Color of the Week: Black

Welcome back to the 

Color of the Week Series 

here on Play Create Explore!

In the 4th week of the Color of the Week Series, my oldest son chose the color BLACK! 

I'll admit that I was a bit worried that I wouldn't have as many activities for this week's color since we are usually surrounded by more colorful toys and craft supplies, but after we started getting into it, I had a hard time deciding which activities I wanted to do...there are so many cool things to do with the color black!

I didn't have many all black objects or toys though to make our usual exploration bucket, such as THIS ONE, so we just jumped right into walking around the house and pointing out the things that were black, then we jumped right into some sensory play!

*Sorry for the lack of pictures of the kids in action, but with this being Spring Break Week, 

I just didn't have the time to include many play pics in the post. * 

Black Buttons and Homemade Colored

 and Licorice Scented Rice

We have a pretty big button collection so I gathered some of the black ones and threw them in with our homemade colored and scented rice. This rice was licorice scented and was a scent the boys weren't used to so it was funny to see their reactions to the new smell! See how to color and scent this rice, HERE!

Gluing Black Paper Squares

We did a very simple pasting activity using some cut construction paper pieces. This was Little B's (19 mo) first time doing something like this and he did pretty well! I showed him how to put the pieces on the glue and pat them a bit, which he did., but he also just liked to run his fingers in the glue and take the pieces off haha, but that's just part of the exploration process of FIRST ART. My oldest used his glue stick to use the black squares to make his own collage which he said was a treasure map.

Black Aquarium Gravel Sensory Bin

Super simple sensory bin with black aquarium gravel bought from Petco. Aquarium gravel is cheap and comes in so many different colors. It's an awesome sensory material!

Animals

We started talking about animals with black skin or fur, black stripes or spots...snakes, bats, bears, zebras, pandas, bees, spiders, killer whales, etc. I had some of these in our animal collection so I got these out and talked about them with the boys. For little B, this was more for animal identification. He hadn't learned many of these animals yet! 

And so we did a few animal activities, starting with some simple coloring pages which I found and printed off of Google Images. See my google search results HERE, for some ideas. 

 Panda Sensory Bin

A simple sensory bin created with navy beans and black aquarium gravel. 

(you could also use black beans!)

The kids seemed to really like Zebra's, including my youngest 

so we did a few Zebra activities...

Zebra Shaving Cream Marbling

A super simple and fun art activity with beautiful results!

Click HERE to see the how-to and the finished product!

Little B played with our zebra striped shaving cream afterwards!

Zebra Themed Bath

This zebra themed bath was so fun to create and fun for the boys! I used zebra print duct tape to make the letters on the wall and trim for the outter tub side. I used store bought washable paint for the zebra stripes on the wall and black food coloring for the bathwater. The black paint didn't stain at all, however the black food coloring left a very faint tub ring disappeared in minutes on it's own without scrubbing after I misted it with a bleach/water combo. The also drew some stripes on the white balloons with a sharpie. Done. Easy peasy!

                   

Black Shredded Paper Sensory Bin

We have a paper shredder so I shredded a bunch of black construction paper for this simple sensory exploration bin. After they were done playing I bagged it up for another time, or to use for any other arts or crafts! 

Black Play Dough

I made some black play dough, using usual our go-to recipe as follows...

1 cup flour

1 cup water

1/2 cup salt

1 tablespoon cream of tartar

1 tablespoon oil

(food coloring, extracts/essential oils-optional)

In a heavy saucepan, mix together all the ingredients (including food coloring if you choose), stirring constantly until mixture thickens and forms a large lump or ball. (approx. 3 min) Remove from heat and set on a sheet of wax or parchment paper to let cool for a bit, then knead until smooth or add any essential oils or extracts for scented play dough.

Black Aquarium Sand and Black Gems

This was another simple sensory bin with black aquarium sand which I bought from Petco, and some black gems which I found at Walmart in the floral department. You can also find these at most pet supply stores as well in the aquarium supplies section. 

What else did we do?

Here are a few other very simple ways we focused on "red" this week

--We identified black ALL over the place. If something was black, I identified it and said it outloud. 

"The road is black."  "This book is black." "What color is your shirt? Your shirt is black!" 

You can never have too much repetition! However, we didn't leave out or ignore other colors though. In our everyday play I still identified other colors, I just put a lot of focus on black specifically!

-We read our books with black covers

-We picked a day to wear black shirts

-We listened to THIS "color black themed" kindergarten song on Youtube.

-We went outside to count as many "black birds" (mostly crows) as we could find.

Ideas from others!

Paper Plate Black Cat Craft from Crafts By Amanda

Hand and Footprint Black Bat from Crafts-N-Things for Children

Black Cloud Dough from Growing a Jeweled Rose

Black Bean Sensory Bin from ebb and flow

Exploring the Color Black from Lalymom

To see the all the previous color themed activities from our Color of the Week Series, click the photo below!

Our next Color of the Week is ORANGE!

More Ways to Follow the Fun!

Poppin's Book Nook: King Jack and The Dragon by Peter Bently

Welcome to the first post in the Poppin's Book Nook! 

I am so excited to be participating in this brand new virtual book club with so many other fun and creative bloggers! Each month we will be given a theme and each participating blogger is free to choose their own book within that theme. We will be posting about our book and any related activities or crafts we did based on the book, on the last Monday of every month. With so many bloggers participating, your sure to see a wide range of books and activities within each months theme! 

To see a list of  all of our upcoming topics, visit Enchanted Homeschooling Mom!

March's theme is related to

Knight's, Kings, Queens, Princesses, Castles, and Dragons

and all things Royalty!

and we have chosen the book

King Jack and the Dragon by Peter Bently

King Jack and his friends build a cardboard box fortress outside and spend the day bravely fighting dragons and beasts. That is until bedtime when it is growing dark, playtime is over, and everyone has gone home- leaving King Jack alone to defend the fortress! My oldest (4) loved this imaginative and suspenseful story!  

After reading this book, a fortress for my two kings was to be built! 

But first, the kings needed their crowns and dragon-fighting swords! 

We created very simple crowns with two pieces of construction paper taped together and "crown cut" on one end, then decorated. The swords were made with a few pieces of cardboard from a diaper box. L (4 1/2)  helped make both his crown and sword, and his little brother's (1 1/2 yrs).

A simple fortress was made in our entryway and 

then days of make-believe followed! 

I usually played the dragon, but we also had a toy dragon that filled in when mommy got tired lol.

Coloring Pages

Another simple activity we did, was color some dragon coloring pages. I found these by simply looking up "dragon coloring pages for kids" on Google Images. There are some pretty cute and not too scary dragon coloring pages out there, such as THIS ONE! 

Next month's theme is Wizards!

Make sure you visit The Poppin's Book Nook's 

 Facebook Page, and Pinterest Board!

Check out these other wonderful bloggers participating in the Poppin's Book Nook to see their book choices and fun activities for this months theme! 
Enchanted Homeschooling Mom
Royal Baloo
3 Dinosaurs
Chestnut Grove Academy
Growing in God’s Grace
Royal Little Lambs
Life with Moore Babies
Teach Beside Me
The Usual Mayhem
Mum Central
Fantastic Fun and Learning
Kathys Cluttered Mind
Play Create Explore
Two Big Two Little
Toddler Approved
Growing Book by Book
Adventures in Mommydom
B-Inspired Mama
The Fairy and The Frog
Edventures with Kids
Learning & Growing the Piwi way
A Gluten Free Journey
Rainy Day Mum
Mom to Crazy Monkeys

Color Surprise Play Dough

I usually make a batch of homemade play dough every two weeks or so and this week I made 

Color Surprise Play Dough!

This play dough has the color "hidden" inside, where the color is then revealed after they start playing with it. The more they play with it, the more the color spreads and the brighter it becomes!  

How to make Color Surprise Play Dough

for homemade playdough, I usually use the general recipe as follows:

1 cup flour

1 cup water

1/2 cup salt

1 tablespoon cream of tartar

1 tablespoon oil 

In a heavy saucepan, mix together all the ingredients, stirring constantly until mixture thickens and forms a large lump or ball. (approx. 3 min) Remove from heat and set on a sheet of wax or parchment paper to let cool for a bit, then knead until smooth. 

To hide the color, I simply separated the dough and rolled it into 6 small balls. I poked a hole into each ball with my finger and then put a few drops of food coloring into each hole. Then I carefully molded the hole closed. I put them separately into plastic baggies and waited until the next day to give them to the boys. 

This was so the food coloring could soak into the play dough a bit and maybe not stain their hands so badly. 

It worked too! No stains at all! 

You could also add color and scent by using Kool-aid rather than food coloring. 

A hidden rainbow of colors waiting to be discovered! 

When they first started playing with each play dough ball, the colors were marbled. We had days of fun with our rainbow play dough and by the end of the week, the colors were even and bright!

L is really into making play dough snakes, so I printed THIS RAINBOW PRINTABLE, so he could get some snake practice in and use all of our new colors to make a play dough rainbow! 

and now we have a fun batch of rainbow play dough to last us quite a while! 

It would even make a great Easter basket addition :)

After posting this and pinning it to my Pinterest Board, I now see that Teach Preschool did the same thing back in June of 2012 (actually named it the very same thing-FIRST), so make sure you check out Teach Preschool's Play Dough Color Surprise Play Dough that she did with her Preschoolers, using another cool way to color the play dough! 

Wanna try a totally NEW and FUN Play Dough Recipe?!

Click the photo below!

More Ways to Follow the Fun!

Color of the Week: Red

Welcome back to the 

Color of the Week Series 

here on Play Create Explore!

We've been having so much fun with our color themed weeks! To see our previous Yellow and Green Weeks, click HERE.  I've been letting my oldest son "L" choose which color we do each week and for our 3rd week, he chose RED. Lot's of fun with red this week! 

Red Objects Exploration Bin

The first thing I did was simply gather some of the red toys and kid friendly objects in the house and put them into a large red bowl. We explored this bowl all week long. We focused on the color of course, but also worked on identifying the names of the objects. 

Red Aquarium Gravel Sensory Bin

I made a super simple red aquarium gravel sensory bin. I bought a 5 lb bag at Petco for  less than 5 dollars I believe. I will be going back for more aquarium gravel because the kids loved this! 

I guess you can't go wrong with tiny colored rocks!

 Lipstick Rubbings
I did learn something this week...red lipstick does NOT look smart, sexy, and sophisticated on EVERYONE. So, my red lipstick was donated in the name of art!
Click the title link above to see the fun my oldest had with my red lipstick! 

Red Food Exploration Bin

We have lots of fake plastic foods so I gathered all of our red foods and put them together.
 I sat with little B and worked on identifying each food while also saying the color
"red apple"
"red tomato"
etc.

Red Apple Themed Bath
A is for Apple and our Apple Bath was RED! Our color themed baths have been such a fun part of our color weeks and this one was simple and fun for both boys! Our color weeks are generally for learning colors with my 19 month old, but I've been really trying to add elements of higher learning whenever possible to engage and involve my oldest (4 yrs) as well.

I painted the apple trees with washable paint and taped some apple bulletin board cutouts that I already had to the walls. 

to the bath water I added 1 packet of red koolaid which smelled sooooo delicious! FYI it did not stain either the tub nor the kids skin. I also added some dollar store fake red apples and some red balloons. 

For that extra learning element for my oldest (4) I cut some red circles out of craft foam and the numbers 10-20 to part of them, and the letters a-p-p-l-e to some of them as well. I've been working with him on learning to recognize these numbers as well as spelling and recognizing lower case letters so this was both fun and educational! 

FYI: Craft foam sticks to tub walls and windows when wet so it makes really fun (and cheap) bath stickers!

Rice and Red Miniatures Sensory Bin
Who doesn't like miniatures?!  We do lots of small world setups because the minature factor is so appealing. I realized that I had quite a few tiny red objects floating around in the crafts so I gathered these things and added them to a bucket of dry rice. The kids loved picking through this one and this is where my youngest was introduced to the "ladybug." 

Painting Ladybugs
After playing with the sensory bin above and my youngest first being introduced to what a "ladybug" is, I thought we'd paint a ladybug. I had a small wooden square with a ladybug painted on it and I gave this to my oldest, along with some red, black, and white paint. I thought it would be interesting to see how or even IF he would look at the painted ladybug as a reference and I believe he did because this painting is the first "lifelike" painting he's ever done. I thought it turned out great! 

I let my youngest finger paint with red first, and then gave him a round sponge-tipped brush to dab some dots on the paper, to create his "abstract ladybug" lol. 

Kidney Beans Sensory Bin
A simple sensory bin with red kidney beans kept my little one busy for quite some time!

For an added sensory bin play element and some fine motor skills and hand/eye practice, I cut a small hole in the lid of a sour cream container. It was really interesting to watch how he decided to put the beans into the hole. He would grab a bunch of beans and put them on the lid, then pushed each bean one by one into the hole with 1 finger. Lots of concentration going on!

Red Rose Scented Play Dough
Click the link above to see how to make this sweet and floral smelling play dough, which also has therapeutic benefits as well! We played with our Red Rose Scented Play dough throughout the week!

Red Letters and Rice Sensory Bin
Both boys played with this sensory bin, but i'm currently working on identfying lowercase letters with my oldest so I used threw in some of our red magnetic letters into some dry rice. Each uppcase letter had it's lowercase match as well. This bin was a fun way to practice matching up the upper and lower case letters with L (4), but little B just liked playing in the rice and scooping out the letters.
I did however call out the name of the letter when he grabbed one.

Red Construction Paper Squares Exploration Bin
I used the red squares from our Construction Paper Squares Rainbow Sensory Bin, to make this simple red themed exploration bin for "B." B had fun throwing handfuls up in the air and also putting the pieces into red plastic cups. This is also a great way to introduce or reinforce the SQUARE shape! It would take more time, but you could cut other shapes from construction paper and make the same sort of bin.

What else did we do?
Here are a few other very simple ways we focused on "red" this week

--We identified red ALL over the place. If something was red, I identified it and said it outloud. 

"The apple is red."  "This book is red." "What color is your shirt? Your shirt is red!" 

You can never have too much repetition! However, we didn't leave out or ignore other colors though. In our everyday play I still identified other colors, I just put a lot of focus on red specifically!

-We read our books with red covers

-We picked a day to wear red shirts

-We ate red foods such as red apples, red grapes, strawberries and spaghetti

-We listened to THIS " red themed" kindergarten song on Youtube.

-We went outside to count as many "red birds" (cardinals) as we could find. 

-you could do some Red Apple Printing



Ideas from others
Red Waterbeads Sensory Bin from AtoZini
Redbird Handprint Art from The Celebration Shoppe
Paper Plate Ladybug Craft from No Time for Flashcards
Exploring the Color Red from LalyMom



To see ALL of our Color of the Week Series,
click the photo below!

More Ways to Follow the Fun!