Tot School: Learning Our Colors- Blue and Purple

This is our second week of our Learning Our Colors series.  This week we are learning about blue and purple.  Last week we learned about red and orange, and still to come are yellow and green, and finally brown, white, and black, with a wrap up week at the end.

To begin the week, we went on a blue object hunt.

Our blue collection.

We wanted to use the sticky paper again.  This time, instead of placing it on the table, I hung it on the wall.  Little Guy quickly found out that only light, flat objects would stick.

Only the letters stick!

We read books about the color blue.  One of Little Guy's favorite books is Little Blue Truck by Alice Schertle.  As a follow up to One Red Dot from last week, we looked at Blue 2, another pop-up book by David A. Carter.  This book was a little more difficult to find all the hidden 2's, and I'm not sure we ever found them all!  We also read I Love You, Blue Kangaroo by Emma Chichester Clark.

Our book page for blue was a bluebird.  To make the bird, Little Guy first had to go through the bag of feathers and pull out the blue ones.  This was a great beginning sorting activity.  Then we smeared glue onto our paper, and Little Guy got to work.

Adding some feathers.

Don't forget the head.

Our bluebird!

 Some other things we did with the color blue are:

• We wore blue shirts during the week.
• We played with our blue rice sensory bin.
• We played with blue Model Magic.
• We ate blue food, including blueberries and blueberry muffins.

Our blue week was cut short by the long weekend (meaning extra day with Daddy!) and Little Guy not feeling well on one day.  However, since we had recently had a blue day and Little Guy can pretty consistently recognize the color blue, I wasn't too upset.

Halfway through our work week, we switched to the color purple.   Some of the ideas for purple week came from Play Create Explore and some others came from Simple. Home. Blessings.

To begin working with purple, we went on a purple object hunt.

Our purple collection.

We read books about the color purple.  One was Clarence Goes Out West and Meets a Purple Horse by Jean Ekman Adams.  This is a charming book about a pig (Clarence) who becomes great friends with Smoky (the purple horse).  (I know we missed out on Harold and the Purple Crayon.  We will enjoy this book during our rainbow week at the end!)

As fine motor practice, visual discrimination, and to practice some of the alphabet, I had Little Guy look for purple stickers.  We had a large sheet of alphabet stickers in different colors.  Little Guy had to look for the purple letters.  Originally, Little Guy was trying to get them off of the sheet, but it was too big, so he would point it out and I would pull it off the sheet.  As I gave him the sticker, I would tell him the name of the letter.

I want that sticker!

It goes right there!

Hamming it up for the camera!

Last week during our red week, we made this red shaking bottle.  I filled a bottle half full with water, added a couple of tablespoons of dish soap and a couple of tablespoons of red tempera paint.  When it is shaken, it would fill with red bubbles!  Little Guy really enjoyed shaking the bottle.  To use it again, I added a couple of tablespoons of blue tempera paint.

Our red shaking bottle.

Not much is happening yet.

Whoa!   It's purple!

The purple page for our color book was a snail.

Our purple snail!

 Some other things we did with the color purple are:

• We made purple dirt dough using grape Kool Aid, then took it in the bath to make a purple bath.
• We ate purple food, including grapes and plums.
• We put purple beads onto a purple pipe cleaner. 

This activity  is linked to Kids Crafts and Early Learning Link Up!

Color Practice: Throwing blocks

Little Guy is getting pretty good at recognizing different colors.  As a way to practice, I will have him identify colors of various things.  One thing that works well for this is a set of rubber blocks.  In the set, there are 2 blue, 2 red, 2 yellow, 2 green, and 2 orange.  In addition to practicing color recognition, we can use these blocks to work on some large motor skills; in this case, throwing.

I gave Little Guy the blocks and had him stand at the edge of the carpet.  (This provided a natural boundary that he did not cross and kept him from dropping the blocks into the basket.)  I set a laundry basket about 2-3 feet in front of him.  He had to identify the color of the block, then throw it into the laundry basket.  It turned out quite fun!

Thanks to No Time for Flash Cards for the inspiration for this activity!

How do you incorporate large motor skills into your other learning activities?

Homegrown Salad

Our tomatoes are starting to ripen in our garden!  I love biting into a tomato that is still warm from the sun.  It doesn't get much fresher than that!

Since we are getting more tomatoes and cucumbers from the garden, I wanted to make a simple salad that Little Guy could help with.  So we made a cucumber salad.  However, this is not just any cucumber salad, it is a star shaped cucumber salad!

Tomatoes, fresh from the garden.

Working hard to punch out stars!

Little Guy worked hard on stars (and he only ate about 1/4 of them)!

Look at the cute little stars!

Cucumbers are ready.

Stir it together.

Yummy!

We added a little bit of Italian dressing and some Parmesan cheese when we were ready to eat!  What a fun way to eat some vegetables!

What have you made with your homegrown produce?

Tot School: Learning Our Colors- Red and Orange

Welcome to the Learning Our Colors Series!  Each week for the next few weeks we will be focusing on two colors.  This week we are learning about red and orange, next week will be blue and purple, then yellow and green, and finally brown, white, and black, with a wrap up week at the end.  Each color will have sensory, fine motor, and craft activities, as well as reading and a culminating page for a book.  Some of the ideas for this week came from Play Create Explore

To begin the week, we went on a red hunt, looking for red objects.

Our collection of red objects.

Then we did a series of activities with the color red.  One day we went rock collecting, then painted the rocks red, added googley eyes, and painted black dots to make ladybugs!

Painting the rocks red.

Adding those black dots.

Look at our cute ladybugs!

We spent time reading books.  We read many books about colors.  Two of Little Guy's favorite books were Pete the Cat: I Love My White Shoes by Eric Litwin and One Red Dot, a pop-up book by David A. Carter. We read One Red Dot multiple times each day to see the wonderful pop-up creations!  Little Guy quickly became an expert at finding the red dot on each page!

Each week we are working on fine motor activities as well.  Using the red pasta wheels, Little Guy was working to fill in a rectangle.  The rectangle is covered with sticky paper. 

However, he quickly lost interest in that activity, so we decided to stick his red collection to the sticky paper instead.

They all stick!

 As a culminating activity for each color, we will make a page to go into a color book.  For red, Little Guy made an apple, filled in with little squares of paper.  He cut the paper into strips, then cut the strips into squares before gluing them on.

Little Guy's red apple page.

Some other things we did with the color red are:

• We wore red shirts during the week.
• We played with our red pasta wheel sensory bin.
• We cut an apple in half and did apple stamping with paint.
• We made some new red Kool Aid scented playdough.
• We ate red food, including apples and tomatoes.

About halfway through the week, we started learning about the color orange, so we went on an orange object hunt.

Our orange collection.

We had a snack of orange Jell-O!

My Jell-O can jiggle!

As a fine motor and sensory activity, we made a sand tray with orange paper on the bottom.

Shaking the salt around.

Wow!  Look at me draw in the sand.

We also played with orange shaving cream!

My hands are orange!

Our culminating activity was to make a fish.  We used orange craft foam.  This turned out to be too hard for Little Guy to cut, so I ended up cutting the squares.  We smeared white glue all over the fish to make sure that the squares would stay.

Little Guy's orange fish page.

Some other things we did with the color orange are:

• We wore orange shirts, or shirts that had orange on them, during the week.
• We ate orange food, including oranges, Jell-O, and carrots.
• We drank out of an orange cup.
• We identified lots of orange at a trip to Home Depot!