Dog's Colorful Day Part 2

Some More Fun With Dog

As I am trying desperately to get myself caught up this month, I realized I have not posted the second part of our Dog's Colorful Day activities!  I guess in order to keep my posts in a proper chronology, I should take care of that now...before moving on to St. Patrick!

As our first post on this great story mentioned, we used Dog to have lots of fun.  The book lends itself so nicely to many different math and language activities, as well as offering a great opportunity to study color.  That is where we'll pick up with today's post.

The munchkins have been working very hard to learn to recognize the eight most common color words.  These past weeks, we've added the challenge of learning to spell them!  Dr. Jean has a fantastic CD with a neat little song called Color Train.  It puts the spelling of each color word to music in such a way that the munchkins learn them so quickly.  They have had a blast with it. 

And during this activity, it was fun to hear the tunes of all the little songs as the kids were working!

We created our own little Dog out of cut paper, placing spots of a certain color on him.  The munchkins could choose the color of (and how many) spots his or her dog would have.  After the dog was complete, each munchkin wrote a sentence describing the dog.  We used the sentences to play a riddle game, using the description to choose the correct dog.  It was fun!

But first we had to cut all Dog's pieces...

Then they had to be glued together...

Then the spots needed to be added...

There!  Finally done!

Then the munchkins got busy with their writing...practicing those color words of course!



What a great finished product! 

Can you believe what fantastic writing a six year old can do when they have the chance?

Well, our fun with Dog and with colors didn't stop there.  We took some time to explore the colors of the rainbow, discussing just a bit how those colors get there (with the help of a really cool prism!).  We read several books about the different colors and what happens when they are mixed together, too.  So, of course, we had to try mixing colors ourselves.

And we didn't want to forget about one last math activity that just couldn't be missed.  We graphed Dog's spots! 

Each munchkins received a bag full of skittles spots. 

First they needed to be sorted...

Then the munchkins created a tally graph for each color...

And then the tallies were transferred into a bar graph.

Finished! 

Then, to add to the graphing fun, we had a skittle spot taste test!  Each munchkin tried one spot of each color.  After choosing one flavor as a favorite, the munchkins had to collect data from each friend in order to see what their favorite flavors were.  The data was then recorded on a special recording sheet.

As everyone worked, there was a wonderful little "hum" all throughout the classroom!

 

Then the data was transferred to a graph.

Of course, we discussed and analyzed the results.  No one in our class liked the orange spots!  But interestingly enough, I don't think they were tossed aside when it came to eating the rest of the spots in our baggies!

Well, you may think that was all there was to do with our spotted Dog, but...never fear.  We still had more!

Our last major activity focused on story structure and remembering that all stories have to have a beginning, a middle and an end.  Of course, those three parts have to go in the right order for the story to make sense.  So it was up to the munchkins to decided how to re-write the story of Dog using just three sentences that would tell the beginning, the middle and the end in an orderly way. 

Very nicely done!

All that hard work deserves a doggie treat!

Farewell, Dog!

Until next time...

Giggles,

Mrs. D.