Lately the girls have started to show interest in colours. We have a few colour sorting activities, but I thought it would be fun to combine colour sorting with our outdoor walks.
Have you heard of the 1000 Hours Outdoor Challenge? The girls were six months-old when we started, and while we probably won’t hit 1000 hours, it has encouraged us to enjoy the great outdoors much more. Finding activities to enjoy outdoors, like this colour board, encourages us to stay outdoors even longer.
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Materials needed:
- wood board
- paint
- cloths pins
- hot glue gun
-Using the scrap wood board, I painted squares on it using basic colours. We plan on using this board year round, so I didn’t just stick to “fall” colours.
-Using the hot glue gun, I glued a few clothes pins over each colour.
On our walks, we look for colours in nature that match the colours on our colour board. The girls often find random fallen leaves or wood pieces. We talk about the colour of the item they have and, together, we use the pin to clip it to its corresponding colour. Fall is such a fun time to do this with so many changing leaves.
While they don’t search for specific colours at the moment, in time this will be a fun colour seeking game.
If not interested in going over the colours at the moment, they just collect items and we go over them after we are done hiking or at home.
I also try to keep a bucket in the car for their collected items if we make an impromptu stop at a park or take a little hike after visiting the library. We avoid taking things from plants, instead only collecting fallen items.
If they have any favourite items, like a favourite leaf, we turn it into a lesson. Last week they each wanted to keep a leaf. Upon arriving home we found out they were cottonwood/poplar leaves. Daddy uses poplar in his wood shop, so we went and checked out what poplar looks like planed and read some poplar tree facts.
Have you taken colour sorting activities outdoors?
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