He went on pecking at worms and didn’t care about poor hurt, sick Dove. He didn’t come near Dove to try to comfort him or help him. 

Dove got so ill his friends though he would die. Suddenly Parrot thought of something. Parrot was also black all over!

He ran to where Dove lay on the ground and pecked Dove’s swollen foot. Out of Doves swollen foot came a river of colour. All the birds who were standing nearby got covered in the colour coming out of Dove’s foot. The colour came out for a long time. When it stopped coming out of Dove’s foot, Dove was no longer sick or in pain – but he was white.

Dove looked around. All his friends were covered in different colours. They were no longer just black – they were red and yellow and blue and green and orange and purple and pink! Parrot was the most colourful of all as he had been so close to all the colour. They were so happy! All except Crow who had been so far away. Crow was still as black as black can be!

Prepare for Thursday on Wednesday afternoon

1. Prepare and set out the art activities and make one green crocodile face (as explained below) to show the children tomorrow
2. Make sure you know what to do for all the rings
3. Wear something green on Thursday