Learning and exploring colours
As you get to know Rueben and I more, you will see I try to focus on one topic for a length of time to help really enforce the learning we are doing at home. Over November, we looked a lot at colours and did a few activities, learnt some Makaton signs and learnt a song in Makaton to help learn colours. Here is some of what we got up to during November.
Colour sorting
Our first activity was a nice simple one that we have repeated over and over, at first it was quite a challenge but Rueben has definitely improved. This activity can be varied so much, you can change the objects you want to organise and what you organise them in or on. For us, I bought red, yellow and blue paint trays to sort the objects into. You could use coloured card to place the objects on, or paint some paper plates to use. Over the course of the month we have sorted a variety of things; building blocks, small toys, cars, pictures of animals/foods/objects. We have tried so many! It’s been a good little activity to keep him busy and help him learn to organise by colour.
Mess-free colour mixing
This is an absolute gem of an activity if you have a child like mine who tries to taste everything! Painting in my house can look more like a not-so-yummy lunch-time if I’m not watching him like a hawk, so when I saw it was a mess-free, I just had to try it. As Rueben is only 2, we didn’t really discuss the terms primary colours (red, yellow, blue) and secondary colours (orange, green, purple) but if you have older children this is a great activity to open up a discussion about how we mix 2 primary colours to create a secondary colour. Take a look below at how to do it, maybe you could give it a go!
All you need is:
- Red, yellow and blue paint
- Medium/Large zip lock sandwich bags
- Alcohol hand sainitiser
- Most sandwich bags come with writing or patterns on, to make your bag completely see-through use alcohol hand sanitiser to clean off any printed patterns or lettering. You don’t have to do this, but I wanted to remove as much visual distraction so my boy could clearly see the magic of the activity.
- Add 2 large blobs of paint (2 different colours) to your sandwich bag, try to aim the colours into opposite sides of the bag.
- Make sure your sandwich bag is fully sealed – if you are worried you can always add some sellotape to the top to double seal the opening.
- Place the bag on a hard surface – table/highchair tray/wheelchair tray.
- Now, let your child experiment moving the paint around in the bag using their hands and fingers. Encourage them to mix the 2 primary colours together to create a secondary colour.
Makaton – Colours
In our house, verbal communication definitely is not our only method – we are all trying to learn Makaton together. Showing an understanding of colour is really tricky when you haven’t got the words, so we tried adding some Makaton signs in. We really didn’t expect the results we got!
My first step was learning them myself. I am a lover of Singing Hands topic videos so I got on YouTube and found their video of all the colours being signed. I kept playing it when I got a few minutes and I began to pick up more and more. Then, I introduced it to Rueben. It started slow with me doing all the signs with him by my side and then I started to notice his hands trying to move with some of the colours.
Now I’d got his interest sparked, I thought “I wonder if there are any colour themed songs in Makaton”. So after a little search I managed to find lots and lots of videos of the song ‘I can sing a rainbow’ with Makaton signs. We started to play it once a day, again with him moving his hands for some of the colours. Suddenly I noticed, he had picked up red and blue!
One evening before bed, I asked him “Would you like the red pyjamas or the blue ones?” whilst signing each colour and making sure he could see me. To my absolute surprise, he signed back blue! I was so proud, we got those blue pyjamas on and had a big celebratory hug.
