Retell Literacy Center Activity – Swimmy

How do you introduce your literacy center time? I use natural activities we do in the classroom as the basis for our literacy centers in our classroom like the retell center. This is how I created a ‘Swimmy’ retell activity to go in our retell center as the introduction for my kindergarten students. They learn to practically memorize this book based off of our multiple readings, discussions and whole group retelling.

My kinders get to choose the book(s) they want to retell while they are at this literacy center, but when they first go, this is one of their first two choices. They read, they act, they use lots of great vocabulary and are developing fantastic reading habits all while continuing to build their love of reading.

Swimmy Retell (Literacy Center Activity)

It’s one of my favorite literacy centers and we usually introduce Swimmy the third week (or fourth) of school.  I love the simplicity of the characters, the language and the BEAUTIFUL illustrations. Here are the props I made rather inexpensively (and you can too) to bring the book alive once we knew it by heart. Side note, the beanie babies were donated but I know you can easily find them at a garage sale or keep your eye out at the dollar store!

And yeah, those are some hand drawn characters and ocean animals from the book. I tried to follow the basic shapes and used markers to color everything. I simply traced outline I wanted in marker and added coloring with markers on the lobster, sea anemones and eel. It’s one of my least artistic of any props I made, but they work! (Note: the little red fish are simply mass cutouts I did by hand – they have no added details)

Go back to read the Retell Literacy Center Directions {in case you missed it}

You can make this kindergarten activity yourself! Here are the materials you’ll need…