Time to grab your coloring supplies! This award is all about coloring, crayons, and markers. Do you know how crayons are made? You, and your Eager Beavers, will by the time you finish this award. Not surprisingly, there is a fair amount of coloring and/or drawing in this award. The most challenging part of this award is the high number of requirements. Fortunately, I was able to combine the bulk of them into just two activities. We learn best through play, so I have gamified the non-coloring parts of this award.
Story: Joseph’s New Coat
Fulfills Requirements # 4
I chose this very simplistic story of Joseph because it focused on the colors in his coat. It’s the perfect fit for this award! Unfortunately, this book doesn’t appear very easy to track down. (Check with your homeschool friends. Maybe they use this particular curriculum. It’s how I borrowed a copy!) Joseph’s New Coat is available on it’s own as a Kindle Book. Any story of Joseph will work just fine here.
Craft: My Book of Colors
Fulfills Requirements # 5, 6, 9, 10
Not surprisingly, an award focused on crayons and markers is going to require a lot of coloring! Depending on your group of kids, you might want to break this up in to ten minute segments. (Ten minutes of coloring, the next activity, another ten minutes of coloring, etc.) Some of your kids will love to sit and color the book from start to finish, but others are gonna get squirrelly. We caught our Eager Beavers in the perfect coloring mood – they sat and happily colored the whole book and even added extra drawings!
Some of your kids will likely color very nicely trying to stay in the lines, but some might go with the more abstract scribble look. Both are fine. Eager Beavers are all different in their abilities and fine motor skills. I created a simple book. Page one, the cover, is printed on cardstock and the two inner pages are printed back to back on copy paper. I used a higher-than-normal quality paper for the interior page to better handle markers, but copy paper is also fine. There are three pictures (or places for pictures): Joseph, a rainbow, and the Eager Beaver’s hand. There is room on the inside front and back cover to draw and doodle as time allows.
Each child should choose their favorite color to color the circle on the front cover – if your kids are feeling creative, they might turn that circle into something else like a smiley face or the earth. Hand them the markers and sit back to see what they choose to do with it!
The last page is waiting for a drawing of their hand. Encourage parents to trace their child’s hand. The Eager Beaver can then color their hand. They might choose to color it in a very realistic way or get extra artistic with their coloring.
Game: Color Races
Fulfills Requirements # 11
Kristen, at Arrows & Applesauce, has a simple fun game to get the kids moving and review colors. Setup can be as simple as taping nine pieces of colored construction paper around the room and calling out different colors for the kids to run to.
I chose to add dice to our version. I love my pocket dice, because I can print whatever I need to fit the award’s theme and slide the cards into the pockets on the dice. Two dice have colors and the third dice gives a movement. The teacher, or one of the kids, toss one color die and the movement die. The kids then skip or run or crawl to the color page on the other die. When the dice lands on Rainbow! kids get to go to their favorite color. (Printables for both the signs and the dice are at the end of this post.)
I set our game up in the church foyer. There is more space to run here than anywhere else in my church. Most of the colors were easy to spot, but a few were hidden around corners and required a little searching. Note: I included two extra pages in the printables – choose the gray/grey that fits your country’s preferred spelling.
Video: How Crayons are Made
Fulfills Requirements # 1a: How are crayons made?
We used a video to show the kids how crayons are made. If you have the ability to use a video for your class, this video is a great choice. It is a bit longer than I’d like for this age group, but its the best video I’ve seen about making crayons.
Book: Crayola! The Secrets of Cool Colors and Hot Hues
Fulfills Requirements # 1a: How are crayons made?
A second option for learning about how crayons are made is by reading Crayola! The Secrets of Cool Colors and Hot Hues by Bonnie Williams. This is a level three leveled reader, and I wouldn’t recommend reading the entire book to your Eager Beavers. Reading pages 4-9 will answer our question.
Activity: Crayon Q & A
Fulfills Requirements # 1b-4, 7, 8
I am so excited about this activity. Each question is written on a “crayon” card. The Eager Beavers take turns picking a color/crayon. The teacher reads the card, and then the kids search the classroom for the poster with the matching crayon. The answer will be on the poster. Movement makes this list of facts more interesting to discover. At minimum, you will want a dried out marker. If you want more hands-on samples, you can add a small pack of eight crayons and a melted crayon.
I have two types of crayon cards for you. The single-sided crayons will be the easiest to prepare, but if you’d like your crayons to look like crayons on both sides, there is a version to fold in half and glue together. Both the posters and the crayons are in the free printable pack. I added velcro to my dried marker so it can hang on the poster and be removed. I added a piece of paper next to the marker poster so the kids could try using this very sad neglected marker.
In addition to the crayons and poster, there is an answer key for you. It includes script ideas just in case you like scripts as much as I do.
Closing Story: How the Crayons Saved the Rainbow
How the Crayons Saved the Rainbow by Monica Sweeney is a fun story to finish off your award. It’s not essential, but if you love sharing stories with your Eager Beavers, this colorful story of friendship will be a lovely addition to your meeting. Sun and Clouds are friends and love making rainbows together, but one day Sun and Clouds have a big fight. They are never together anymore and without the rainbows they create, the world slowly turns to black and white. Fortunately, one colorful box of crayons survives to color the world and inspire Sun and Clouds.
Downloads
This award took my club more than one meeting to finish – about a meeting and a half. If your meetings are only an hour, plan to use some of another meeting to finish up.
If you use these ideas, could you do me a favor and leave a comment about how it went? Learning about clubs using my ideas inspires me more than you can imagine!