Great Cape o’ Colors by Karl Beckstrand

Great Cape o' Colors... fully known as Great Cape o' Colors - Capa de colores... is another fun book written in English and Spanish by Karl Beckstrand.  In this book, Karl Beckstrand introduces new colors and professions to children.  He also encourages children to use their imaginations and indulge in a bit of make-believe.  Keep reading to learn more about Great Cape o' Colors and how you can use it as inspiration for making a class book.

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Author's Summary

This is a magic cape!  A color/career picture book adventure: Explore colors and daring jobs with full text and pronunciation guide in both Spanish and English.  Count the careers, colors, cultures, and costumes, or dress up! Learn some color theory and make a game of pretending to be all the different characters. Comes with online extras. Get this read-aloud children's book with Black and Hispanic superheroes in Spanish-only, English-only, soft or hardcover, or ebook versions. 100 words--double for bilingual.  Dyslexic-friendly font.  By award-winning author Karl Beckstrand.  Illustrated by John Collado.

🍎 Title: Great Cape o' Colors - Capa de Colores

🍎 Author: Karl Beckstrand
🍎 Illustrator: John Collado
🍎 Date: April 20, 2018
🍎 Publisher: Premio Publishing & Gozo Books, LLC
🍎 Pages: 30

Picture Walk the Story

Great Cape o' Colors is a beautifully illustrated story, so you and your students should really take the time to picture walk through the book and enjoy each illustration.  As you do, talk about the different people in the story and what they are doing.  Some of the people will represent traditional jobs such as being a judge or a professor.  Others aren't so traditional such as a space ranger or a knight.  As you talk about the illustrations, keep in mind that you may need to do some vocabulary building with your students.  For example, they may or may not know what a sultan or a pontiff is.  Have fun with the picture walk.  If you happen to have a student or two who pipe up and say, 'That's not for real,' just smile and say to them... anything can happen in your imagination.

Learning New Colors

As you previewed Great Cape o' Colors and talked about the illustrations with your class, you were able to see how each page focused on one or two people and the color of the cape they are wearing.  You probably spent a good chunk of time talking about what the people were doing as well.  Take the time now to read Great Cape o' Colors to your class.  Pay particular attention to the colors of the capes people are wearing.  After you read each page, record the color words on an anchor chart and save the chart for future reference.  Note: There is a Spanish pronunciation guide in the book in case you need it.

Make a Class Book

Many teachers like to create class books with their students after mini-lessons like the one I described.  Class books reinforce vocabulary and skills students learned... in this case the names of colors.  When making a class book, each student has an opportunity to 'write' and illustrate their own page.  The students' pages are then correlated and bound together.  Teachers often add these books to their class libraries for students to read over and over during quiet reading time.

Since using our imaginations and indulging in make-believe is one of the main themes in Great Cape o' Colors, allow your students to use their imaginations while working on their pages for the class book.  It's perfectly acceptable if your students want to draw themselves like a person in the story or if they use their own ideas.  (In my sample page below, I chose to draw Count Dracula from Sesame Street.  Why?  Because the other day a friend and I were reminiscing about our childhoods and joking about the Count.  The Count was still fresh in my mind.  1... 2... 3... Mwuhahahahaha!)  Remember... anything is possible in our imaginations.  As long as your students are drawing themselves with a cape, using the correct color words, and their drawing is appropriate for school, it's all good.

To make a class book, you will need:

• construction paper or cardstock
• crayons, colored, pencils, or markers
• glue
• laminator
• plastic comb bookbinders, binder rings, or something similar
• This Is My Cape printable

Directions:

• Pass out one printable per student.
• Have your students draw and color a picture of someone wearing a cape.
• Help your students fill in the blanks as needed.
• Glue their drawings to construction paper.
• Collect and laminate the students' pages.
• Bind the pages into a class book to keep in your classroom library for children to read independently.

To download a FREE copy of my class book cover and page (two pages in all, English only at this time), please click on the image above. Clicking this image will take you to the Teachers-Pay-Teachers third-party website. This is a FREE download-- no purchase necessary.

To learn more about Great Cape o' Colors - Capa de colores and Karl Beckstrand's other books, watch the trailer from Premio Publishing below.  

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