Well…Color Me Happy! And a FREEBIE!

One of my most favorite “themes” to teach at the beginning of the year is COLORS!  Not necessarily color identification…although yes, that’s VERY important…but I love teaching color WORDS.  I think it’s SO important for our kids to know these words early because they’re used SO much throughout the year and we see them in print ALL.THE.TIME.  When I say “theme”, I’m more or less talking about the books I read and the hands on activities I include in my station work.

Here are some of my most favorite color themed books to read during our unit on color words…

Throughout our study on color words, I like to keep adding to our predictable chart.  We all know kids tire pretty quickly, so I don’t do this all at once.  Especially when there are 20+ kids in the classroom!  My kids fill this out a little at a time…maybe a couple of friends in the morning, a couple in the afternoon.  And we’ll do this over the course of a couple of days or throughout the week. 

Of course, I don’t have any pictures to share with you from this past year, so I used my boys as my “class” :)  They were all too happy to oblige ;)

One of my favorite things to do with predictable charts is create titles for them.  After we’ve filled them all out, we discuss what the chart is all about and then we relate that to books.  I tell my kids that we’re turning our chart into a big book for our class library and they get to help me name it.  They always get really excited!  Then we brainstorm a list of titles and I remind them that titles give us a clue about what the story is about, so the title they give me needs to match.  I love being able to tie that into the reading we do in the classroom!  After we brainstorm a list of titles, the kids get to vote on it.  Then I’ll take a piece of butcher paper, cut it to the size of the chart paper, and leave it in the art center for a Fun Friday activity and the kids get to illustrate the cover.  After that, we staple it to the predictable chart and put it in the class library.  The kids LOVE that they can read it independently!!!! 

I also love, love, LOVE this little science activity during our color week {s}!!!!  DISAPPEARING COLORS!!  The kids go CRAZY over this one!

You need bleach, food coloring, a jar, and some water.  Make sure to have an apron and gloves on hand as well.

Start with a small amount of water in your jar…maybe 1/4th of the way filled.  Then add a drop of food coloring to the water and let the kids observe the changes it makes to the water.

Of course, they’ll go cuckoo for the colors and exclaim, “IT’S BLUE!!!!! IT’S BLUE!!!!!!!”.  They like to make sure you notice, too ;)

Then you’ll introduce the bleach to them and ask them if they know what it is.  My boys are all too familiar with this little cleaning product.  I have an obsession with bleach.  I absolutely LOVE the smell.  Random???  Yes.  But so true.  And I make no apologies for this obsession.

Of course, you’ll tell them what it is and what it’s used for.  Then you’ll have them hypothesize what they think will happen when you add bleach to the water.  Do you know?!?!?!  Well let’s see…

Slowly…after you shake it around just a bit…it starts to disappear.  And after a couple of minutes….

Then let ‘em explain what they think happened.  You can keep adding colors to the water and they will slowly start to disappear because of the bleach that’s already in the water.  You can also set up two jars to start.  One with bleach, one with water.  Then add color to both and have them guess which is which.  My kids think this is the coolest thing!  {My own two boys included.} 

In 2011, I posted on Blog Hoppin’ about THIS fun milk/food coloring experiment.  My kids were in AWE!!!!  That’s another fun one, too!

As a culminating activity, I like to create a “What’s Your Favorite Color?” graph with my kids.  This goes right along with our predictable chart.  We talk about the data and then we create our own little “Color Pals”.  I hang up our graph and then display our Color Pals around it.  The kids get such a kick out of these guys! 

You can grab this little FREE craftivity by clicking the pic below!

If you’re looking for some more fun activities to reinforce color word identification, check out my newest unit, True Colors, in my little shop. 

Happy Sunday Funday!  Hope it’s full of things that make you happy :)