Mouse Paint Book Companion Preschool Kindergarten 1st 2nd Sped

About this resource

One theme, one week. Read the same book every day at circle time: three mice hide from a hungry

cat by climbing into jars of paint, and discover that mixing two colors together makes a brand new

one. After the read-aloud each day, pull one simple activity: sort colors from everyday things,

count paint buckets, find the letter M, put the steps of getting ready to hide and paint in order,

then build a mouse craft with ears, a tail, a paintbrush, a paint bucket and five colors of paint.

Every student page has one short instruction with a picture, so a paraprofessional can run the room

from it too.

This week pairs with **Mouse Paint by Ellen Stoll Walsh** (or any gentle color-mixing story you

already have). This resource is not affiliated with or endorsed by the author or publisher. You need

your own copy of the book; nothing from it is reproduced here, and every picture in the file is our

own drawing or a licensed picture set, not the book's artwork.

EVERYTHING INSIDE (58 pages)

• 1 Start Here week plan: what to do after the read-aloud each day, plus what else it practices
• 1 book-and-words page naming the read-aloud, an original circle-time chant ("Hide and Mix,"

written for this unit — no song or story text is reprinted), and the 9 circle-time vocabulary words

• 9 smartboard slides for whole-group circle time on a projector or interactive board: the cover art,

name the pictures, sort, count (3 slides), the letter hunt, the life skill in order, and the core

word

• 9 circle-time vocabulary cards to cut out and use at the carpet (mouse, cat, paintbrush, bucket,

red, blue, yellow, purple, green — the five colors are our own hand-drawn circles, never an emoji

color swatch)

• Day 1, Sort (is it a color, or not?), at 3 levels: Level 1 errorless matching, Level 2 the

standard two-group sort (8 cut-and-glue pieces), Level 3 a third group added (a color, a mouse

thing, or not a mouse thing — 10 cut-and-glue pieces), both levels agreeing on what counts as a

color

• Day 2, Count the paint buckets, at 3 levels: Levels 1 and 2 count sets of 1 to 5 with a 5-piece

numeral strip to cut and glue; Level 3 counts sets of 6 to 10 and writes the number, no cutting

• Day 3, Letter M, at 3 levels: Level 1 glues 5 matching M's, Level 2 finds M among 10 look-alike

letters, Level 3 says 10 pictures aloud and glues the 5 that start like "mouse"

• Writing, at 3 levels: Level 1 traces the big letters, Level 2 traces letters and the word "mouse,"

Level 3 writes the letters and the word independently on primary lines

• Day 4, a life-skill sequencing page: 5 picture pieces (4 real getting-ready-to-hide-and-paint

steps — see the cat, find the paint, climb in and turn red, hide very still — first/next/then/

last, plus 1 that does not belong)

• Day 5, a book craft: color and cut a plain standing mouse, then a sheet of 10 pieces (two ears,

a tail, a paintbrush, a paint bucket, and five colors of paint — every cut a straight dashed

rectangle) and glue them onto the mouse hiding on an open sheet-of-paper scene

• 2 fine motor pages: a tracing-paths page and a cutting-practice page (4 strips, easiest first)
• 4 core-word pages for the word of the week, "hide": a big word card for the talker or core board,

a 12-word find-and-circle grid (6 of the 12 are the target word "hide"), a mouse to color (ears

and tail already drawn on, for the simplest level of this task), and 10 color pictures to cut out

and glue around it

• 1 "Who Did What This Week" data page (one row per student, a prompt-level code for each day —

handy for IEP notes and progress reports)

• 1 family letter to send home on Day 1
• 1 "More From Bright Path Sped" page: four more theme weeks that pair naturally with this one, shown

with their own real covers

• 1 credits page (art and font licenses)
• Ink-saver twins of 19 picture-based student pages (the craft and pure-coloring pages are

color-only) in outline art for a photocopier, so the color pages above are optional, not required

Three Levels On Every Academic Task

Sort, count, letters and writing each come in three levels, marked with a small shape instead of

a number so children don't compare theirs to a neighbor's: a circle for starting (errorless

matching), a square for building (the standard task), a triangle for ready for more (a real step

up — a third sort group, counting 6 to 10 with writing, or beginning sounds).

Cutting Built For Small Hands

Every cutting page carries 5 or more pieces, lined up edge to edge so each cut is one straight

line. Pre-cut them yourself for students who are not cutting independently yet.

Color Or Ink-Saver

Print the color pages, or use the ink-saver twins at the back on a photocopier — most

picture-based student pages have both (the craft and pure-coloring pages are color-only by design).

Who This Is For

Any teacher starting a self-contained preschool or early childhood special education classroom

who wants a whole week of circle time, ready to pull and go: one theme, a different simple

activity every day.

What This Is, And What It Is Not

A print-and-go weekly theme unit built around three little mice who hide from a cat by turning

colors. It is not a claim about any student's age or rate of progress, and it does not reproduce any

book, its text, or its artwork — only our own mouse, ear, tail, paintbrush, bucket and color-circle

pieces are drawn here. The sorting activity ("is it a color, or not?") is a simple classroom sorting

task, not a scientific or clinical claim.