Kindergarten Kerry: Color of the Week- Red- The Little Mouse, the Red Ripe Strawberry and the Big Hungry Bear

I like to start the school year off with colors of the week. It helps most of my students build their confidence about being in school. It also teaches those who were not in school before or who may be second language learners their colors. Each week has one main book with activities to introduce literacy, and math skills into the curriculum.

Day 1

We'll start by reading the book:The Little Mouse, the Red Ripe Strawberry and the Big Hungry Bear. Once we have read the book, the students complete this page from the Mailbox Magazine. I use it as a recall from the book instead of for predictions.

http://www.theeducationcenter.com/magazines#!/editorial/what-to-do-3

Day 2

We reread the book and complete a half page about characters and glue it into our academic journals. The students trace the words at the bottom and draw a picture of the mouse in the frame.

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/The-Little-Mouse-the-Red-Ripe-Strawberry-and-the-Big-Hungry-Bear-Vocabulary-776133

Day 3

We once again read the book and the students work on sequencing the events in the story. They use these pictures from the Mailbox Magazine to sequence the events. This early in the year a lot of my students do this incorrectly without support. I usually project the page, have a class discussion about the order of the pictures, and then cut them out and place them in order and keep them projected. (Yes at the beginning of the year I still do have students who cannot place numbers in order, or follow a model on the board, but at least it helps those that are able to and I can spend more time with the really needy ones.)

http://www.theeducationcenter.com/magazines#!/editorial/what-happened-3

Day 4

We reread the book and focus on the vocabulary words. We especially talk about the word disguise. The students complete a half page journal entry about the word and then create the disguised strawberry craft.

Here is an example of what it looks like in my students' journals. (Please ignore the missing eyeball, it fell off in the middle of the year sometime. And I only decided it would be a good idea to have a picture of this the last week of school. Way to procrastinate!) I just loved these eyebrows and mustache so I had to showcase this one.

You can find the journal pages and the art activity by clicking on the image below.

Another part of the color of the week theme are the poetry journals I will be using this year. I found this awesome poetry pack from Kindergarten Smiles. In this pack there is a poem for each color of the week and a whole year's worth of poetry. What I love about this set is that it includes the poems and also pictures for the kids to glue into their journals and then students create the backgrounds.

Some other choices of books for the color red:
Clifford, Ten Apples Up On Top, The Little Red Hen

Some other websites for color of the day/week: