Blue, Green, and Purple!

Today we started our exploration of "cool" colors (blue, green, and purple). You might recall that we did an exploration of "warm" colors (red, orange, and yellow) at the beginning of the year. This will give us a chance to explore the rest of the colors of the rainbow before we go into winter.

Our sensory bin is full of blue, green and purple items that we can scoop and pour. Filling and dumping are a big part of toddler development, (wrist and hand movement, cause and effect play) so giving the children safe ways to explore that skill is important. They loved being able to fill the cups and dump them out. The noise that the past made was different from the noises the shreds made when we dumped them.

Our favorite invitation to play was the colored spaghetti noodles! The children had so much fun feeling the cold spaghetti and using safety-scissors to cut the strands. This became another way our friends could explore filling and dumping today as they put the noodles in the bowls and dumped them back out on to the table. We were actually surprised at how long this invitation held the toddler's attention today. If you would like to try this at home, we used regular spaghetti noodles cooked about two minutes less than suggested and drained. They were then put in plastic bags and mixed with a little olive oil, a couple drops of hand sanitizer (or rubbing alcohol), and food coloring. It will keep in the refrigerator for a couple of days but we threw ours out at the end of playtime today.

Finally, we continued to work on our fine motor skills with pom poms stuck in whisks. The children used their pincer grip to get the pom poms out and to put them back in the whisks. 

We are looking forward to many more fun invitations this week as we explore these colors!

Indiana Early Learning Foundations:

M3.1: Identify similarities and differences in objects

SE4.1: Engage in parallel play

APL1.2:Demonstrate enthusiasm for new learning (may be within familiar contexts)

APL3.1: Focus on an activity for short periods of time despite distractions

SC1.1: Use simple words to describe sensory experiences, objects, and how objects move

SC5.1: Use tools to explore the environment