Amanda Feingold Kornhauser, MS, CCC-SLP,TSSLD
Speech & Language Pathologist, Children's Book Author & Illustrator
COLOR ME CREATIVE
COLOR ME CREATIVE: “In Creative City there lived a family, of colorful crayons, as you now can see. Their names were Rosy Red, Opposite Orange, and Yaya Yellow just to name a few. Then there is Gram R. Green, the Purple Prince and Princess, and Alpha Betty Blue.”
The “COLOR ME CREATIVE” book series provides engaging stories accompanied by comprehensive illustrations for parents and educators to easily narrate, provoke interaction, encourage emergent literacy learning, and provide an opportunity to teach critical thinking skills through inviting dialogue on topics that build children’s character. The first edition to the series, “COLOR ME CREATIVE,” introduces each Creative City crayon character, working together to overcome challenges and create adventures. What happens when a bully, who dislikes color with all his might, turns Creative City to only black and white? In the rest of the series, each crayon has his/her own story, targeting areas to grow and develop overall communication skills.
CHILDREN'S EXPERT & AUTHOR: Due to my devotion and love for the field of Speech and Language Pathology, I have created, written, and illustrated this series of seven children’s books designed specifically to foster precise speech and language skills that are pivotal for success in literacy, storytelling, narrative development, and perspective taking. These books specifically target areas crucial for growth and development in speech and language skills and are equally visually enticing and thought provoking. My “COLOR ME CREATIVE” series is targeted towards children between the ages of three and eight, providing a unique, one of a kind, fun and adventurous experience, where each crayon takes on a personality of its own to help children learn.
Character Bio's
Rosy Red - Rosy, the Red Crayon teaches children all about rhyming words, as she takes you on a tour of her house. Rosy will take you to her bedroom, playroom, kitchen, and bathroom. As you explore each room you will learn that all the things in each room follow a specific rhyme pattern (i.e., all things in her bedroom rhyme with “bed,” all things in her bathroom rhyme with “sink,” all things in her living room rhyme with “play,” and all things in her kitchen rhyme with “eat”). Rosy’s book focuses on training and improving phonological awareness skills, which is the understanding of the sound structure of language and the ability to reflect on and consciously manipulate syllables and sounds of speech. Young children’s phonological awareness abilities are excellent predictors of their later reading and spelling performance levels; children with poor phonological awareness abilities often experience greater difficulty learning to read. Blachman1991; Hodson 1994; NRP 2000.
Training in phonological awareness has also been shown to improve speech production, reading accuracy, reading comprehension, and spelling. Gillion 2000.
Opposite Orange - Opposite, the Orange Crayon, teaches children all about opposites. Understanding and learning these targeted opposites and concepts will help children expand their vocabularies and learn how to describe different things. Without these words, we would not know what big was compared to small, and what happy was compared to sad. Opposites allow us to understand that not everything or everyone is the same, and to understand differences in the world around us. Opposites allow us the “opportunity” to challenge our cognitive thinking skills.
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YAYA YELLOW - YAYA, the Yellow Crayon teaches children all about the different times of the year, while presenting readers with increasingly developmentally age-appropriate problems to solve. YAYA’s story is split into four separate sections, one for each season; participation from the reader and the mastery of thinking skills are encouraged by the use of repetition, both within and across the structures of each story. In each story, the reader is invited and encouraged to search for three of YAYA’S yellow “waxprints” to figure out her favorite seasonal activities.
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Gram R. Green- Gram R. Green, the Green Crayon, teaches children about English Grammar rules and sentence structures. Did you know that 70% of the time when we use a verb in English it is an irregular one? That means that learning and using irregular verbs is an essential skill for learning English, though these are the verbs that children most commonly misuse (i.e., saying “I goed there” or “I eated it”). In his book, Gram R. Green teaches and exposes children to a variety of commonly misused irregular past tense verbs. Regular verbs have an –ed ending to talk about the past, but irregular verbs do not follow this pattern, and instead take on a pattern of their own. In Gram’s story, he exposes children to a variety of commonly used irregular past tense verbs, as he talks about what he did each day of the week while his parents were on vacation.
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Alpha Betty Blue.- Alpha Betty Blue, the Blue Crayon, teaches children about the alphabet, specifically the alphabetic principle, which is the relationship between written letters and the sounds they make and represent. In her story, Betty Blue shares her Alphabet Cheer to teach readers the names of the letters, the sounds they make, and a word to help increase understanding and recall. Children’s reading development is dependent on their understanding of this principle. Learning that there are predicable relationships between sounds and letters allows children to apply these relationships to both familiar and unfamiliar words, and then begin to read with fluency. By Kindergarten, children should be able to identify and produce the most common sounds associated with individual letters, blend sounds of individual letters to read one-syllable words, and recognize and read words by sight.
Prince Purple and Princess Pink- Princess Purple, the Purple Crayon, and Princess Pink, the Pink Crayon, teach children about the social use of language, also known as Pragmatics. Princess Purple, who is the most proper and polite of all the crayons, has a sister, Princess Pink, whose behavior is very unexpected. While the King and Queen are away, Prince Purple promises to help teach his sister the best social graces. Pragmatic language involves three major communication skills: using language for different purposes (i.e., greeting, informing, promising, requesting) changing language according to the needs of a listener or a situation (i.e., talking to a child verse adult, giving background information) and following rules for conversation and storytelling (i.e., taking turns, staying on topic, using nonverbal communication, facial expressions and eye contact). Throughout the story, the Prince will teach the Princess about good hygiene, taking turns with friends, using kind words (i.e., please, thank you, I’m sorry, excuse me), and following directions.