Choose a Story
We’ve had another fun day playing with colour today. Floss and I usually always share stories through books. Today, I was horrified that I couldn’t find my copy of ‘Brown Bear, Brown Bear’ by Eric Carle and so I decided to do something I never do and use the computer. We found a video of the story being read and played it a couple of times. Floss was really excited to have a book on the computer – I still missed the real book in my hands! However, it was lovely for her to hear a new voice reading a story.
Match Resources to the Text
I cut out some pictures, of the animals from the book, on Twinkl; they were free to download. Floss watched me cutting out – fascinated. It got me thinking that she’s quite good with fine motor control and that I might try and hunt down a pair of scissors that are age appropriate for her. As each one was laminated I put them on the hard floor in our kitchen and Floss eagerly attempted to 
pick them up. It was definitely a challenge and a great fine motor activity without any planning. She spent over 10 minutes picking up the different animals. For older toddlers you could definitely get them to help with the cutting out.
Introduce New Language
Floss loves pointing to things that you name, so we had a game of me saying the animal and her pointing to which animal. Each time she pointed I said, for example, ‘yes, that’s the yellow duck’. Adding in the colour to the noun she already knows. When I then changed to just saying a colour she could find the blue and green animal. This is a great way to introduce new vocabulary.
Build on Past Experiences
Later we used the laminated, coloured cards from yesterday and together we matched the animals with the colours. I think it would be really interesting to do this activity with older children and for them to discuss where the cat and the fish should really go as there are pink and yellow on them too. Would be great to hear the children’s reasoning skills at play. Independently, Floss put some of her Duplo bricks on some corresponding colours (as we did in the treasure hunt game in the previous post), some also ended up all over the place!
Sing Sing Sing
Before nap time we sang songs; teachingmama.org has a great selection of songs about colours. There was a lot of ‘boo, boo’ echoing going on, Floss’s word for blue after car spotting yesterday!
Get Messy (or not)!
Finger painting was hilarious! When did Floss decide she didn’t like to get messy? You’ll notice there are a lot of large (my) finger prints and only a handful of little person prints. The faces she pulled when the paint was on her fingers was so funny. I sat there thinking I can’t believe this is the same kiddo who, 6 months ago, poured a tray of baked beans over her head while sat in gloop. We need to do more messy stuff!
Crayons went down a lot more smoothly in the afternoon. I know in the previous post I said orange is the favourite colou
r, but I think Floss’s allegiance has changed to ‘boo’, I mean blue. Lot’s of ‘boo, boo’ with the blue crayon. We did try out a few different types of crayons that are for toddlers. Testing still in progress. We’ll update on the website soon with our recommendations for crayons for toddlers.
Independent Play
At the end of the day I found her going to the strips of coloured card that she had yesterday and blocks. She stacked blocks on top of each other with matching cards. Sorry no photos – like yours – our home is real – I was cooking dinner!
Busy Busy Tips
- Go with their interests
- Books are fabulous, but sometimes it’s great to mix it up with other media.
- Get messy!
- Use new language in a range of ways and contexts to help little learners learn new words.
- Opportunities to play with familiar resources/ toys.
