Fun Reading Activities: Color & Trace “The Monkeys Have Marshmallows”

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.

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 Monkeys Have Marshmallows”

Download Free Coloring Page

So maybe you’re looking for extra, fun reading activities to support the learn-to-read journey. To that end, we’re sharing: “The Monkeys Have Marshmallows.”  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 Marshmallows

1. Ever wonder how someone came up with the word marshmallow? Well, it turns out the ancient Egyptians, way back around 2000 B.C., were squeezing a sticky sap from the mallow plant (which, you guessed it, grew in marshes) and mixing it with honey and nuts. (That sounds more like nougat to me.)

2. By the 1800s, the French got in the act. Candy makers gathered that sap from the mallow root and whipped it into a frenzy. Well, more into a fluff. Before too long, they stopped using the mallow plant altogether and replaced it with gelatin. So now we can’t pretend anymore that it’s okay to eat as many marshmallows as we want because it’s from a plant.

3. Ever seen that game where someone tries to pack as many marshmallows in their mouth, counting off between each one, “One pudgy bunny, two pudgy bunnies, etc.”? Yeah, you’re right. It’s not pretty. I’m not sure what the world record is for pudgy bunnies (or marshmallows, for that matter) in one’s mouth at one time, but the world record for the most marshmallows eaten in one minute is 25.

4. Did you know you can make your own marshmallows? Here’s a recipe for homemade marshmallows, but be careful. Marshmallows are mostly whipped sugar and gelatin, so it’s a good idea not to eat too many, even if you make them yourself.

5. Everybody’s favorite marshmallow treat, the S’more, is believed to have been created by Girl Scouts back in 1927!

Watch a Video About How Marshmallows Are Made

Marshmallow Limerick Poetry Prompt

Try your hand at a limerick about marshmallows. Use the “fun facts” as inspiration if you like. Need more inspiration? Check out our limerick infographic.

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

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.

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