Looking for arctic animals emergent readers? Check out this collection – get three books in three different levels of difficulty!
Our Color Me Readers are a series of books on popular themes for preschool through first grade. Each free set includes three books. Usually all three books have the same pictures, but the text varies slightly.
This way you can use the books with pre-readers as well as with children who are ready for basic sight words.
I have been using these books with my Three (who just turned four). This set of books is part of my Winter Theme Pack, which covers many mini-themes such as snow, penguins, and arctic animals.
After reading a gazillion books about arctic animals (just a slight exaggeration), I knew my Four would be ready for this set of Color Me Readers.
This image shows the three different levels.
- Level One only asks your child to read the word “a” and use picture clues (and beginning sounds) to read the name of each arctic animal.
- Level Two adds the words “I see” to each page.
- Level Three is for more advanced beginners and repeats the pattern “A ____ lives in the Arctic.”
Color Me Readers are all very simple – on purpose. They are designed to build concepts of print, sight word knowledge, and confidence.
This page (“A snowy owl.”) was a little tricky for my Four. I helped him with the word “snowy.”
On this page, my Four used the picture without the beginning sound clue. He read it as “A dolphin.” I showed him that “whale” begins with a w and not a d. He needed help coming up with the word whale.
After reading the whole book, he pulled out his crayons.
The first day I shared these books with him, we also attempted the Level Two book. I was quite sure he could handle the pattern “I see a…” because he can read each of those three words in isolation.
However, my Four was quickly frustrated on the first page when he saw the letter “a” inside the word “walrus.” For some reason, this threw him off, and he didn’t want to read any more.
One of my rules for teaching my kids to read as preschoolers is to back off when they’re frustrated. So I put it away and plan to pull it out again soon. 🙂

Get your free Color Me Readers!
GET THE FULL WINTER THEME!

Winter theme
$16.00
This 300+ page theme pack has a huge variety of activities for your winter unit in preschool or kindergarten! You’ll get printable vocabulary cards and nonfiction books with real photos, emergent readers that your child can color and read all by himself, clip cards, beginning reading games, printable math centers, activity pages, and more.
OK, so this might seem silly, but it’s really bugging me. I’m pretty sure your ‘whale’ in these readers is either a dolphin or a beluga. The face doesn’t look like a whale face at all. I’d really like if you could change the text or the picture to match better.
A beluga is a species of whale, which is why I used that word.
It’s a beluga…A beluga is a whale.
My son knows them as beluga whales so he would probably be tempted to say that every time. Do you corrected them to say just whale since they have to read what the word says though? We tend to refer to the Orcas as “whale.”
It can be so tricky. Maybe just take out that one page if it’s too frustrating.
Brilliant, my autistic god child will love these. So inspiring.
I’m so glad you can use them, Donna!
These came at the perfect time tonight! I was planning for a day in preschool next week and the theme is arctic animals. I love it when God brings things together perfectly!
Thanks for sharing them!
You’re welcome, Erin!