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Friday, July 11, 2014

Preschool Lab: Colors

I wasn't here for last week's Preschool Lab, but luckily I have the awesome Miss TS who subbed for me and it looks like they had a great time! I had planned everything and had it all ready to go. The kids explored colors last week! Here's what they did:

Storytime:

Opening Song: My Hands Say Hello

Book: I Ain't Gonna Paint No More by Karen Beaumont



Prop: Mixing Colors - I am sorry I don't have a source for this! If it's yours, let me know and I will credit you!

Book: Duckie's Rainbow by Frances Barry. I love to use our color scarves with this one and have kids wave their scarf when we get to their color. At the end, we all wave together and create a rainbow!

(There are millions of books about colors! Pick your favorites!)

Stations:

I got tons of great ideas from Library Makers' Color Wonderworks program! Do click through and check out their post!

Scarves and Color Paddles. We put out color scarves and color paddles for experiments in color mixing and seeing the world in a different light.



Color Sorting Toys. This set was purchased through Lakeshore Learning for our Toddler Time program and it fit perfectly with this week's theme! Even if you don't purchase a kit, you could easily collect objects of different colors and create your own color sorting boxes.

Play Dough Mixing. We had lots of play dough left over from the play dough program we did earlier in the summer, so this was one of our stations. Kids could experiment with mixing different colors of play dough to see what colors they could make. Bonus: squeezing and kneading play dough together helps strengthen little hands, which contributes to fine motor control.



Color Pom Pom Drop. I got this idea from Princesses, Pies, & Preschool Pizzazz via Pinterest. I covered paper towel tubes in colored construction paper. Instead of affixing the tubes to poster board, I put a little velcro on the backs and stuck them to our felt board. It was super easy makes for easier storage. We put out colored pom poms and plastic tongs for kids to sort and put their pom poms through the appropriate tubes. Using the tongs helps strengthen hands and develop fine motor control. And everyone loves pom poms! I should have made labels with the color names, but I will definitely do that before we use them again.

Since we had so many stations and since I was pawning this program off on one of my unsuspecting librarians, we did not attempt the colored water station that Library Makers did. I think it would have been super popular! I'm sure we'll do colors again in the future and I'll be brave enough to try it.

Lots of colorful fun (and learning)!