Learning About Colours | learning 4 kids

Learning Colours – Orange

Posted by Janice on May 15, 2013 4 Comments

Come play with the colour ORANGE!

As part of our Learning Colours Series here on learning4kids, today I am sharing with you some of the activities we have been doing as we explore and play with the colour ORANGE. Our ‘orange activities’ involved reading The Big Orange Splot followed by some ‘splot’ painting, also playing with orange water beads, orange play dough and making a orange sensory ice box.

By completing all these activities we are not only learning about the colour orange but we are also promoting other learning, development and skills building.

If you have only just joined our Learning Colours Series here on learning4kids and would like to find out more, click here

ORANGE SPLOT PAINTING

A fun and simple activity which involves reading the story The Big Orange Splot by Daniel Manus Pinkwater followed by making orange paint ‘splots’ with oranges cut in half pressed into paint. Books are a great way to introduce new ideas and concepts and this story is perfect for introducing the colour orange.

I set up our activity table with newspaper and placed 2 orange cut in half faced down onto an orange paint tray. Kids will love to create their own ‘splots’ with paint and cut oranges on paper!

ORANGE SCENTED PLAY DOUGH

Making Orange Scented Play Dough is a great way to create a fun sensory learning experience that promotes fine motor development, creativity and learning the colour orange. We have used this play dough before in a previous activity with Number Play Dough Mats.

Click here to view and print Orange Scented Play Dough Recipe

Click here to view the full activity Number Play Dough Mats and print your FREE Number Play Dough Mats.

ORANGE ICE CUBE SENSORY BOX

Another orange activity Miss 2 had fun playing with was an Orange Ice Sensory Box. I filled a jug of water and added a few drops of orange food colouring and then filled a range of different shape containers, some small and some larger ones. I placed the containers onto a tray and into the freezer. When frozen the colour appears to be a more pale orange.

To make the ice sensory box a little more fun we added a small amount of bright orange water (food colouring) to the box, a pair of tongs and different orange objects to create an invitation to play in an unstructured and creative way. I added the tongs to encourage Miss 2 to pick up the ice blocks.

We also have a Blue Artic Ice World here on Learning4kids.

ORANGE WATER BEADS

I absolutely love water beads, so when I found these orange ones I thought it would be perfect for our learning the colour orange activities. On our activity table I laid out a bowl of orange water beads, an orange spoon and orange cupcake pans. Miss 2 spent hours picking up the water beads with the orange spoon and placing them into the cupcake holders.

OTHER ORANGE ACTIVITY IDEAS

Threading Beads: Threading ORANGE beads onto ORANGE pipe cleaners.
Wear ORANGE for a day: Dress your child and/or yourself wearing the colour orange for the day. Where your favourite green scarf or socks.
ORANGE Discovery Box: Go on a ‘orange treasure hunt’ around the house with a box and fill it with as many orange things as you can find. You can involve your child or make the discovery box for your child to explore. A box filled with so many ‘orange’ treasures to pull out to touch and feel, smell, listen to, look at and explore.
Make an ORANGE morning tea: Cut up a range of orange foods such as carrots, melon and oranges for morning tea.
Sing Songs about the colour ORANGE: You can basically take any song and replace some words with the colour green. Why not make up your own song or chant with the word orange?
ORANGE Bath: Fill the bath with water and add a few drops of orange food colouring and orange balloons filled with water. Adding bubbles makes it even more fun!

Click on the links to see our other Colour Activities from our Learning Colours Series

RED

YELLOW

BLUE

PINK

GREEN

Filed Under: Themes Play | Tagged: Tagged With: Learning about colours

DIY Skittles & Games

Posted by Janice on December 5, 2012 2 Comments

Our Homemade Skittles would have to be one of the most played with toys in our house. My girls are continuously finding new and fun things to do with them. I have seen them become pretend food and drink in imaginative play games, used to create barriers or goals in ball games and they have also become music shakers. With these in mind there are two main games we love to play with our Homemade Skittles, Skittles Bowling and Hide & Seek Skittles.

What you will need?

You will need 10 clear empty plastic bottles, rice, colour labels (optional), food colouring and a ball.

We placed half a cup of rice into each plastic bottle and added a few drops of food colouring, placed on the lid and gave the bottle a good shake until all the rice was covered.

We also placed colour labels on each of the bottles as a way to encourage reading and visual awareness of these words. I wanted my kids to label and name the bottles by colour and be repetitively exposed to the written word.

SKITTLE BOWLING

Skittle Bowling is much like a game of 10 Pin Bowling but using our own homemade bottles.

Arrange the bottles into a triangular shape and mark a line from where kids are to roll the ball. The aim is to knock over as many skittle bottles as possible. It is up to you if you would like to keep score but this did not seem important to my kids as their total aim was to knock over as many as possible and beat their own personal best.

HIDE & SEEK SKITTLES

Hide & Seek Skittles is a great game that can be played both indoors and outdoors depending on the weather. It involves one person hiding all 10 Coloured Skittles and another person finding them. You will often hear conversations between my kids, “I have only found 8 which means there are 2 more hiding” or “the Red and Green ones are not found yet”.

GAMES ARE IMPORTANT FOR KIDS:

Games are so important for kids to play as they learn so many important skills by playing them.

Turn taking and sharing
Getting along skills and problem solving
Negotiation and language skills
Team player and sportsmanship
Mathematics through score counting
Self-esteem
Physical and emotion development
Gross motor, fine motor, coordination and balance

For more Colour Activities click here: EXPLORING COLOURS

For more Active Play Activities click here: ACTIVE PLAY

Learning Colours – PINK

Posted by Janice on November 18, 2012 8 Comments

So far on our colour series here on learning4kids, we have looked the colour RED, BLUE, YELLOW and GREEN. This week we have been playing with the colour PINK!! With having 3 girls in our house, pink is not a hard colour to find!

We have had lots of fun reading the wonderful story Pinkalicious by Victoria and Elizabeth Kann, making wonderful pink play dough creations, practising our fine motor skills with pink pompoms and patty pans, creating pink cupcake collages and some pink sensory play in a pink theme bath with pink flower petals.

If you are looking for more colour activities and play ideas check out our list of EXPLORING COLOURS PAGE

PINK POMPOMS & PATTY PANS

A wonderful and simple hands-on activity to promote the learning of the colour pink and fine motor development as well is playing with pink pompoms, patty pans and mini tongs. Miss 2 had lots of fun picking up the different size pompoms and placing them into the patty pans.

PINKALICIOUS CUPCAKE COLLAGE

Books are a wonderful way of exploring and learning about a new colour and then extending the learning into an activity. We have been reading the story Pinkalicious by Victoria and Elizabeth Kann about a little girl who makes pink cupcakes with her Mum on a rainy day. Without giving too much of the story away, the little girl over indulges on pink cupcakes and turns pink herself. It is a lovely story and we decided to extend the learning about the colour pink and create a pink cupcake collage. We used anything pink we could find around the house. We tore up pink crepe paper, cut up pink straws and pipe cleaners, we also had pink pompoms, buttons, patty pans and pink foam shapes.

Miss 2 covered the cupcake printable with PVA craft glue with a paint brush and randomly placed all the pink craft materials onto the glue and cupcake, covering as much of the surface as possible.

You can download and print this cupcake to create your own Pink Cupcake Collage here: Printable Cupcake

PINK PLAY DOUGH CREATIONS

The possibilities and things you can make with play dough are endless!! AS part of our learning the colour pink this week we also set up an invitation to play at our play table with some pink glitter play dough. We provided as many fun and creative pink materials as possible to promote creativity and the imagination as well as learning the colour pink. There was pink straws, pink pegs, pop sticks, patty pans, pink beads, feathers and a pink safety play dough knife. Miss 2 loved the pink feathers and sticking them into the pink play dough.

PLAY DOUGH RECIPE HERE: BASIC PLAY DOUGH RECIPE

We have added pink food colouring and dark pink glitter to our basic play dough mix to create our Pink Glitter Play Dough.

SENSORY PINK PETAL BATH FUN

Bringing the fun of learning the colour pink into the bath with a sensory play experience with fake pink flower petals! I scattered the bath water with pink fake flowers and a small amount of food colouring. You do not need a lot of food colour, I basically just ran the lid from the food colouring bottle under the running tap and this seems to be enough to give the water a pale colour of pink. I also had a pink boat and a pink fish which I added also.

OTHER PINK ACTIVITY IDEAS TO TRY:

Wear PINK for a day: Dress your child (and yourself) wearing the colour PINK for the day.
PINK Discovery Box: Go on a ‘PINK treasure hunt’ around the house with a box and fill it with as many PINK things as you can find. A box filled with so many ‘PINK’ treasures to pull out to touch and feel, smell, listen to, look at and explore.
Make PINK Cupcakes or Cookies: Cook cupcakes together and decorate them with PINK icing. This is also a great extension activity to follow on from the story Pinkalicious.
Read Books: Choose books that have PINK pictures in them and point them out but also mentioning the other colours too.
Sing Songs about the colour PINK: You can basically take any song and replace some words with the colour PINK. Why not make up your own song or chant with the word PINK?

So far in our Learning Colours Series we have looked at:

Filed Under: Learning Play | Tagged: Tagged With: Learning about colours, Other Colour Activities

Sorting Colours with Cardboard Rolls

Posted by Janice on October 2, 2012 15 Comments

How to teach colours to toddlers and kids?

Making learning your colours fun with this interactive game using pompoms and cardboard rolls!

Miss 2 has been learning her colours for some time now as we have been focusing on a different colour each week and sharing the activities here in our Colour Series.

Today’s activity is sorting and placing coloured pompoms into the matching coloured cardboard roll and catching them in a bowl.

It was a great way to reinforce the learning of colours, checking for understanding and having some fun with colours.

I think this Sorting Colours with Cardboard Rolls is also a great rainbow activity too!

What you will need?

You will need an assortment of sizes and lengths of cardboard rolls, coloured paint, paint brushes, small bowls, assortment of coloured pompoms and masking tape.

This activity is very simple to organise and set up; firstly we painted the cardboard rolls and allowed them to dry in the sun. We arranged the small bowls out along the glass sliding door and set up the coloured pompoms in a small tray. The cardboard rolls are stuck to the window using double sided masking tape. I love how they are all different lengths and sizes, adding to the variation of this activity.

Tip: At the beginning of the activity place a couple of pompoms in the bowl underneath the matching coloured rolls to support the learning. Also arrange the cardboard rolls at a height that is comfortable for littlies to reach.

This activity was so much fun for Miss 2 as she just loved placing the different coloured pompoms into the matching cardboard rolls and watching them come out the other end. During the activity a lot of language was used reinforcing the different colours and their pronunciation, also a lot of praise and encouragement along the way as Miss 2’s confidence grew as she completed the activity.

One of the great things about this activity is that Miss 2 was using a number of problem solving strategies and self-correction. When she placed the wrong coloured pompom into the cardboard roll and watched as it came out the other end. If the colour was not right she would giggle and say “oh no,” then pick it up to try again. I also noticed that she was carefully looking at the pompom in her hand and trying to match it with the colours already in the bowls before placing it into the matching coloured roll.

Learning Benefits of Sorting Colours

Fun, interactive and motivating!
Great for fine motor development and hand/eye coordination.
Self-correcting and problem solving.
Literacy: Connecting the written word with the colour.
Language skills: naming labelling and pronunciation.
Reinforce and extend learning about colours.

You may also like to try: Sorting Colours with Bottle Tops

Eye Spy with my Little Eye………other AWESOME Cardboard Roll Activities I have ’spotted’ around the web!

My Little Bookcase: Story Skittles – 10 Scared Fish by Ros Moriarty

At Home with Ali: Making a Crane

Mummy Musings and Mayhem: Circle Painting

Learn with Play At Home: Cardboard Tube Marble Run

Boy Mama Teacher Mama: Shiver Me Timbers It’s the Octonauts

Pompom Hockey

Play Dough & Cardboard Rolls

Cardboard Roll People

Toilet Roll Alphabet

Filed Under: Learning Play | Tagged: Tagged With: Learning about colours, Rainbow Activities, Things to make with cardboard tubes

Learning Colours – GREEN

Posted by Janice on September 23, 2012 11 Comments

Colour green activities - learning colours

Come play with the colour GREEN!

As part of our Learning Colours Series here on learning4kids, today I am sharing with you some of the activities we have been doing as we explore and play with the colour green. Our ‘green activities’ involve a Green Tea Party in the bath, reading the book Where is the Green Sheep?, painting with green paint and green play dough.

By completing all these activities we are not only learning about the colour green, we are also exercising and developing many other important skills.

If you have only just joined our Learning Colours Series here on learning4kids and would like to find out more, click here

GREEN TEA PARTY IN THE BATH

Having some sensory fun and learning the colour green in the bath with a Green Tea Party. Miss 2 could have played for hours if the water would stay warm enough but she made countless cups of green tea for her sisters and Dad.

To create this invitation to play Green Tea Party, I added a few drops of green food colouring to the water, a few green plastic cups, plates, and teapot. We also had some stick up green frogs so I added this to the bath also to add some extra ‘greenery’.

To add colour to the water, you do not need a lot of food colour, I basically just ran the lid from the food colouring bottle under the running tap and this seems to be enough to give the water a pale colour of green.

PLAYING WITH GREEN PLAY DOUGH AND BUTTONS

Another green activity Miss 2 had fun playing with was Green Play Dough. To make it a little more fun we added a bowl filled with buttons which allowed for unstructured and creative play. You can read and see more photos about this activity here: Play Dough & Buttons

ROLLING GREEN CARS THROUGH GREEN PAINT

Miss 2 absolutely loves painting and I thought I would this time incorporate the colour green. Rolling green toy cars through light green and dark green paint created some beautiful patterns on the paper. It was a wonderful opportunity for Miss 2 to discover the cause and effect of how paint on the toy car wheels created lines of patterns on the paper. When the paintings were dry, we used them to create our green sheep puppet.

HIDE AND SEEK GREEN SHEEP

Where is the Green Sheep? by Mem Fox is is a great book for learning about the colour green as it repetitively uses the word green throughout the story and encourages Miss 2 to read along with the predictable text. Using the paintings we made with rolling the cars through the green paint we made a green sheep puppet and played many, many games of hide and seek green sheep. Hide and Seek Green Sheep involves hiding the Green Sheep Puppet around the house in obvious places that your child will see instantly and won’t have to search for too hard, such as standing up or leaning on the couch. We would ask Miss 2, where is the green sheep? just like in the book. You can read and see more photos about this activity or print off your very own copy of the green sheep here: Where is the Green Sheep?

OTHER GREEN ACTIVITY IDEAS

Wear GREEN for a day: Dress your child and/or yourself wearing the colour green for the day. Where your favourite green scarf or socks.
GREEN Discovery Box: Go on a ‘green treasure hunt’ around the house with a box and fill it with as many green things as you can find. You can involve your child or make the discovery box for your child to explore. A box filled with so many ‘green’ treasures to pull out to touch and feel, smell, listen to, look at and explore.
Make a GREEN morning tea: Cut up a range of green fruits for morning tea such as green apple, grapes and honey dew melon.
Sing Songs about the colour GREEN: You can basically take any song and replace some words with the colour green. Why not make up your own song or chant with the word green?