Hi, everyone, welcome to storytime.
I'm Christie Matheson, and I'm the author and illustrator of lots of books,
including my newest book, which is called The Hidden Rainbow.
And we're gonna read that one today.
I wish we could be reading it together in person,
because I need your help when we're doing this.
But the good news is, you can help from wherever you are.
If I need help brushing the snow off a tree, or tapping something,
or touching something, or doing anything, waving to some bees.
You'll see when we read the book, you can just do it on the ground in front of you,
or in the air in front of you wherever you are.
So let's get started.
This is The Hidden Rainbow.
This, as you open the book, is a little map of a garden,
it's a botanical garden and this is where our story takes place.
[MUSIC]
The Hidden Rainbow.
[MUSIC]
One little bee peeks out to see a world of gray and snow.
She's looking for bright colors and she needs you to help them grow.
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First, please brush the snow off the budding camellia trees.
Brush it off, you can help with that one.
Look, the flowers are red, and their nectar feeds two bees.
Can you find the bees?
Now, it's time to do something else,
let's tickle the very tops of the growing tulip leaves.
They're right over here.
[SOUND] Very soon the bees will find orange,
and can you see three bees?
Next, point to the crocus shoots, can you point to them?
Just beginning to sprout.
[MUSIC]
Four bees are eating pollen now that yellow has come out.
Now, it's time to search for a special four-leaf clover.
Can you find a four-leaf clover?
Let me show you where it is.
Right there.
[MUSIC]
What luck!
A field of green with five bees zooming over.
Can you find all five bees?
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Please wave the bees back to their hives, clouds are gathering for a shower.
[MUSIC]
The bees don't like the rain, but it's important for the flowers.
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Blow the forget-me-not buds dry, [SOUND] as the rain clears from the sky.
[MUSIC]
The sun is shining, blue is blooming and six bees are buzzing by.
Next, trace a line straight down the orderly hyacinth row.
[MUSIC]
Seven bees are foraging in blooms of indigo.
You're practically done.
Now blow a kiss to the lovely lilac trees.
[SOUND]
[MUSIC]
The violet blossoms are brimming with nectar for eight bees.
Can you find the eight bees?
All right, at last get ready to find,
[MUSIC]
Nine bees on the rainbow you grew.
Did you find all nine bees, on this beautiful rainbow of flowers?
But the story is not over, these bees have work to do.
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Can you see ten humming bees getting busy in these trees?
They're spreading so much pollen, you just might have to, achoo!
Why are the bees spreading pollen?
So something you eat can grow.
Thanks to the bees, soon you'll have
your own delicious rainbow.
Look, it's a rainbow of fruit, apples, and peaches, and
pears, and more apples and plums, and blueberries, and blackberries.
The bees pollinated that for you.
And if you read this book, you can learn a little more about bees if you
read the pages at the end of the story.
Now, thank you so much for reading The Hidden Rainbow with me.
I had so much fun working on it, and I hope you enjoyed it.
When you think about rainbows, there are lots of fun activities and
crafts that you can do that are inspired by rainbows.
Right now, a lot of people are putting rainbows in their windows to
say thank you to the health care workers and
the other frontline workers who are helping us all so much right now.
And we've done that at our house, but one thing we thought about when we were
thinking about the hidden rainbow was what if we made new rainbows for
our windows, and made rainbows of flowers to put in our windows?
And there are lots of different ways that you can do this.
You can draw a rainbow, you can color it, you can, let's see,
this is one that one of my kids made in marker.
I love this one.
Here's one that another one of my kids is working on, it's a work in progress and
other rainbow flowers.
You can collage it, you can cut out flowers I kind of, oops,
cut out some flowers that were inspired by the flowers in these books, a little bit.
You can make them look however you want.
You can cut them out of construction paper, or you can color paper and
then cut them out.
And you can make a rainbow of cut out flowers in your window.
I think I wanna make a lot more flowers.
This could take a long time or just a little bit of time,
depending on how much time you have.
I'm gonna make some more flowers and then put a flower rainbow in our window.
Another thing, one of my daughters made me a rainbow beaded bracelet,
which I really, really love.
So you can make rainbows out of beads.
And if you can put any kind of flower rainbow in your window, I think that's
a really fun way to add some color, add some cheer, and say thank you.
And another thing that you can do, if you wanna get outside and explore nature,
I know sometimes we're not getting out as much as we'd like to these days still.
But hopefully we can get out a little bit more while it's summer, and
you can go exploring, and you can do a nature scavenger hunt.
Not to take anything, but just to find all the colors of the rainbow.
Can you find a red flower, and an orange flower, or a leaf, or something else?
Yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet,
can you find all the colors of the rainbow out in nature?
And you can make your own scavenger hunt.
Another thing you can do is try and eat a whole rainbow of fruit.
You can talk to your grown-ups and
see if you can get fruit in every color of the rainbow.
And try and
eat it all in one day, cuz it would be really healthy and really, really tasty.
So thank you so much for joining me, I hope you liked our story time.
I hope you do try some rainbow flower crafts.
And thank you so much for joining me for this Hidden Rainbow story time.
Come back soon to Harper Kids and
see what other story times and other activities they have for you.
Bye. [MUSIC]