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2 - 4 Years STEM

A Crafty Way To Develop Color Recognition

Painting is one of those activities that teaches children all kinds of skills at a young age. Whenever a child runs a brush over a piece of paper or canvas, they are exploring their creativity, fine tuning their motor skills, and even expressing their emotions.
But even more so, painting opens the opportunity for children to learn color recognition while having fun. Luckily, there are endless painting games and exercises you can do with your children to help them learn all about colors. Below a few of my favorite painting activities.

Connecting the wheel

For the first activity you will need:
  • a paper plate
  • red, blue, and yellow paint.
I used acrylic for this demonstration, but any washable paint will work as well. Start by drawing six circles on the plate. Make sure to leave enough space between each circle so that you have enough room later. Then fill three of the circles with your primary colors (red, blue, and yellow). They should form a triangle as seen in the picture.
 
 
Now it's time for the fun part. Let your child pick two adjacent colors and let them start pulling paint into the unfilled circles. Once enough paint is transferred, have them mix the rest until a new color forms. Clean off the brush when you are done and repeat the process with the remaining colors. Soon they will have created a complete color wheel!
 
 
One reason I enjoy this exercise so much is that the child gets to see the process of making new colors. Trying to explain that red and blue make purple is much harder to comprehend than watching the colors mix right in front of them. Plus, the child has a full color palette after the activity is complete, which is a great transition into another painting project.

All about hues

While this activity is more advanced than the color wheel, it is a good way to teach how paint affects colors differently. Here is what you will need:
  • Three small paper cups. (If you don’t have any, you can always use a plastic paint tray like the one used in my example.)
  • Any paint mixture from the previous activity. (I used purple.)
  • A piece of painting paper or a canvas.
  • A few paper towels and an old water cup to clean off the brush between mixes.
Choose a paint mixture and add a little to all three cups. After each cup is filled, take one cup and pour a little bit of red into it. Next, let the child slowly mix the colors with a brush.
 
 
Once you notice the color changing, start to ask questions. What happened to the purple? Do you like this new color more than the original? What happens if we add even more red? These questions get your child engaged, while also making sure they see the process.
 
 
Repeat the first few steps with the second cup, but add blue instead and go through the same questions. Look at the colors now. See how all are different but remain like the starting color.
 
 
After the child is done, let them have some fun by allowing them paint a picture using the new colors they made. Using colors created from scratch is incredibly rewarding and provides a sense of uniqueness with their painting.I hope these activities inspired you to grab some painting supplies and start painting with your family. They're an excellent foundation for any little artist so what they learn now will help in the future.
 
  
 
Learning is Where We Play:
 

The Magic of Matter Experiment!

 
 
A Crafty Way To Develop Color Recognition
Painting is one of those activities that teaches children all kinds of skills at a young age. Whenever a child runs a brush over a piece of paper or canvas, they are exploring their creativity, fine tuning their motor skills, and even expressing their emotions.
But even more so, painting opens the opportunity for children to learn color recognition while having fun. Luckily, there are endless painting games and exercises you can do with your children to help them learn all about colors. Below a few of my favorite painting activities.

Connecting the wheel

For the first activity you will need:
  • a paper plate
  • red, blue, and yellow paint.
I used acrylic for this demonstration, but any washable paint will work as well. Start by drawing six circles on the plate. Make sure to leave enough space between each circle so that you have enough room later. Then fill three of the circles with your primary colors (red, blue, and yellow). They should form a triangle as seen in the picture.
 
 
Now it's time for the fun part. Let your child pick two adjacent colors and let them start pulling paint into the unfilled circles. Once enough paint is transferred, have them mix the rest until a new color forms. Clean off the brush when you are done and repeat the process with the remaining colors. Soon they will have created a complete color wheel!
 
 
One reason I enjoy this exercise so much is that the child gets to see the process of making new colors. Trying to explain that red and blue make purple is much harder to comprehend than watching the colors mix right in front of them. Plus, the child has a full color palette after the activity is complete, which is a great transition into another painting project.

All about hues

While this activity is more advanced than the color wheel, it is a good way to teach how paint affects colors differently. Here is what you will need:
  • Three small paper cups. (If you don’t have any, you can always use a plastic paint tray like the one used in my example.)
  • Any paint mixture from the previous activity. (I used purple.)
  • A piece of painting paper or a canvas.
  • A few paper towels and an old water cup to clean off the brush between mixes.
Choose a paint mixture and add a little to all three cups. After each cup is filled, take one cup and pour a little bit of red into it. Next, let the child slowly mix the colors with a brush.
 
 
Once you notice the color changing, start to ask questions. What happened to the purple? Do you like this new color more than the original? What happens if we add even more red? These questions get your child engaged, while also making sure they see the process.
 
 
Repeat the first few steps with the second cup, but add blue instead and go through the same questions. Look at the colors now. See how all are different but remain like the starting color.
 
 
After the child is done, let them have some fun by allowing them paint a picture using the new colors they made. Using colors created from scratch is incredibly rewarding and provides a sense of uniqueness with their painting.I hope these activities inspired you to grab some painting supplies and start painting with your family. They're an excellent foundation for any little artist so what they learn now will help in the future.
 
  
 
Learning is Where We Play:
 

The Magic of Matter Experiment!

 
 
 READ MORE

Toddler Treasure Hunts

Tired of turning around only to find that your toddler has emptied the Tupperware cabinet, or worse, your underwear drawer? Turn your toddler’s curiosity into a totally teachable moment with our scavenger hunt-style toddler treasure hunts!

Color Clues

A treasure hunt is a great way to help your toddler learn his or her colors. First, spend some time reviewing a specific color–red for example, read a board book about the color red, talk about things you see each day that are red, sound out the word red. Then set off on an adventure–together–to find things around your house that are red. Collect them if you can and then review your bounty, repeating the word red as you identify each object you’ve found. Weather permitting, you might follow this activity up with a walk around the block, looking for outdoor objects that are red, like cars, stop signs, flowers, berries, or even a kite flying in the sky.

toddler treasure hunt

 Shape Spotting

The activity above also works well with shapes. Start by reviewing the basic shapes with your little one. Draw a circle, square, rectangle, and triangle on a sheet of paper and have your child color each one in with crayons. Then take a tour of your home and point out the shape of the objects you see. The oven door is square. Books are rectangular. So is your child’s pillow. The bottom of a sippy cup is round. So is a ball. After you’ve pointed out several objects, try pointing to one and asking your child what shape it is.

toddler treasure hunt

Counting Cuties

Your home is also a great place to help your child learn to count. Start by counting from one to five as you hold up the appropriate number of fingers. Next, take out several of the same object – books, bananas, socks, or spoons will do. Place the objects in a pile and move one object over to an empty space as you count its number aloud: one for the first object, two for the second, etc. Once all objects are in the second pile, count them up again. Now challenge your child to bring you one toy from his room. Then two, then three, holding up your fingers as a reminder.

toddler treasure hunt

Size It Up

You’ll probably be tempted to put away the piles of objects your child has collected, but don’t! It’s the perfect way to introduce your child to the concept of size. Sitting near the pile, point out to your little one that the sock he found is small, but the bookcase is big! Stretch your legs on another walk through the house, pointing out things that are big and small and asking your child to do the same.toddler treasure hunt 

 Get Descriptive

It’s almost time to put everything back (we strongly encourage you to learn, live, and love the “Clean Up” song), but before you do, take this opportunity to introduce some new words. Describing the attributes of the things you’ve collected on your treasure hunts is a wonderful way to enhance your child’s vocabulary. As you pick up each item to put away, remind your child of its color and size, and describe it, using words like “fuzzy”, “soft”, “hard”, “smooth”, “rough”, etc.
Toddler Treasure Hunts Tired of turning around only to find that your toddler has emptied the Tupperware cabinet, or worse, your underwear drawer? Turn your toddler’s curiosity into a totally teachable moment with our scavenger hunt-style toddler treasure hunts!

Color Clues

A treasure hunt is a great way to help your toddler learn his or her colors. First, spend some time reviewing a specific color–red for example, read a board book about the color red, talk about things you see each day that are red, sound out the word red. Then set off on an adventure–together–to find things around your house that are red. Collect them if you can and then review your bounty, repeating the word red as you identify each object you’ve found. Weather permitting, you might follow this activity up with a walk around the block, looking for outdoor objects that are red, like cars, stop signs, flowers, berries, or even a kite flying in the sky.

toddler treasure hunt

 Shape Spotting

The activity above also works well with shapes. Start by reviewing the basic shapes with your little one. Draw a circle, square, rectangle, and triangle on a sheet of paper and have your child color each one in with crayons. Then take a tour of your home and point out the shape of the objects you see. The oven door is square. Books are rectangular. So is your child’s pillow. The bottom of a sippy cup is round. So is a ball. After you’ve pointed out several objects, try pointing to one and asking your child what shape it is.

toddler treasure hunt

Counting Cuties

Your home is also a great place to help your child learn to count. Start by counting from one to five as you hold up the appropriate number of fingers. Next, take out several of the same object – books, bananas, socks, or spoons will do. Place the objects in a pile and move one object over to an empty space as you count its number aloud: one for the first object, two for the second, etc. Once all objects are in the second pile, count them up again. Now challenge your child to bring you one toy from his room. Then two, then three, holding up your fingers as a reminder.

toddler treasure hunt

Size It Up

You’ll probably be tempted to put away the piles of objects your child has collected, but don’t! It’s the perfect way to introduce your child to the concept of size. Sitting near the pile, point out to your little one that the sock he found is small, but the bookcase is big! Stretch your legs on another walk through the house, pointing out things that are big and small and asking your child to do the same.toddler treasure hunt 

 Get Descriptive

It’s almost time to put everything back (we strongly encourage you to learn, live, and love the “Clean Up” song), but before you do, take this opportunity to introduce some new words. Describing the attributes of the things you’ve collected on your treasure hunts is a wonderful way to enhance your child’s vocabulary. As you pick up each item to put away, remind your child of its color and size, and describe it, using words like “fuzzy”, “soft”, “hard”, “smooth”, “rough”, etc. READ MORE
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