Good Night, Gorilla – Color, Cut & Paste

This activity focuses heavily on strengthening fine motor skills (physical) and letter recognition (literacy).  It includes coloring, cutting and pasting pictures of the animals from the story “Good Night, Gorilla” as well as a few other key items (such as a banana, key, & flashlight) onto the corresponding letter page (literacy).

• Color, Cut & Paste pages
• Glue Stick or Elmer's Glue
• Child safe scissors (possibly adult scissors as well)
• Crayons, markers or colored pencils

* Affliate links included above for your convenience

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These supplies and more can be found on my:

Good Night, Gorilla - Amazon Wishlist

Be sure to talk about what each letter looks like and trace over it with your finger before you start gluing.  You can also discuss what sound the letter makes and brainstorm what other things begin with the same letter.  Another SUPER effective way to increase your child’s language skills is to narrate what they are doing throughout the activity. 

For example: “I see you are placing 2 armadillos right next to each other at the bottom of the page.” 

Don’t forget to check out the “Variations & Extensions” for ideas that target cognitive & social-emotional skill building.

1. Print a letter page and the corresponding picture page
2. Talk about what they see (read the "Summary" above for more details)
3. Color the pictures (encourage them to color the pictures different colors)
4. If you have a beginning cutter use your adult scissors to cut the three long strips of pictures then let your little one cut along the rest of the dashed lines with supervision
5. Glue the pictures on to the letter page

 

→ To incorporate math into this activity count out how many pictures your child glued onto their page.  If your child colored the pictures different colors, count out how many there are of each color.

 Another way to extend this is to make a graph that displays how many colors there are of each picture.  I’ve included a graph sheet that you can use to do just that!  If this is your child’s first time using a graph be sure to explain what it is and how it is used.  Then you can help your child color in the correct number of squares or you could use stickers.  My favorite is to laminate the graph sheet and use colored  manipulatives, that way it can be used again and again! 🙂  I sized the grid to fit unifix cubes, bingo chips, or rounded glass pieces (like you’d find at a dollar store for a fish bowl).

→  If you’re wondering how this activity can work on social-emotional skills, think about the amount of focus and persistence your little one will need to complete each phase of this activity.  Cutting can be especially challenging.  Be sure to narrate what they're doing “Look at you trying again!  Great job!”  Or if your little one accidentally snips a picture in half remind them that “It’s okay!  It happens.” and let them know there’s plenty of extras to try again.  If they’re getting EXTREMELY frustrated model taking deep breaths to calm down.  You might also consider taking a break, get a drink of water, etc. before making another attempt.