There’s nothing like the joy a child has when he has read his very first book! We can give that joy to children as young as three years old by creating very simple books they can read themselves.
But wait a second.
If they’re just using the pictures and memorizing the pattern of the book, how is that reading?
Put “reading” in quotes if you will, but don’t discount the confidence building that occurs when children read (or recite) predictable books all on their own.
Not only do they have the great excitement of knowing they read a book all by themselves, they also learn valuable concepts of print.
- They practice holding a book and turning the pages in the right direction.
- They learn that each word on the page represents a spoken word.
- They see that text is read from left to right.
The world needs more of these little books! That’s why I’m excited to introduce a new series of printable first books for preschoolers. These would also work great for beginning readers in kindergarten and first grade.
Introducing… my Color Me Readers collection of emergent readers.
Each set of three books will be based on an early childhood theme. This set of books was designed to go along with my giant transportation book list. After reading some of those books to your child or class, print a Color Me Reader for each child.
While the Color Me Readers do feature sight words, we won’t be going in a particular order or progressing level of difficulty like my sight word readers do.
These were created simply to give joy and confidence to future readers. However, you might find that your child learns some of the sight words by reading these books over and over. And beginning readers can certainly build their sight word vocabulary by reading these little books!
The bonus is that each set of three books comes in three different levels. Print the level that’s right for your child, or do all three.
The level one book is the simplest. Each page has a new vehicle.
A car. A bike. A train. A helicopter. A tractor. A fire truck. A police car.
Since my Three knows the letter A, he could “read” this book all by himself. So fun!
The level two book goes like this:
Go, school bus! Go, garbage truck! Go, taxi! Go, airplane! Go, motorcycle! Go, tow truck! Go, car!
Level three has a longer sentence on each page. But it’s still super simple.
I see the car. I see the bus. I see the hot air balloon. I see the mail truck. I see the raft. I see the truck.
How to assemble
1. Print the four pages for each book, single sided.
- Level 1 – pages 2-5
- Level 2 – pages 6-9
- Level 3 – pages 10-13
2. Cut along the bold lines on each page.
3. Stack the pages together to make each book.
4. Staple along the left side of each book.
I hope you get a lot of use out of these!
More free transportation activities!
So many emergent readers!
TransportationArctic animals
Community helpers
Fall
Space
Spring
Farm animals
5 senses
&
Get your free transportation Color Me Readers!
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Trish
Thank you so much for these great resources. Just what I was looking for to go along with our transportation unit theme.
Anna G
I’m so glad you can use them, Trish!
Ellen
Your printables are godsend to us. My son has social communication disorder and it’s so hard to teach him how to read but we’re getting by thanks to you.
Anna G
I’m so glad to hear that my resources are helping, Ellen!
Ada Sun
I am sincerely appreciate your sharing things and the way you accompany your child. Now I want to change the PDF file into word file, and the software asks me for the passwords, can you help me to deal with that?
Anna Geiger
Hi Ada – the file is secured to protect my work and the copyright of the clip art. So I’m not able to share the password.
Nma
Thank you for your comprehensive resource materials. I really appreciate it.
Anna Geiger
You’re very welcome! 🙂
razan
Good
Julia
My kids (ages 3 & 5) loved coloring and reading these! Thanks so much!! Was wondering if you are planning to add more Color Me emergent readers to your fabulous website?
Anna Geiger
Thanks, Julia – so glad your kids enjoyed these! I do plan to create more to correlate with my early learning book lists – so probably once every 3 weeks or so. I hope to get a set out next week. 🙂
Tatiana
Thanks for the printables. I’m looking forward to sharing the level 3 set with my boy!
Anna Geiger
I hope he enjoys it, Tatiana!
Meghan
I just printed off the easy “A” version for my 3 year old son and he loved it! He colored every page brown 🙂 We read it together and he has since read it to me about 4x he is so proud! I can’t wait for his daddy to come home so he can see him read it too. I printed off the hardest version for my 4 year old daughter, but she said wants a princess one. I told her since you are making these for your boy, that one may not happen… 😉
Thanks so much!
Anna Geiger
That’s wonderful, Meghan! Yay! I’m afraid I don’t have any princess books coming, but that’s because I am creating these books to go with my early childhood themed book lists. Since the first list was transportation, the color me books were too. Next up: space. Hopefully I’ll create something that will catch your daughter’s interest. 🙂
Kate
Meghan,
Boys have more rods in their eyes (seeing distance and speed), and girls have more cones (seeing color and shape). It’s completely normal for little boys to draw and color using only one color, while girls use many colors. After learning that fact at a kindergarten conference, it was fascinating to see it play out in the classroom. Just a little science to explain what you see in your son:)
Jennifer
This is fascinating about rods and cones – does that change as we grow up?
Kate
Jennifer,
Since I only remember what related to kindergarten at the conference (in 2005 or 2006), I did a quick internet search and came up with many articles about this topic.
According to this excellent article, the difference in vision is widest at age 11, and very small by age 30. I have not read the works cited at the end of the article:
http://www.karenwalstraconsulting.com/home/index.php?ipkArticleID=24
Another website referenced this scholarly journal article. It describes a study involving young adults, and the differences between men’s and women’s vision were significant:
http://www.bsd-journal.com/content/3/1/20
So to answer your question, I think our eyes do change as we grow up, but I’m not sure how much and in what ways. That scholarly journal article above is too technical for me to understand completely:(
I do love this stuff, though!
Meghan
I just now saw this! That is fascinating. He colors in monochrome 99% of the time! Thank you for sharing!