Colour My World Bonus Activities

Filled with large, boldly-outlined pictures, Colour My World is designed for children who are just starting to colour. The carefully-curated images progress from very simple to slightly more complex as your child’s dexterity improves. Colour My World’s images celebrate the Caribbean region and correspond to curriculum objectives that children encounter when they enter primary school. As they colour, children will enjoy connecting the dots between their day-to-day lives and what they learn in school.

The book is organised around the following topics:

Making Connections

Pre-K and Kindergarteners are starting to understand their own emotions and how to express what they are feeling with words. Children have many feelings when entering school for the first time so we began with this grouping.

Activity Idea

Place the coloring sheets from Colour My World on cardboard and attach to popsicle sticks. (We tried sticks from the Areca palm (pictured on the right) and they work well too and are free.)
Children can use these cards to express how they are feeling or they can trace their own emojis to use if you do not want them to remove the colouring pages from their books.

Bonus Downloadable Colouring Page – Love and Empathy

Making Connections

Children at this age are learning about healthy food choices. We chose the garden and its inhabitants to showcase what lives in a healthy garden/farm. As the world moves away from pesticides and fertilizers they are replaced with methods to grow healthy food in abundance using nature’s help. We included food common in the region to ensure children can colour images that they are familiar with. Healthy food choices start with feeling good about what is available locally.

Activity Idea

Have children colour their favorite fruit or vegetable and share their colouring pages on a wall with their name on it. If you do not want children to remove colouring pages, you can let a few children a day share their favorite vegetable or colouring page. This is a great way to build community as children to learn more about their friends and classmates.

Making Connections

Animal characteristics vary greatly. There are many depicted in the colouring book, which makes it a great resource to explore characteristics such as animal covering (feathers, shell, scales); number and type of limbs (legs, hooves, snout, nose); size; and colour.

Activity Idea

• Brainstorm similarities and differences of the animals. Children will use their colouring books to look at the pictures and talk about the differences. You can guide them to explore the following:
  • Parts of animals compare and contrast.
  • Hooves versus paws and Snouts versus noses.
  • Sea Creatures and Crustaceans Fins, Gills, scales, tentacles, claws.
  • Birds beaks, toes vs talons
• Math:
  • Count the differences between a sea turtle and tortoise.
  • Count the differences between a donkey and a horse.
  • How many spots does the ladybug have?

Bonus Downloadable Activity Sheet – Animal Sorting Cards

Making Connections

Physical activity helps children concentrate, calms them, gives them an outlet to relieve frustration, and is a great method to use for transitions and classroom management.

Activity Ideas

Teach children one or two yoga poses that do not require them to use a mat. Tree pose and squat pose are good ones. You can then use prompts for each. Pretend to be a tree. Pretend to be a frog. Use these prompts during transition time or when children need a moment to collect themselves to get ready to learn.
Choose part of a favorite song and choreograph a dance children learn that can be used during transitions or to get out the wriggles and jiggles.
Prepare a class mantra and physical activity: clapping, stomping, and other movements your children come with to use for beginning and end of day.

Bonus Downloadable activity sheet – Yoga Printables

This and many other activities are available here.

Making Connections

Celebrations often involve creativity from costume designing to choosing or making just the right gift for someone’s birthday. Regionally music is also a key part of most celebrations.

Activity Ideas

Use the celebration images in the colouring book and ask children what celebration or holiday they would typically see the image.
Expand on this and add celebrations children think of that are not depicted in the images.
Expand on this and use the list to make a celebration word wall.

Bonus Downloadable activity sheet – Spot the difference cupcake colouring sheet from The Crumb Bunch Activity Book

Making Connections

The thought of saving the environment can be overwhelming. We were inspired by the many innovative ideas teachers have put into practice, for example, repurposing materials from decorating cereal boxes to hold files and books or painting tires to make whimsical planters in school yards.

Activity Ideas

• Brainstorm with the class: When do you need to use water?
  The daily routine section in the colouring book can help. Prompt them to look at the pages and determine if water is used in a specific routine. Write down children’s responses and leave them at a center where children can draw a picture choosing one of the uses of water. This will bring awareness to how special and important water is and how we can protect and conserve it.
• Reduce, Recycle, Reuse
  • Reuse materials for art projects, for example: make a caterpillar like the one in the colouring book using egg cartons or use paper rolls to make runs for marbles.
  • Recycling: Start a recycling bin in your classroom.
  • Start a recycling mission: Are there recycling bins in your community? Give a task to children to look for recycling bins around the community and share with the class where they found them. Extend this by asking children where they think additional recycling bins are needed. You may consider going one step further and showing children how to reach out to key community members to help them lobby for more bins.
  • Brainstorm ways to reduce waste at school and at home, for example, composting, choosing food that is not packaged or that is packaged with biodegradable materials, repairing things instead of throwing them away when they are broken) Make a list with the class.

Activity Idea

Engage the children in round robin story telling. Start the story and have each child add a sentence or two to the story. Center the beginning of the story in an important local location.
Examples of starter sentences:

• Our class went to the beach yesterday and as we arrived a huge wave crashed on to the shore and we saw …
• The waterfall is our favorite place to relax, until one day when we visited and…
• I heard a rumbling and the ground shook. I ran…

As the class tells the story write it down. If you are struggling to write it you can also record it so you can write it down later.

Bonus Downloadable activity sheet – Waterfall colouring page

Making Connections

A daily routine for little ones helps their family and teachers. When children have the opportunity to know what is coming next they can prepare for the transitions. This can reduce a lot of angst at home and school. Children feel more confident when there is a routine in place. Of course, we all know these routines can not always be adhered to but in general terms they can work magic. From brushing teeth, to going to school, to washing hands, daily routines are covered in the last section of the colouring book.

Activity Ideas

Art: Daily routine colouring pages can be a catalyst to give children ideas of how they can freely draw their favorite activity (Calendar time, recess, math, fishing, playing marbles, playing with friends). Have children draw a favourite activity. This can give you insight into what your child(ren)/students enjoy or are interested in.
Literacy: Have children dictate to you what their favorite time of the day is and write each child’s responses down.
Sequencing: Have children find the routines that are out of order, an activity they will need to master while in preschool and kindergarten.
Personal Connections: What daily routines do you do that are not included in the Colour My World: Jumbo Coloring Book?

Bonus Downloadable activity sheet – Girl on Scooter Colouring Page