My little Quinn is a smarty pants. He just turned three and will explain to you what echo means, what an acrobat does and tell his dad he is ridiculous with perfect pronunciation. When his aunt referred to the Octopus’s legs he told her they were tentacles. The kids vocabulary is huge and his ability to remember stuff astounds me. He can recite books word for word and has excellent story telling skills. One would think with this crazy good memory and outstanding vocabulary colors would be no big thing. They are! Quinn really struggles with his colors. We practice, a lot, but they just don’t stick. This is why I thought I would start with the basics. Simple matching. Here is the run down of the little activity (free) that I whipped together.
Walmart carries Better Homes & Garden paint. Their paint chips look like this.
The beauty of these paint chips is that perforated circle they have. Half the work is done for you. I picked up your basic colors in their truest shades. Didn’t want to confuse the kid with all the color variations.
I popped all the circles out. Easy enough, right? Then I used some clothespins I had. Truthfully I think full-size clothespins would be easier to manipulate. Add a dab of glue and you are good to go.
Next I trimmed down the paint chips. I decided to get rid of the logo along with the opening where the circle was punched out.
Now the game is ready for playing. Clip the clothespin to its corresponding color chip. This also works the fine motor skills for the little guys.
To conveniently store this I busted out some popsicle sticks and a good old zip lock bag.
After I made this I realized there are a million ways to use it. So here are a few:
1. Have kids match on their own terms.
2. Ask kids to match the red one, the blue one, the green one, etc.
3. Create lots of clothespins with colors or shapes and clip a pattern on one popsicle stick and have the child replicate the pattern on the other popsicle stick. Working patters is a great beginner math skill.
4. If you want to get advanced or are an art teacher you can have kids put the pin on the complementary color.
5. Another advanced (art teacher-ish option) get various shades of a color and have the kids arrange the clothespins on a popsicle stick in order of hue.
6. Make a couple sets and have kids race to clip colors.
These are just a few ways to adopt this project for your kid’s stage. As of now, we are just on matching and learning to work the clothespin. What kinds of things did/do your kid’s struggle with?
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