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Fun Reading Activities: Color & Trace “The Mare is On the Merry-Go-Round

By Will Willingham 11 Comments

Merry go round featured image
Now, you can help a child learn to read with the young chickens Molly and Joe—two wide-eyed early readers who are full of curiosity, mischief, and mirth—plus, in this fun M edition, characters like a mare, monkeys, medieval mice, and a mermaid! Rich language and amusing illustrations combine with strategies that address how the brain remembers best: pattern, repetition, visual novelty, and multi-sensory experiences.

Molly and Joe 250 High M Cover
Children demonstrate six reading stages, from zero to five (print awareness to analysis and reasoning). This multi-level Molly and Joe Want to Know reader serves stages zero to two: print awareness, sound and letter pairing, and automatic reading.

You can use the Reader to read for pleasure (even for babies!); then teach the letter m; then teach or reinforce other sound/letter relationships, high-frequency words, new vocabulary, and writing.

In a move-quickly-from-one-thing-to-the-next culture, it can be surprising to learn that stage two learners benefit from repeated experience with the same texts and materials, until reading is automatic.

To make the necessary repetition easy and fun, we’ve included simple games with cut-out materials (all reusable) and activities in the Reader. You’ll find Color & Trace Pages, Merry-Go-Round Matching, Story Cards (for Matching, Story Train, Partners in Rhyme, and Story Challenge games), Letter Dress-Up Cards (for sound and letter associations and word building), and Sentence Builders.

Color and Trace “The Mare is On the Merry-Go-Round”

Merry Go Round Coloring

Download Free Coloring Page

Our Color & Trace pages help teach high-frequency words, develop fine motor skills and handwriting, and solidify memory of the letter m or other sound/letter relationships.

So maybe you’re looking for extra, fun reading activities to support the learn-to-read journey. To that end, we’re sharing: “The Mare is On the Merry-Go-Round.”  If you’ve already got the Molly and Joe reader, then you have other fun coloring pages that teach high-frequency words.

5 Fun Facts About Merry-Go-Rounds

1. Some stories about the origins of the merry-go-round, or carousel, date back to Byzantine times and are a bit gruesome, and we’ll let you look those up on your own. Others, which we’re more interested in, relate the origins to jousting games. Eventually a wooden model of a carousel was built for children.

2. By the middle of the 1800s, merry-go-rounds were showing up at fairs in England with live animals and chariots.

3. Today, most merry-go-rounds are mechanically operated with models of animals for children to ride on. Thomas Bradshaw created the first steam-powered carousel in 1861 at the Aylsham Fair. The Halifax Courier described it as “a roundabout of huge proportions, driven by a steam engine which whirled around with such impetuousity, that the wonder is the daring riders are not shot off like cannon- ball, and driven half into the middle of next month.”

4. Most often the merry-go-round is populated by horses, but manufacturers like the Herschell-Spillman Company in the late 1800s made carousels with kangaroos, pigs, giraffes, sea monsters, frogs, and dogs and cats.

5. The animals are made from metal and wood, and painted by artists. In some cases they may have 30 or more coats of paint.

Watch a Video About Craftsmen Who Build Carousels

 

Merry-Go-Round Limerick Poetry Prompt

Try your hand at a limerick about merry-go-rounds and mares. Use the “fun facts” as inspiration if you like. Need more inspiration? Check out our limerick infographic.

Molly and Joe 250 High M Cover

Give the Gift of Reading Now!

This book is so much fun! I used it with about 10 Kindergarten and first graders who are labeled as “at-risk,” (I like to call them my promising students), and we had a blast reading the poem and doing the activities. The poem produces giggles and conversation, and the activities are easy to prepare and fun to complete! Plus, I love that I can use the activities over again. This is a must have in a teacher’s classroom.

—Callie Feyen, at-risk literacy specialist

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Will Willingham
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Will Willingham
Director of Many Things; Senior Editor, Designer and Illustrator at Tweetspeak Poetry
I used to be a claims adjuster, helping people and insurance companies make sense of loss. Now, I train other folks with ladders and tape measures to go and do likewise. Sometimes, when I’m not scaling small buildings or crunching numbers with my bare hands, I read Keats upside down. My first novel is Adjustments.
Will Willingham
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Filed Under: Learn to Read, Limerick, Literacy, Literacy Starts With Love, Molly and Joe Want to Know

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About Will Willingham

I used to be a claims adjuster, helping people and insurance companies make sense of loss. Now, I train other folks with ladders and tape measures to go and do likewise. Sometimes, when I’m not scaling small buildings or crunching numbers with my bare hands, I read Keats upside down. My first novel is Adjustments.

Comments

  1. L.L. Barkat says

    March 7, 2018 at 4:38 pm

    Oh, the video! I was wishing for even more detail. Why did it never occur to me that carousels are made of wood? (Metal seemed the more likely, and I see they are made of that too, sometimes.)

    Definitely glad I never rode the steam-powered version. (That quote is funny. 🙂 )

    Reply
    • Will Willingham says

      March 8, 2018 at 8:20 am

      Well, I think the wooden versions are definitely preferable to the models used by the folks in the Byzantine era. 🙂 And I’m grateful there was no video for that. 😉

      Reply
  2. Megan Willome says

    March 8, 2018 at 9:55 am

    There was a carousel I loved as a child near the zoo in San Antonio at Kiddie Park (yes, that’s the official name). Later my husband and I realized we’d both played at that park as children–we might have even sat next to each other on the carousel.

    Reply
    • Sandra Heska King says

      March 8, 2018 at 12:30 pm

      That’s a fun thought! My husband and I realized years and years into our marriage that we’d actually grown up on the same street/road–about 200 miles apart. He had a real mare. Then he got me one. Now no mares at all–but we’re a dizzy duo. 😉

      Reply
  3. Donna Falcone says

    March 8, 2018 at 4:18 pm

    There once was a white knuckled rider
    Who’s mamma was right there beside her
    “AUNT DONNA!” she screamed
    “I’m NOT FALLIN!” she beamed!
    Undeniable strength grew inside her!

    Reply
    • Katie says

      March 8, 2018 at 5:09 pm

      Oh, Donna – what a fun, happy memory:)
      SO enjoyed your limerick!

      Was very interesting to visit the links – the next Carousel Works video after the one in link gives much more info!

      I’ve written a couple of carousel limericks, but like my cinquain better):

      Costing only a pound
      to go round and round and round,
      He took the big dare
      and jumped on the mare,
      loving that carousel’s every sound.

      horses
      standers, jumpers
      flashing eyes, flying manes
      bejeweled saddles, leather reins
      spinning

      LW, Thanks for a great “ride!” 🙂

      Reply
      • Donna Falcone says

        March 9, 2018 at 12:11 pm

        Thank you Katie…. love those flashing eyes!

        Reply
    • Sandra Heska King says

      March 10, 2018 at 9:48 pm

      Love it!

      Reply
      • Katie says

        March 11, 2018 at 9:33 am

        Thank you, Sandra:)

        Reply
  4. Donna Falcone says

    March 8, 2018 at 4:24 pm

    I grew up not far from a Dentzel Carousel that I don’t remember riding until I was an adult… I think this is because it was closed for years and then wonderfully refurbished! OH how I love that merry go round…. and my limerick is true, and happened there when my niece rode for the first time.

    Reply
    • Donna Falcone says

      March 8, 2018 at 4:25 pm

      Wooden… hand carved, hand painted, exquisite.

      Reply

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