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Back to Children's Literature
Counting on Frank
Color Zoo
by Lois Ehlert
In a creative and bright way, Color Zoo, introduces a range of shapes through abstractly formed animal heads.
Resources for Color Zoo:
Full Book Review (English)
Full Book Review (Spanish)
Brief Book Review (English)
Brief Book Review (Spanish)
What Shapes would you use to make a turtle?
Topics: shapes, classification, geometry, transforming shapes, counting
Activities To Do Together:
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Take a walk and talk about the shapes you see. What shapes do you see in different objects? For example, a street sign may be made of rectangles, ovals, octagons, and squares.
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Write 10 different shape names on sticky notes. Find the 10 shapes and label them with their shape name.
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Ask your child to recall and draw the shapes they saw throughout the book. Cut out the shapes and group them by attribute. Ask your child to tell you how they grouped the shapes.
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Questions for Mathematical Thinking:
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Where do you see shapes during the day? What types of shapes have you noticed in every day objects?
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Look at the ox, if the shapes were arranged differently would it still be an ox? What other shapes could you use to make an ox? What other shapes could you use to make a lion and a monkey?
Vocabulary for Building Math Concepts:
circle, diamond, heart, hexagon, octagon, oval, rectangle, square, triangle
Please check out the Book Guide for Color Zoo for more!
Online External Resources for Color Zoo:
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Shape Classification Activity (Activity to explore classifying shapes and identification)
Activities for Color Zoo:
Animal Faces (English)
Caras de Animales (Spanish)
Giant Animal Faces (English)
Caras de Animales Gigantes (Spanish) Shape Scavenger Hunt (English)
Yarn Shapes (English)