Tot School-Colors

So I've been feeling kind of stuck in a rut with our day to day routine.  Usually I would try to balance cleaning the house with spending time with Mara.  Here in Georgia we were blessed to be able to hire a housekeeper which has really freed up a lot of time for me.  Additionally I've noticed a lot of our friends here have their young ones (Mara's age) already enrolled in pre-school.  I never knew pre-school was a thing for 2 year olds!  Not that I feel any pressure to enroll Mara anytime soon (she's not ready) but it got me thinking about incorporating some fun learning activities into our days at home.

I had already been pinning toddler activities when I stumbled upon this blog.  This mama was concerned about the amount of screen time her toddler was getting with the addition of a newborn.  (I was like um that is about to be us) She decided to start "home schooling" her daughter through a series of fun activities that revolved around a weekly theme and has shared all the information she's gathered on her blog.

Perfect I thought!  No work but all the resources right there at my fingertips.  So I decided we'd start this week with some fun activities to learn our colors.  I didn't want to put too much pressure on myself but picked out a few fun things to do throughout the week.  I'm fully aware that some may fail and others she will love.  I'm not quite sure what her skill level is but this is all a learning process for me too.

Monday we started off with a little bible lesson on Joseph and his rainbow coat.  We read the story out of her children's bible then sat down to do a craft.  The night before I had printed out a coloring page of Joseph and cut out the shape of his coat.  Behind it I adhered contact paper and then taped the whole thing to a larger piece of construction paper.  I gave her the sheet and different colored scraps of paper I had tore up.

Overall she was pretty focused sticking each paper to the sticky parts for about half of the coat.  The other side not so much and would only engage if I would hand her the pieces naming each color.  She also enjoyed coloring the page itself with her crayons.  Afterwards I made sure to praise her and we put it on the fridge to show Daddy!

Later that morning we had an impromptu session in her room.  She already owns a book series on colors so we read through each color.  I noticed she had pulled out her xylophone so I grabbed it and asked her to point out the colors to me that matched the books we had just read.  She did so good!  She got every color but orange pointing to yellow instead.

We then moved downstairs for another art project.  I pulled out a coloring page on red and we talked about the different items on the page and how they are all red.  We wrote out the word red and then I gave her red crayons to color.  She doodled a bit but quickly grew bored.  I blame this on the pre-nap craziness today and am going to leave it out for her to finish later.

During her nap I prepped a rainbow scavenger hunt.  I "hid" different color objects around our living room and then laid out the corresponding colored towels or scarves on the floor.  The goal here is for her to collect the objects and put them on the matching fabric.  I expected her to really love this activity but honestly she was less than impressed.  It took a lot to keep her focused.  All she wanted to do was collect the toys.  She could have cared less what color they were.  We ended up calling it a wash and named each color toy as we put them away.

Tuesday started off pretty simple with some color high-5.  I cut hand shapes out of different colors of paper and taped them to the wall.  We started by trying to say, "high 5 the color blue." and going through all of them.  This worked for a bit and then we switched to going down the line and just yelling out the colors as she high fived them.  I left them up for the rest of the day and she kept going back.

About mid-morning I decided to change focus and do a little baking.  Recently Mara has loved baking with me.  She likes to dump ingredients and stir.  We made some basic sugar cookies but to incorporate colors we rolled them in rainbow sprinkles.  I didn't try to hammer colors in but just kept reminding her of all the colors in the sprinkles.

We attempted another coloring sheet and again somewhat of a failure.  The yellow sheet lasted longer than the red but again was quickly forgotten.

After nap she was literally a beast.  I initially wrote off any kind of activity and thought we'd be camped out in front of the TV.  Eventually she relaxed and I decided to try a sensory box with her.  I don't have any of the traditional sensory box materials so I went the water route.  It's still warm here so I filled a bin with water and Easter eggs.  She dove right in.  Again we named the colors as she played and then she got in the bucket itself.  At that point I let her play.  This activity kept her busy for close to an hour!!

Wednesday was almost a wash as we had maintenance crews from the embassy at the house for most of the day.  Mara decided to forgo her nap this day as well so it was just overall stressful.  As I was preparing dinner she was at my feet and I decided I needed something to keep her entertained.  The previous day I cut up different color straws to use at a later point.  I dumped these in a tupperware and handed her four different color cups that we had on hand.  She didn't want to sort the colors but had fun moving the straws from the tupperware to the cups.  Soon we had straws everywhere but hey I got dinner made!

Thursday went similar to Wednesday as it was just stressful around here.  (I think that's the beauty of this though in that I don't feel guilty that we didn't do as much.  We did what we could!) In the morning I decided to do an art project with Mara.  I taped a piece of black construction paper down to some cardboard and set her up with chalk and water.  She loves to dip things and had a blast dipping the chalk into the water and drawing.  The water helps the chalk be more vibrant on the paper and the end result was pretty neat.  We hung it on our fridge proudly!

Our second activity of the day was super random and stemmed from her grabbing the tupperware of straws from the day before.  Before I knew it they were all over the floor and she was walking on them.  I rolled with it!  She was taking the sensory bin to a new level!

Friday was another low key day as we had appointments in the afternoon and we are still struggling with naps.  In the morning though we were able to fit in three different activities.  We started with a pom pom color sort.  I didn't have any expectations for this as all week she hasn't wanted to sort anything all week.  This morning the light bulb went on and she was super into it.  I gave her little instructions and she just knew what to do!

When she grew bored of this we moved to a coloring page on green.  Again no expectations as the other coloring pages this week have been washes.  She was really into this one!  I think it's because there were a lot of green animals on it and more specifically ones she knew/read books about.

We ended the morning with a pom pom sensory bin.  I didn't plan this at all as we had already played with the pom poms but she was still really intrigued by them.  I think it's important to have a plan for the day but to be flexible to your toddler's whims when it comes to activities.  They usually take it to another level that you weren't expecting!  Anyways we filled a box with the pom poms, added some wooden letters to make it an alphabet soup and grabbed some utensils.  She scooped, wisked and used tweezers to move the pom poms around.  Great fine motor skills activity all while she was having a blast.

Overall I think it's been a pretty successful week.  I've had fun and I know Mara has as well.  I can see some improvement on her color recognition and I think it will only get better as we continue on.  Looking forward to shapes next week!