Follow Me

Reinforce the idea of learning/recognizing colors in a meaningful way.

Tusa, Tricia.
Follow Me.
April 2011.
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Review copy provided courtesy of publisher.

In Follow Me, children are taken on a typical childhood adventure - swinging, and yet the adventure is turned into so much more. The little girl narrating the story has readers literally "following" her as she starts out swinging, and swings higher and higher. As she swings higher, the little girl takes in her surroundings, matching them each with a different color name as she describes them. Ultimately, the child has readers "following" her home after the swinging adventure is complete.

At first, I didn't really understand the story... after my second reading, something just clicked! And the more I thought about it, the more I realized what a unique story this really is. The book really shows children how to make personal connections to their surroundings, while utilizing all the little things they are familiar with! What a great read for a summer evening!

Learning/Reading Activities:

• Take this book outside, settle on a picnic blanket on the ground at dusk, sharing the story and talking about the colors in the story while watching the same colors as they settle across the sky. Encourage your child to use color words to describe their surroundings and the colors they see in the sky.
• Take a walk or even a bike ride at dusk, allowing your child to be the leader, in a sense, allowing them to be the one to say, "Follow me!". Have your child observe the colors they see. Upon returning home, have your child, in his/her summer journal, draw themselves on the walk or bike ride, making sure to have them use details to depict the different colors they saw. See if you child can name something of each color they saw on their walk/ride. (For example, I rode through waves of green grass and pedaled past fields of yellow dandelions, before settling at the blue table for some icy cold pink ice cream.) You'll have to help your child with the actual "story," but try to encourage them to come up with descriptive color words and names of objects they saw.
  

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