Color Blue

Today, I'm going to share with you how our week went learning about the color BLUE. Like last week, I started by changing out all of A's toys while she was napping.  I set out a basket of blue markers, crayons, and colored pencils; a basket of blue string with blue beads along with blue animal manipulatives. And I totally forgot to take a picture of all of it! =( I'll try to do better.

We started off by introducing the color/word for A to color with whatever medium she chose (which of course was marker). *note to self - make sure markers are WASHABLE before setting out*

I noticed a considerable difference in the way A concentrated on coloring the individual letters of the words instead of making random markings. I was really impressed! Please excuse the paci in the mouth -we are working on getting rid of that. She normally doesn't have it during the day, but for whatever reason this day, I let her have it. Probably because I was too lazy to fight the battle and deal with the whining that happens alllllll daaayyyy looonnnggg when she doesn't have it too busy teaching to notice I forgot to take it away after nap. We use this sign as a label for her basket of crayons/markers/colored pencils for the week. She will also randomly pick it up and color more of it until the letters are unrecognizable, ha!

One of our art activities was a watercolor of a bluebird. You could also do blueberries, a sky/clouds or even a ball (especially if your child is as obsessed as mine is with them or you are working on the letter "B"). As you can see in the picture, this became a fingerwatercolorpainting. It was a great way to add in a little extra teaching moment about the different mediums you can use to make art AND a bonus sensory activity. I was impressed again with how much better A's painting skills were this week than last.  She really worked hard to fill in the whole bird and didn't make a lot of markings outside of the lines.

For a fine motor activity, we first, colored an empty paper towel roll with a blue marker.  You could also paint it if you want the blue to be a little thicker.  I would actually probably recommend painting because the marker rubbed off on fingers. But I was too impatient to try this activity to wait on paint to dry, so we went with the quick route. =) It was also great practice for holding a marker correctly while coloring something besides paper.  It was kind of hard for even me to hold the roll and color at the same time! After you color/paint, cut the roll into rings. I made 10 rings so we could practice our counting skills, too. Then, I took the paper towel holder and we slid the rings onto the holder. As easy and monotonous as this seemed, A absolutely loved it and played with it for about 30 minutes! To stretch the learning out, we would say "blue" every time she put a ring on, and then count the rings as we took them off. Then switch (count as you put on, say blue as you pull off - or whatever combo suites your fancy).

Here we are repeating the activity another day.  We also wore blue as much as possible - which was pretty easy considering half of her closet is blue! What can I say, I'm a sucker for blue clothes on a blue eyed baby =)

We made a water sensory bin by simply adding blue dish soap (dawn) in our blue bowl and filled with water.  A loves to wash anything and everything! And I'm certainly not complaining! I spread out a blue towel and filled the soapy water with her blue animal manipulatives. Then, she had to dig in and find them.  We counted them as she pulled them out and then did it again and named each animal. This was a big hit. This was actually a spur of the moment activity because she had blue marker all over her from coloring the paper towel roll and it seemed like an easy way to get her hands clean very thought out and planned activity that I spend hours preparing.

Finally, (I know, right...you thought I'd never shut up) I "tested" A by pulling out our red manipulatives from last week and had her sort them onto the correct paper.  I'm not gonna lie - I had to help her on this one. I demonstrated first, then set the animals below the corresponding paper.  Since this was the first time we've done something like this, I wanted her to have as much success as possible so she would enjoy it. I think she was getting the hang of it by the end, though! 

*Some things not pictured that we did were: check out books from the library about BLUE, lay on a blanket outside and talk about the blue sky (make sure it's not a time of day when the sun will blind you), play with blue toys in the bathtub, talked about our blue eyes (our whole family has them), eat blue foods like blueberries (A's favorite food), make blue play dough, make a homemade blue beanbag.

Next week: the color PURPLE