My district uses the Houghton Mifflin reading program, so all of our kinder themes last 3 weeks. I'll do the stories from the reading program for the first 2 weeks, and then the third week provides me with a little more freedom to use my own themed books that I love. During that week we read stories like Harold and the Purple Crayon, Pinkalicious, Caps for Sale, Go Away Big Green Monster, & The Crayon Box That Talked.
For the latter book, I created a center where my kids had to write the color word on the game pieces, match it to the same color on the game board, and then, when they were done, use it to fill out and color the recording sheet.
I posted it in my last entry, but I'll put it here again for your free downloading pleasure if you missed it! Click on the link below to download the center from Google Docs.
To help the kids learn to read and write their color words, my kinder team and I have them sing color word songs. I noticed such a difference between my first year class, when I didn't have the songs, and my second year class, who did, with how quickly they remembered and were able to read all the words. I swear, there is a song for everything! But it's more fun that way!
Another book we read for this theme was A Color of His Own by Leo Leonni. After we read the story, I have my kids write their own sentence stem to tell what color their chameleon turned and what object made it do so. I give them the sentence stem, "My chameleon turned ________________ when it sat on a _____________." They make their own chameleon (I just found a template online), glue it to the writing sheet, and then draw the object that it stood on to make it change colors. I got some cute and creative ones this year! One kid said a tiger, so he drew orange and black stripes on his chameleon. Other kids chose rainbows, leaves, cherries, and strawberries. I love how excited they get for this activity! Unfortunately I don't have my writing sheet available to download, but you can feel free to use this idea and make it your own. I'll try to take some pictures of the finished writing... I don't know how anyone takes pictures in their class, kindergarten is too exhausting for that! Haha!
Even though we have moved on from our colors reading theme, I don't stop integrating those activities with the color words. We're onto a families theme - what stories or activities do you guys like to do with colors and/or families? I've seen some great ideas out there in blogland already. Till next time!
