Welcome back to the
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!
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.
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.
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!
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| 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."
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!
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!
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.
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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!
What an incredible blog you have here! So many wonderful ideas for learning colors. I will be back to implement some of these for our tots! Thanks so much for the link back to my post.
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