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COLOUR
THE COLOUR WHEEL ABOVE IS A RAINBOW BENT INTO A CIRCLE
THE BEST LEARNING IS ALWAYS THROUGH PLAY.
IF LEARNED THROUGH FUN, THE LESSON IS BETTER REMEMBERED.
When your little one is old enough to use textas or coloured markers under supervision,
try drawing a little happy face on the lids so that the pens become "penfriends". As well as using them to
draw with, if you have
some play dough or plasticine, make little islands of them and play with your child by sticking the markers
in them in colour groups. Play with them like little people talking to one another. Children love this
and will learn the dexterity of removing and replacing the lids in a fun way. Make it dramatic! e.g. if "Bluey's"
lid is missing he could be hopping around saying "Oh dear, oh dear - where is my head?" Then the child finds it and
puts it back on - all the time learning colour matching and the names of the colours.
If you have a group of pre-schoolers and would like a fun way to show them some colour mixing magic, you
might like to try this. Take 6 transparent beakers or plastic glasses and fill them 3/4 with water.
Non toxic food colouring usually comes in small bottles with eyedroppers. You will need just the 3 primary colours of
RED, YELLOW and BLUE.
Either you or the children (depending on their age, under supervision) drop a little of each of the
primary colours into every 2nd beaker, as in the picture below. You then proceed with the "MAGIC" by combining
RED+ YELLOW between them to form ORANGE (go easy on the red & more yellow). Then follow with YELLOW + BLUE to make GREEN
(very little blue and more yellow). Lastly, combine BLUE + RED to make purple (more red than blue).
If your child is old enough to trust not to suck on a straw, but to blow only, you can add a little
non toxic dishwashing liquid soap to the beakers and join them in blowing coloured bubbles!
Another innovation to this is to have the coloured water in plastic bags to decant into a container
with detergent.
The children then blow bubbles and lower a piece of paper onto them. It leaves a lovely pattern on
the paper.
LEARNING TO DRAW & PAINT WITH COLOUR
One way I have found children enjoy learning to draw is to draw along with you.
At first, all they will probably be able to do is strokes, dots and scribble but then we can
at that stage awaken
in them the knowledge that those marks can "represent something".
So how can we do this?
Lets use what they CAN do to have valuable input into a drawing.
Since they all love birthdays, that is a great subject to begin with!
Firstly, you draw a cake (talk as you are drawing, telling them what you are
doing) - then draw a plate under it. Next draw however many candles are appropriate for
your child's next birthday. (Just an upright line will do). Now ask you child if they
would like to put dots on the cake to represent the sprinkles or decorations. Next, ask
if they would like to join you in drawing colourful streamers around it (always name
the colours as they choose them). Next, draw some balloons and ask your child to draw
the strings attached to them. Colour them in together.
Lastly, pick up a yellow marker and put "HOT" lines emanating from the candle/s, saying
"HOT, HOT, HOT!"
Ask your child to blow out the pretend candles and end by singing Happy Birthday together.
All of my grandchildren have loved this game and have wanted to do it over and over again.
An early introduction to painting could be to take a sheet of paper or card, fold it in
half and draw the outline of half a butterfly on one side. Apply paint with the child as far
as possible within the wing shapes, using full bodied thick paint in different colours.
Then before the paint dries, fold it over and you both press it down well all over.
Then the magical opening up to make a full butterfly!
TEXTURES
It's good to collect a number of small light objects that can be glued onto a piece
of cardboard so that children can experience feeling and handling different textures
as well as gaining dexterity in managing glue. Encourage them to find beautiful leaves on
the ground when you go for a walk to add to the collection and cut up old greeting cards
or wrapping paper into shapes. Dry sand adheres to glue to make texture too (just pile
it on thickly over the glue and shake the excess off.)
A glue stick is the easiest to manage for
very small children, but with help craft glue squeezed through a nozzle is best.
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