Reading and Writing Color Words

Building a solid sight vocabulary in our youngest readers is key to their reading success. The ability to effortlessly recognize and read sight words increases both fluency and comprehension. I wanted to share a quick post about an adorable book I recently discovered. It’s a perfect read aloud while teaching color words, and a fun one to read to your students as they add color words to their growing sight vocabulary.

Frankencrayon, by Michael C. Hall is a silly tale narrated by a pencil. The cast of costumed crayons are all set to stage a play about a scary monster. Just when the play is about to start, a big scribble appears on the page. The unexpected scribble grows and grows until it becomes a scribble monster! As the scribble monster grows, the story gets cancelled, but everyone forgot to tell Frankencrayon! While the book is not at all about Halloween, it’s a fun one to use in October.

I loved the Frankencrayon character so much I created some color words activities to do with our Kindergarten buddy class. After reading the books students made a Frankencrayon booklet.

On the back of the booklets students colored and labeled Frankencrayon’s body parts. Using a color words poster for guidance and this projectable chart, they also labeled a diagram of Frankencrayon.

Our Kinder buddies loved their Frankencrayons and they made a bight and colorful hallway display!

After reading the book a second time, we talked about the Scribble Monster that scared all of the crayons. I wondered, “What do you think a Scribble Monster eats?”. We made a list of colorful foods and added them to our chart.

These matching write-in readers enable students to add their own ideas and to practice writing color words.

As primary teachers, we know that students need lots of exposure to the words they are learning. To further practice reading and writing, as well as playing with color words, I added some center activities.

Students spin and color if they land on the Scribble Monster and write the word if they land on Frankencrayon!

I hope you’ve found some ideas you can use in your classroom as you introduce color words to your young readers. October is just around the corner and how fun would it be to read about Frankencrayon?

Are you looking for the resources I used? All of the activities can be used with or without the book. Click on any of the pictures in this post or find them in my shop here.