Sky Color by Peter H Reynolds was our daily read-aloud picture book today. It inspired us to paint, recall details from the book, and get creative! I picked this book because we read The Dot by Peter H. Reynolds yesterday and learned about the water cycle, clouds, and weather last week. These are the Sky Color inspired activities we had fun creating.
What is the plot of the picture book Sky Color?
Marisol is an artist who is asked to create a mural for her school with her classmates; when the color she needs is unavailable, she gets creative and observes that the sky isn’t just blue. We read this after The Dot, for more information about Peter H. Reynold books, please visit his website, The Dot Central.
What knowledge can be taught or reviewed using this book with young children?
- The color wheel can be discussed and how colors mix and change into a new color.
- The concept of daytime and nighttime and how changing times impact the sun and the sky.
- Finding a creative solution to your problems.
- Making daily observations of the natural world around you.
If students want to learn more about colors please see other posts about this topic. Favorite Book Activities with Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? & Chameleon
Background Knowledge & Vocabulary Words that can be taught/review using the book Sky Color include…
- Sky
- Art Gallery
- Artist (art supplies, painting)
- Mural
- Brainstorming
- Rummaged
- Horizon
- Settled
- Swirled
Before reading the book, we went outside, stared at the sky, and made observations. First, we discussed colors we see in the sky and words like the horizon and color wheel. Then, I paused and had a quick discussion on the first page about what an artist might be and talked about supplies we might see because our main character is an artist. After reading, I returned to the mural page at the end, and we discussed the swirling colors problem & solution. Lastly, we discussed words like rummaged in the book and gave examples of real-world connections. We also talked about our art gallery wall to make more connections to vocabulary in the story.
Which phonic skills can be used using Sky Color for early readers?
The primary phonic skill I focused on for the book Sky Color was Bossy R or R-Controlled Vowel words. I had taught this skill before, so this book was a great practice opportunity to find as many words with Bossy R as they could find, then sort by vowel and sound.
- Page 1: Marisol, artist, her, very, art, gallery
- Page 2: her, art, gallery, shared, world, posters, share
For an encoding activity, students can use as many of these words to form a sentence. For example, ask them to write the sentence; See the world of color in this art. or Marisol shared her art in a gallery. Children can draw a picture above their sentence and highlight all the R-Controlled words as well.
Literacy follow-up activity for Sky Color
As a team, we created visual symbols with colors in the sky to recall the book. Next, we made a document for six major events in the book. Then printed, cut out, and shuffled the pictures up. Lastly, the children tried putting all the events back in order and explained what each sky color represented in the story.
For this free activity please visit my Teacher’s Pay Teacher’s homepage.
Shaved Crayon Watercolor Sky Color Activity
After reading the book, I set up watercolor paints for kids to create sky-color paintings. But looking closely at the illustrations on one of the pages inspired me to create a melting crayon activity to add texture to the picture. This was inspired from the dreaming page in the book. I grated old crayons, and the kids picked which color shavings to sprinkle around their paper. Then I placed a second sheet of paper on top (parchment paperwork also works). Then using a blowdryer, the kids watched as their sky color melted together.
Originally I wanted to leave the shaved crayon outside and see how it melted, but it was cloudy, so this worked quicker for us.
After the kids peeled the top sheet of paper off and revealed their melted sky design, they used watercolor paint and filled the page with various colors of a sunrise or sunset sky.
We then made rainbow sky crayons for further coloring.
Amazon Resources for this Activities
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Please see other posts for more ideas.
