Color of the Week: Blue

Welcome back to the 

Color of the Week Series 

here on Play Create Explore!

This week my toddler and preschooler explored the color Blue! We were a little light on the activities this week as both boys were sick for a few days and now i've caught the bug as well, however this post will NOT be lacking for fun ideas for the color blue! 
Hope you enjoy :) 

Blue Objects Exploration Bowl

As always, the first thing we do on the first day of our color themed weeks, is walk around the house and gather a bunch of our blue toys and other objects. This serves as a bit of an introduction to the color of the week and we also explore this bowl all throughout the week. For my 19 month old, it serves as a great way to identify and verbalize new objects and experience different shapes and textures as well.  

Blue Cotton Candy Scented Rice

Our first sensory bin was homemade dyed and scented rice. The rice has a cotton candy scent which smells sooo delicious! It was my oldest sons favorite part of playing with it. To see how I dyed and scented the rice, click HERE! 

Blue Baby Powder Scented Epsom Salt

We love sensory play with epsom salt! It is so easy to color and add scents to and the colors usually turn out so bright and pretty! I added baby powder essential oil to this batch which gave it such a fresh and clean smell! To see how to color and scent your own epsom salt, click HERE!

After just playing with the epsom salt for a bit, I gave each of the boys their own glass of water. They loved putting the blue epsom salt in the water and making it blue! The more they put in, the "bluer" it became! This gave me some great ideas for more epsom salt mixing fun that i'll be sharing soon! 

Small World Ocean Sensory Bin
I used blue aquarium gravel, sea shells, colored gems, and some of our plastic ocean animals to create this simple small world ocean setup. 

I really enjoyed watching little B explore his ocean bin. There were so many little things to discover and he seemed so thoughtful about each thing he found. He learned the names of some of the ocean animals we had as well. Channeling my inner Dory (from Nemo), I did the sound a whale makes which he thought was pretty funny! He also loved the shells. And of course we talked about the BLUE rocks. 

Colored Shaving Cream and Ice Sensory Play

Click the title link above to see this fun messy sensory activity we did in the tub which contained the mess and left us with a pretty blue bath afterward!

Blue Water Beads

We LOVE water beads! If you're unfamiliar with this amazing sensory material, click HERE to read Teach Preschool's post all about them! I made them blue by just adding blue food coloring to the water they were "growing" in. When I put the fully grown water beads into a plastic bucket, I also added enough water just to cover them. I've found that my kids stay interested in water beads WAY longer when they are actually IN a bit of water. 

Later that week, I used the water beads again for bathtime! 

(with proper supervision) These are lots of fun in the bath! It was pretty entertaining to watch little B try to catch them in the water...it's not easy! Do not let these go down the drain though. It only took a few minutes to scoop them all out with a strainer. I usually save our water beads for up to a month in a plastic bag, but after being in the bathwater I tossed these in the yard. 

(afterall, their intended purpose is to keep plants hydrated!)

Click the titles or the pictures below to see these other fun "blue" activities from Play Create Explore!

Blue Themed Bath

Messy Play: Blue Shaving Cream on the Windows

Surprisingly easy to clean up!

Blue Goop

Paint Roller Painting

Baby Oil 

Sensory Bag

What else did we do?

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

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

"The sky is blue."  "The ocean is blue." "What color is your shirt? Your shirt is blue!" 

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 blue specifically!

We checked out these 25 Awesome Blue Animals!

-We picked one night to read only some our books with blue covers.

-We picked a day to wear blue shirts.

-We ate blueberries and used food coloring to make blue waffles

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

We played with our Blue Playdough!



Ideas from others
Blue Water Beads Ocean Sensory Bin from Janne.cc
Blue Sensory Bin from Peanuts are Evil
Kid Made Ocean Sensory Bottles from The Little Nook
Printable Whale Craft from Learn Create Love
Ocean Crafts from Danielle's Place
Exploring the Color Blue from Lalymom

Next week's color of the week is white!

To see ALL of the colors so far in the Color of the Week Series, 

click the photo below!

More Ways to Follow the Fun!