Writing Activities: Making Books About Colors with Preschoolers

Our Playful Preschool Series  theme this week is lights.  This month we have shared some activities about evergreen trees and reindeer.   This week we are looking at writing activities for preschoolers.

Making books with preschoolers is a fun and educational way to work on lots of different literacy skills.  In this activity we worked on handwriting, beginning sounds, labeling and brainstorming.

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Making Books:  Colored Lights

Why We Chose This Activity

Writing is probably the area that my preschooler needs the most support with at this time.  He will occasionally write a letter that is recognizable.  He also will trace.  But, he has to be in that just right mood for either of these things to take place!

He does love stickers and books.  So, I took those interests along with our theme this week of lights and came up with a book making activity for us.

Preparing the Book

Materials needed:  construction paper (various colors), light template, makers, book ring, hole punch, stickers, and abc chart (optional)

1.  Using a template, trace the light onto each piece of colored paper.

2.  Cut each light out.  If your preschooler is ready to handle this, then allow him to do this step.

3.  Punch a hole at the top of each light.

4.  Attach a book ring through the lights.

Creating the Book

Before we even started writing, we named the colors in our book.  We had some colored light stickers and did a matching activity to stir up some excitement for our book making experience.

Each preschooler’s writing skills are at a different developmental level.  Here are some ways to create the book depending on their writing readiness.

• My son has been working on beginning sounds.  We named the color and identified the beginning sound.  He then attempted to write the letter that represented that sound.  There was a lot of reminding about proper grip.  It’s also helpful to have a model for the child to reference as they write.  You could use an alphabet chart or draw the letter first for the child.
• 
• On some of the pages, I wrote the word.  Then, I made a dotted template for him to trace.  He liked having a mix of things to do.
• If your child has greater writing control, they could write the entire word on their own.  Encourage the sound to write down the sounds they hear in the word.  Conventional spelling is not important at this stage.

After we had each page labeled, we use more stickers.  We used our favorite sticker resource book and searched for pictures that had the same beginning sound as each colored page.  He added the stickers to his book.

We created this book over multiple sittings.  It is now one of the books that we read each day during our multiple story times.

Check out our other writing activities and our color book list!

Keep reading.  Visit the links below for more great activities from the Playful Preschool team!