This week was all about the color GREEN! It was a week full of frogs, slime, dinosaurs, and leaf hunts! Green is already becoming H’s favorite color. Most of the week he was shouting, “Green! Green! Green!” It makes sense why he loves this color so much. Most of his favorite things revolve around this color: gardening, trash trucks, and dinosaurs just to name a few!
Week 4: The Color Green
This is what our week of green looked like:
Green Books of the Week
Froggy Learns to Swim by Jonathan London
This book is part of a series of many other books about Froggy. We did a lot of crafts around frogs, so this was a great book to pair with those crafts. This particular Froggy book is also perfect if you have a little one learning how to swim! The book shows how Froggy overcomes his fear and learns how to swim with the help from his mom. The Froggy books tend to be a bit wordier, but my almost 2-year old really enjoyed the entire story. It can easily be shortened by just focusing on the illustrations.
Green Wilma by Tedd Arnold
This was another childhood favorite of mine and the perfect book for green week! This is another book about a frog, so it works well paired with frog activities. The illustrations are fun and the storyline is compelling with a plot twist towards the end. After just one read, H was hooked and kept saying “Wilma!”
Arnold also has a book called Huggly’s Pizza, which H thoroughly enjoyed as well. Huggly is a green monster that lives in a slime pit. This is another book that works well with green week. It is actually quite a long story, but H loved it and kept asking for it again and again.
Other Book Ideas:
- Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss (perfect to read and then make green eggs)
- The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle (green caterpillar)
- Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown (“in the great green room”)
Green Sensory Bin
For this week’s color bin, we had LOTS of things that were green.
This week’s bin consisted of: green train tracks, big lego blocks, popsicle sticks, feathers, pipe cleaners, shapes, grandpa shark puzzle piece, plate, toy peas, palm tree Duplo Lego pieces, foam blocks, balls, Percey trains, and a few other random green things.
Since we had SO many green legos, we spent some time early in our week building tall green towers!
Monday: Plant Something Green
With this past Monday being a holiday, Memorial Day, we did not do many planned activities, but we did plant some basil! This past week was National Children’s Gardening week, so it was a perfect way to celebrate the week. H helped me shovel dirt in the pot, which he of course loved. I gave him a straw to poke holes in the dirt and showed him how to carefully place the seeds in.
We talked about how the tiny seeds are going to grow into green basil for us to eat. I then let him use his watering can to water the freshly planted seeds. Be sure to only fill up the watering can with however much water you would like the plant to have. H over watered it a tad!
Tuesday: Jumping Frog Origami Craft
As I spent a lot of time with my grandma who was Japanese, I grew up really enjoying origami. This jumping frog origami from Red Ted Art is really simple to fold and great for young kids. While the folds are still too hard for H, he enjoyed watching me make the folds and explaining to him what I was doing. To get him more involved with the process, I let him color with a green marker on the frog’s back. I also let him help me glue the googley eyes on.
Hudson loved playing with the final product! He loved watching it jump around. Even hours after we made these jumping frogs, he went back to play with them some more. That is always a sign of a good craft!
This activity could easily be extended into a more active activity. We didn’t have time for this, but after making these jumping frogs, you could play a “Jumping Lily Pad” game. You could either cut out lily pads with green construction paper or draw them on the sidewalk with green chalk. This could be a great way to teach numbers too. You could number each lily pad and call out a number for them to jump on to!
Wednesday: Green Slime + Dinosaurs
We made green slime THREE TIMES this week, and if I am honest, even the final batch did not turn out great. Next slime recipe I think I am going to try with Borax. This is the recipe I used and even after pouring in way more water and contact solution, it was way too sticky. So if anyone has the perfect slime recipe, let me know! I also was hoping to make it glittery by adding green sparkles. The sparkles would probably have showed up better with clear Elmer’s glue.
It was still a fun process to make with H! We threw in some of his miniature dinosaurs into the slime, which he seemed to really like. It was fun for him to pull out the dinosaurs and see the elasticity of the slime. Since our slime was SO sticky, I threw it all in a bag, which made for good mess-free sensory play.
Thursday Morning: Build-A-Dino Play-dough Tray
This play-dough tray was a hit! It was a super simple set-up with minimal materials. For the homemade playdough, I used Must Have Mom’s green jello play-dough recipe. It was a great recipe, but definitely needed a fair amount of flour to be added towards the end because it was still pretty sticky. Using Jello or Kool-Aid mixes in playdough recipes is a great way to add color + smell!
For the tray, I used a cracker and cheese platter. I put out some googley eyes, cut up pipe cleaners, some feathers, a roller, and a few other playdough tools. So simple and something that H keeps coming back to!
Thursday Afternoon: Toilet Paper Roll Frog Craft
Last week’s bee toilet paper roll craft was such a hit that we did another one this week! I had more time, so I was able to set-up this craft before he woke up and that made a big difference. Right when he woke up, he was able to start creating! It made it easier for the both of us.
Materials:
- Toilet paper roll
- Green paint
- Paint brush
- 2 big googley eyes
- Green construction paper cut into a circle (frog’s head) and two legs
- Cut piece of red pipe cleaner (curl with finger to make it look like aa tongue)
- Green glitter glue (optional, but a fun way for little one to decorate the frog)
Invite your little one to paint toilet paper roll green. H was not super interested in this part, so he mostly watched it be put together. Towards the end, he loved squeezing green glitter glue all over the toilet paper roll. This addition made the final product look really fun and sparkley.
This is the perfect craft to chase your little one around with. You can make frog noises, “ribbit, ribbit!” and practice hopping like a frog together. We even named our frog Wilma and then read the book I mentioned above, Green Wilma.
Friday: Herb Watercolor Painting + Leaf Tracing
Herb watercolor painting was a simple activity that turned out really beautiful and even smelled like rosemary!
Materials:
- Rosemary or other herbs
- White paper
- Watercolors (we mostly just used the different shades of green)
- Cup of water
Simply, dip rosemary into water and then watercolor, and stamp it all over the paper. The rosemary made a really interesting pattern that a typical paintbrush cannot.
For the leaf tracing, we first went on a leaf hunt right outside our front door. I gave H a set of binoculars and a basket to collect the leaves. Since he is so into gardening, he really enjoyed finding and pulling leaves off bushes and trees in our front yard.
Materials:
- Leaves
- White Paper
- Green crayons
- Green glitter glue (optional)
For the leaf tracing, simply place the leaves under the white paper and color with crayon on the paper. The shape and lines of the leaf will appear. It looked really pretty to use different shades of green.
Like most crafts, H’s favorite part was squeezing glitter glue everywhere. If you have a child that like mine that is not super into crafts, finding the one element they do enjoy is a great way to get them more involved. For H that is squeezing glue everywhere!
Saturday: Green Collage Activity
At the end of each color week we make a collage with items of that particular color. Once we finish this color unit, I will bind each collage into a book for H to flip through.
For this collage we used the following green materials: feathers, popsicle sticks, crayons, pipe cleaners, foam shapes.
Like I say every week, at this stage, the collage is very much a team effort. H needs help with gluing, but he likes to point where he would like the item to be placed.
Green week was a lot of fun! Now, on to the color blue! I will have a full week of blue-inspired activities next week!
This Mama Needs Grace 
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