Sorting and Spooning A Rainbow of colour!

Sorting and spooning are a staple activity in a Montessori classroom. Since my room is a combination of both emergent ECE and Montessori - this activity fits right in.

In this activity the children will use the corresponding spoon and bowl to spoon and sort the beads into the correct bowl.

I gotta say I love the dollar store - I wish I had stock in it because I could spend a thousand dollars a day! I just love this bowl and spoon set I got for $1.50. Never underestimate what you can put together with a few dollar store finds.

What's on the light box

The light box is so fun!

I gave the children plastic mobile pieces to use on the light box.

They work really well and I love the shapes and colours.

I added plastic page dividers which I cut into halves.

The two items worked well together.

I wanted to note that I used those repositionable gel stickers for Valentines and they stained the surface of the table.

Our table is covered in stick tac paper so we can change it - thankfully!

Count to 10

I found these icecube trays on Saturday and I wanted to use them right away! I came up with this activity.

I had some dollar store dowels....

....I measured them to fit the tray.

My hubby cut them to size for me!

I sanded the rough ends with an emery board - I couldn't find my sand paper - LOL

I prepared the tray to hold the dowels while they dried. I used stick tack pressed into the tray.

I painted each dowel a different colour so we could use this for a colour activity as well.

Then I Mog Poged them!

The completed project! :)

The kids LOVED this!

Colour activity

This colour activity has some fine motor and counting added in - I love activities that are adaptable for many uses! :)

I was looking for a snack last night and I found these year old tootsie rolls - yes I ate two and I am still alive LOL - then it came to me - this container would be great for the coloured game chips I bought at a garage sale for 10 cents. I also had some sticky tac paper I had bought at a garage sale for 50 cents.

So I covered the container.

Nice eh!

Then I needed to pop out the covering on the slit in the top!

See here?

Presto!

I sorted all the chips I had and took out the coloured ones.

Then I put them together as a colour activity!

I called up each friend to find a specific colour and put it into our container.

They had a great time and did very well identifying the colours!

Later in the afternoon some of the children played with this independently, taking turns and identifying the colours!

Colour all around us

Just like we use common objects to count - we also use common objects while learning to identify colours. In our classroom colour abounds, it's all around us. So using common objects to identify makes learning the colours rational.

Here the children are using Twister hopscotch rings and connector beads to sort the beads into colour groups.

The children also use the mittens seen in this post to match with toys and objects from the room. The mittens are also held up like flashcards and the children yell out the colours they are identifying.

How do you teach colour? Let us know by posting a link below!

Illuminating!

http://www.teachpreschool.org/2011/06/diy-colorful-discs-for-the-light-table-in-preschool/
Look what has been happening over at Teach Preschool! Smart lady! I love these - now I have to source some of these cups. Maybe I'll find some at a garage sale this weekend - LOL!

Playing with colour

I was lucky enough to pick up these plexiglass panels this weekend for FREE - the kids loved them!

They could colour mix - test which ones were translucent, opaque, or transparent.

I don't think they will get tired of playing with these.

Colour Mixing - Follow up!

So today we revisited our colour mixing activity and it went well! 

We each took turns using the droppers and mixing the colours. We got the desired result with no difficulty. The children followed the colour chart for mixing the correct colours. (As seen in the previous post.)
We had reviewed the colours we knew so that the younger children would be able to help identify the colours we were using. In a toddler classroom we have children at different skill levels, so reviews are always important.

Some of the children could use the droppers independantly and others required a bit of assitance, but everyone was anxious to mix their own colours.  

Once we finished with the droppers we moved to the light table to view colour mixing through the baggies of coloured water. At first the baggies had too much water in them, and the colour change was so faint we could hardly see it. So we had to dump out some of the water.

My light table is on an angle it does not lay flat - a flat one would have been better.

Still too much!

OK it was getting there!

We liked this result!

The blue and yellow to make green was really cool!

Neat eh?!



Colour Mixing

This activity was really fun!

We used the droppers to place coloured water into the small dishes and observed the mixed colours. We also lined the clear bottles up and shone a flashlight through them and viewed the colour they made on the surface of a white piece of paper we placed behind them.

I wasn't blogging when we did this - so I will repeat this activity to take pictures and show you our results.

Some colours did not mix when we shone the light through the bottles. I was told by 'Science Bob' that the rounded bottles threw my experiment off. He said I should have tried putting the colours into ziplock bags and hold them up to a window for better results. He also said to experiment with how much coloring to use for the best effect.
OK this weeks activity! :) This will give me a good reason to use my new light table!

The blue and yellow to make green worked great - so did red and yellow to make orange - but not as well - the blue and red to make purple did not work at all.

Here are Science Bob's Links:
http://www.facebook.com/#!/sciencebob
http://www.sciencebob.com/blog/
http://www.sciencebob.com/experiments/

Update to follow! :)

Colour matching

This colour matching activity was done by one of my classroom assistants.She found the dolls at a dollar store in the craft section - she drew the train and glued on coloured paper to match the dolls - we got the paper laminated and put velcro on the dolls and train picture. The children appeared to enjoy this activity very much!

Identifying colours

I tried to find a unique way to introduce colours to my toddler class. I am sure I must have seen this somewhere - or something similar, that inspired me to make these mitts - I'm glad I did. The children really have fun when we use them. When I started using them most of the children did not know their colours. I would hold them up and tell the children the colours - now they hold them up and tell me the colours. The next step was to add shapes.

Once the children could identify all the shapes and all the colours - I now ask them to tell me the colour and the shape. Now the children feel confident enough to take the shapes and colours around the room to match them with things in their environment!
I am so proud of my toddlers! :)