Welcome to my Blogging from A to Z April Challenge for 2019! The A to Z Challenge is a blogging event held each April. Bloggers create posts from A to Z beginning on April 1st and ending on April 30th. There is a post scheduled for each day of the month (except for Sundays) with each day corresponding to a sequential letter of the alphabet.
We're getting so close to the end! Today's letter is Y. Y is for YELLOW! And where there's yellow, there's more colors!
Brecken is very much into rote learning right now. He enjoys the alphabet, numbers, and colors a lot. Color play is something we're constantly doing around here, whether we intend to or not. It just kind of shows up in our everyday lives when he gets the urge to start identifying colors.
We started out seriously introducing colors with the simple activity of coloring. I gave him some chunky crayons and a blank piece of paper and we were off. He is still working on hand grasp, but his coloring continues to improve and he loves to identify the colors of his crayons as he goes.
We've also gone for other media to work with color. He has a chalkboard that he loves to use and we have a lot of colored toys like blocks, stacking cups, and cars. We have not yet introduced markers or paint, but those are on the agenda for the next few months. I have our play bins ready to go with washable options since I know how messy these boys can be. Playdoh will also be getting used soon as he got a good selection of colors for his birthday.
We have worked with colors using both video and reading. I do allow screen time around here, but it is primarily utilized for educational videos. We sing songs along with short YouTube videos and watch others that introduce colors in the outside world (Blippi seems to be a house favorite).
We also have a very large selection of books. The current color favorite is Goodnight, Goodnight Construction Site: Dump Truck's Colors. It is a cute little board book where the words for colors are printed in the color they represent. By reading this book, we've now discovered that Brecken recognizes and "reads" the words for most colors. Amazing! And it totally plays to his preference for vehicles in his toys and learning (bonus points!).
One of the best color toys we have is one I made from a discarded muffin tin. I glued in color squares to each of the bins. I then colored six blocks to match. The Boy was quickly drawn to dumping out the blocks and lining them back up.
More recently, we've played with the tin using colored pom poms. They are smaller and work more on his dexterity, plus there are more of them to sort. He has a good time moving them around, matching them up, and just squishing them between his fingers.
There are so many options for playing with and learning colors. You can use any kinds of bits and bobs to get them to recognize the colors around them. We talk about the color of socks and shirts while getting dressed, the color of Froot Loops at breakfast, the color of his cup and his bib. We talk about the colors of cars on the way to other places and the colors of vegetables and fruits as we shop in the supermarket. If I don't find the opportunity to introduce color into our learning during the day, he will do it for me. He loves to point something out and say "green" or "blue" in his own little toddler way. It's great to have an inquisitive little guy who keeps me finding games in the every day.
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Miss a prior 2016 A to Z post? Find your missing link down below...
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