dogs colorful day pdf free download

I am so excited to share with you two extension activities that I developed to go with the story we've been reading, Dog's Colorful Day by Emma Dodd.

The first one is a group activity. After reading the book a few times last week, this week we tried a hands-on group activity. I gathered pom-poms in the colors of Dog's "spots" and placed those into a cloth bag along with the pictures I created to go with the story. (You may download those using the link below.) A few years ago I also made a "Dog" from white craft foam. I just used the book as a guide to help me draw Dog. I used a Sharpie marker for the details. For the group activity, I got out the "Dog" and placed him in front of me on the floor. Then I passed the cloth bag around and asked each child to take one item from the bag (either a pom-pom "spot" or a picture). After everyone had something, I read the book out loud. When we got to each page the children with the corresponding picture and spot came up. Pictures were placed below the Dog from left to right and pom-poms were placed directly on the Dog in the correct location.

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This photo shows the foam "Dog" with the pom-poms and pictures. Here is the link for the pictures.

Download Dog's Colorful Day pictures

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This photo shows Dog with his red spot of "jam" and the corresponding jam picture. The children love getting involved with the story in a hands-on way.

The second extension activity is a coloring page. I made the pages by placing my Dog on the copier and copying him onto paper. Then I drew "spots" in the correct places on the paper copy. Then I made a bunch of copies of the "spotted" Dog. Next, I made a little flip book to break down the task of coloring the correct spots. To make the flip booklet I reduced the size of my copied Dog on the copier and colored one "new" dot per page. I wanted the children to be independent in coloring the dots and my assistant, Miss Melissa, came up with the flip book idea. We piloted it in class today and the children were really successful.

Below you can see how I've set up this work on a tray. The copies of Dog are on the bottom with the flip book and a tray of crayons on top.

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To do this work the child carries the tray to a table and sets up the workspace as shown below. (I don't know why there is an extra gray crayon in the container. There is only supposed to be one of each color needed which is a built-in control of error.) Also, in this photo the flip book is turned to the second page which shows the red dot of "jam" on Dog's back.

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After flipping to the above page, the child would choose the correct color (red) and color the correct dot as shown.

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The next page had the previous dot colored in (in this case, the red one) and one "new" dot (in this case, blue). So on each page the child has to find the correct color crayon and the correct dot to color.

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I snapped this picture during work time today. You can see the page in the flip book on the right. Yay! This child is independently completing his paper. I can see the "used" red and blue crayons on the table.

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And here is the "finished" Dog! Since I know some of you will ask, I wanted to tell you that I don't feel comfortable making copies of the coloring page or flip book available here on the blog since I am not the illustrator of the book. I have confidence that you could easily replicate the foam dog yourself by looking at Emma Dodd's simple line drawings. Really......you can do it!!

When the child brings this page home, I have encouraged them to share it with their family and to try to retell the story in order by describing what caused all the different colored dots. Story retelling is an excellent memory and oral language activity. If your child brings this home, have them tell you about each "spot" on Dog. For example, "He got the red dot from jam. He dipped his tail into blue paint. He rolled in green grass at the park, etc."

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