Two of fall’s colors are brown as summer-green fades and grey for cool, overcast skies but play can combine some bright color and shape activities for kids.
Blocks come in a variety of shapes and colors as well as materials. While children are building with blocks, it’s easy to mention the names of colors and talk about them. This tower has a yellow triangle on the very top. There’s a circle on the red square block. A blue square is the same size as the red square. This incidental matching of the color and shape names helps kids connect to the words and remember them. Besides blocks, there are other toys such as Lego and Duplo that have different colors and shapes.
Most of the time we think of shapes as circles, triangles, rectangles and squares. These are regular shapes but there are irregular ones too. Shapes and colors are part of puzzles and even if kids don’t know the names for them, they can use them as a strategy for putting a puzzle together. To fit the pieces where they go, kids need to check if the shapes fit and the colors match. Being wrong about where a puzzle piece goes is all part of the process. It’s okay to do lots of trying.
Mosaics are another toy that uses colors and shapes. The shapes are regular to start with, but kids can use them to make many other kinds of shapes. And kids aren’t the only ones. The child-made design on the floor looks very much like this adult-made one in a dome.
Kids can also use play dough for color and shape activities. The shapes can be either regular or irregular or both at the same time. Plasticine stretched and smooshed on a paper plate makes a round world, complete with rainbow colors. What color and shape fun might be your child’s play-of-the-day?
P.S. Add some color and shape to your day when you visit 123kindergarten.