What better way to learn about colours then to make them yourself?

Here I provided 2 Primary colours (red and blue) and a shade (white) along with a small canvas and said, "Go for it!"

 Squeezing out paint requires a lot of concentration. We're practicing our hand-eye coordination at the moment. "It's coming out squiggly, Mummy" Also developing language.

 No better way to mix paints than with your hands. A tactile experience, and did we mention, fun!

 "My hands are purple like my canvas"

 "Some bits are blue, some bits are red and some bits are purple. I can't see any white!"

How to remove some of the excess paint off our hands? Purple hand printing!

Some tips:

- Simplify this activity by only providing 2 Primary Colours and leave the shade out

- Extend this activity by providing all 3 Primary Colours and have your child experiment till they make the chosen colour (eg, Purple)

- Ask questions to help connect their understanding eg. "How did you make purple?" "Which colours did you start with? What did the white do? etc

- Listen to your child talk as they go through their experiences. This will help you determine where they are at with their learning, knowledge and understanding and help you to develop the activity (or future activities) to their level and interests.


Debs :)

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Today's easy, fun activity helps your child practice their colour and shape recognition as they use focus, concentration, coordination and basic problem solving to try and recreate a simple block construction.

Ages: 2+

Materials: Coloured Blocks

 Start with a basic construction that your child would be able to recreate and explain that you're playing a copy cat game

 Searching through all the blocks to try and find matching colours and shapes

 I've done it. Hang on a minute... Recognising that something doesn't quite look right

 That's BLUE! I don't have blue.

 Very happy with herself for succeeding

 Playing again. Look, same same. Green bridge.

 Ok Mum, your turn to copy MY construction

Some tips:

- Simplify by matching just 1 block colour and shape and build it up to see what your child is capable of

- Extend by making more complicated constructions with extra blocks, colours, shapes, levels and so on.

- Change the game by photographing a range of constructions earlier and giving your child the pictures to try and recreate off

- Have your child make some constructions for you to copy as well so they can observe the processes you go through in order to recreate them

- Discuss the different colours and shapes. 3 dimensional shapes have different names to 2 dimensional shapes. If your child is ready/interested, talk about the names and where you'd see them in real life. eg, Most of the tall buildings in the city are rectangular prisms.

- (PS- Make sure that you do have doubles of all the blocks/colours so that your child can copy your construction exactly... I realised this after discovering that we only have 1 of a particular type of block. Much frustration searching! haha)

Debs :)

Happy playing,

Debs :)

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How to make a simple paper plate colour wheel with toddlers.

This simple activity will promote the learning of colours and encourage literacy and fine motor skills.

To extend this activity to include other learning areas such as division and colour mixing, see the tips section below the pictures.

Divide a paper plate into as many different colour segments as you wish and label with the different colours. 

Use words or letters depending on your focus and write them in the corresponding colour.

 

Provide paper in the various colours to be glued on in a collage style

I provided the paper already ripped and separated into the various colours. We used different shades of the same colour to talk about "light and dark" colours.

Some tips:

- To simplify this activity for younger children who are still learning colour names, try separating a plate into 3 segments for the Primary Colours (Red, Blue and Yellow) before adding in Secondary colours.

- To extend this activity, bring numeracy skills into the mix by having your child help with the division of the segments on the plate. You could also have the child rip or cut up the paper themselves OR even have them paint the paper themselves and do the colour mixing to make the secondary colours.

- For an added challenge, have your child practice sorting by mixing all the coloured paper pieces together at the start and then encourage them to sort into the different colours.

- Attach a cardboard arrow to the centre of the plate with a split pin to use the colour wheel for games. Eg, spin the arrow and then find something around the house that's the same colour as the arrows pointing to.

- Use pictures cut out of a magazine instead of coloured paper. Have your child separate the pictures into the different colours and stick on.


Debs :)

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Today we made our "Little Critters" to live in our Pasta Shell Houses. My daughter has been asking me about doing these ever since we made the little "houses" so we finally got around to doing it.

This seemingly simple little activity really tests your child's fine motor skills and it ended up being a bit more challenging for my (recently turned) 3 year old than I had first imagined. For tips on how to simplify this activity for your child, please see the "Some tips" section below the pictures.



 To make our critters we used pom poms, pipe cleaners, mini googly eyes and glue

 The first fun job was to choose the colours for our critters body and then choose which coloured pipe-cleaners to use for the arms. Use this time to teach or reinforce colour knowledge. Maddie was very insistent on most of the critters having "matching" bodies and arms.

 Here comes the tricky part. Holding down the pom pom to wrap the pipe cleaner around the middle

 Carefully pull the pipe cleaner so that it's tight around the middle of the pom pom.

I then trimmed the arms to the desired length.

 Glue two little dots for the eyes

 Then stick on the eyes

Our little critter family with their pasta shell houses

Some tips:

-To simplify this activity you may need to put the arms on yourself and just let your child do the colour choosing and gluing the eyes on. Just using their pincer grip to pick up the tiny googly eyes can be quite challenging, not to mention the coordination required to hold the little critter while sticking them on.

- Extend this activity by letting your child do the trimming of the pipe cleaners themselves

- Demonstrating the easiest way to wrap the pipe cleaner around the pom pom first might save some frustrations. As might lending a helping hand here and there.

- Use this activity for counting practice and colour matching if you like.

- Make a play scene (playing environment) for your critters and their houses. Use this for imaginative play.

Happy playing,

Debs :)

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