How To Teach Kids

Here is a good selection of kids’ books that can be used to teach the color orange:

• An Orange for a Bellybutton by Haruo Fukami
• An Orange in January by Dianna Hutts Aston
• Autumn Orange by Christianne C. Jones
• Big Pumpkin by Erica Silverman
• Each Orange Has 8 Slices by Paul Giganti  (Reprint)
• Mystery of the Flying Orange Pumpkin by Steven Kellogg
• Orange by Nancy Harris
• Orange Juice by Betsey Chessen and Pamela Chanko
  
• Orange Pear Apple Bear by Emily Gravett
• Orange:  Seeing Orange All Around Us by Sarah L. Schuette and Elena Bodrova
  
• Oranges by Inez Snyder
• Oranges to Orange Juice ( How Things Are Made) by Inez Snyder
  
• Otto’s Orange Day by Frank Cammuso Jay Lynch
• Star in My Orange: Looking for Nature’s Shapes by Dana Meachen Rau
  
• The Big Orange Splot by Daniel Manus Pinkwater
• What Columbus Found:  It Was Orange, It Was Round by Jane Kurtz
  
• Why is an Orange Called an Orange? by Cobi Ladner

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One student I tutored at my home knew how to count to ten, but one of the skills we had to work on a lot was how to count objects up to ten.  He would often get mixed up after counting five objects, would start counting too fast and miss some objects, or  he would start moving backwards and recount objects he had already counted.  It took a lot of repetition for him to learn to do this, and so we did various activities.  These are some of the activities we did:

• Have student put 10 Teddy Grahams or Fish Crackers in a row.  Have student count slowly, touching each cookie or cracker as they count it.  Count with the student a couple of times if necessary. If successful, they get to eat one cookie.  Then count the 9 remaining cookies.  If successful, they get to eat one more cookie.  Repeat until all cookies have been eaten.
• Use simple number workbooks.  I was able to find two sticker and activity workbooks for this student that he enjoyed. Some pages involved stickers and some involved coloring.
• Line up various objects to count such as blocks, pennies, game pieces, etc.  Count how many there are and make a game out of it, such as put six blocks in the bucket, nine pennies in the piggy bank, etc.

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The first 10 words below make up about 24% of all written material, according to Dr. Edward Fry.  The first 100 words make up about 50% according to him.

Copy the words on index cards and have students practice them, starting with the first 10 or 20 words.  Then add 10 or 20 more, depending on the child’s level.  The goal is to work on all 100 words.

There are 300 words in Fry’s total list.

First group of 20 words:

• the, of, and, a , to , in, is, you, that, it
• he, was, for, on, are, as, with, his, they, I

Second group of 20 words:

• at, be, this, have, from, or, one, had, by, word
• but, not, what, all, were, we, when, your, can, said

Third group of 20 words:

• there, use, an, each, which, she, do, how, their, if
• will, up, other, about, out, many, then, them, these, so

Fourth group of 20 words:

• some, her, would, make, like, him, into, time, has, look
• two, more, write, go, see, number, no, way, could, people

Fifth group of 20 words:

• my, than, first, water, been, call, who, oil, now, find
• long, down, day, did, get, come, made, may, part, over

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