Start Your Circle Time with this Fun Colour Song

Every morning at circle time, we do a quick fingerplay and then enter into a Good Morning Song.   I have a few favourites, but I do like to switch things up regularly.  Variety is good!

One great way to start our circles is with a colour song.  I pick a colour that each student is wearing and then move my way one by one through the class.  

The tune for this song is "The Colour I See."

The words go like this (depending, of course, on what colour each student is wearing): 

Red, red is the colour I see

If you're wearing red please show it to me.

Stand up and turn around.

Show me your red, then sit back down.

Green, green is the colour I see

If you're wearing green please show it to me.

Stand up and turn around.

Show me your red and then sit down.

etc.

To turn this song into a game, you could also hand out 4 colours of paper to the class.  To make the game more challenging for older students, choose colours that you think they are less familiar with - grey, silver, gold, etc. 

Tell the children that when you sing about the colour they are holding, they can stand up and turn around.  

For more fun colour activities and games, click HERE to see a previous post.

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Colour Games for Preschool - 3 to try!

This week we enjoyed playing a number of colour games at school.  

Colour Game #1 - Shades of Colour  

Many of our preschoolers know their basic colours.  We also try to introduce them to the concept that colours come in many different shades.

It's a new idea to many of them that although you may say the sky is BLUE, to be even more descriptive you could call it light blue, dark blue, turquoise, etc. depending upon the shade.

My co-teacher set up an activity for centre time that introduces students to this concept.

Students pin the coloured clothespins to the matching shades on the colour cards.  

It takes a discerning eye!

Here is a close-up of the purple card after the clothespins have been matched to the correct shades.

The colour cards are freebies from the paint store.  Just get two copies of each card so that you can cut the second one into pieces for gluing onto the clothespins.  

We store all the pieces in the decorated can shown below.  

   Another fun storage container for this game would be an unused paint can.  Some paint stores will donate one for free if you let them know it's for school.  At worst, I believe they charge only a few dollars for it. 

Colour Game #2 - Pom Pom Toss

Another colour game we set up this week gave the kids a chance to develop their gross motor skills.

    

We had an old box with lots of compartments that we had been saving for some sort of activity.  (You know how teachers like to re-purpose everything?!)

I cut up pieces of coloured paper and placed one in each compartment.  

We laid down a line of tape for the kids to stand behind, and then they attempted to throw the pom poms into the box.

The students' challenge was not only to get them into the box, but to have them land in the compartment with the matching colour.  

When they had thrown all of the pom poms, they counted how many landed in the correct spot.  Next round, they'd try to beat their score!     

Colour Game #3 - Rainbows

A whole class colour game that we like to play is called "Rainbows."

Every child gets a coloured item.  I usually try to use no more than about 4 different colours in total to keep it simple.

The items you use could be any object from around your classroom.  We sometimes use coloured blocks, coloured felt pieces, coloured squares of paper, etc.  

Whatever you have on hand will work!

Students sit on chairs in a circle.  When you call out a colour (i.e., RED) everyone with that colour has to quickly get up and change seats with someone else who has that colour.

Every once in a while, you call out "Rainbow!" and then everybody in the class must get up and change seats.  

It's lots of fun and could also be a great way to teach those trickier colours that some of the kids are less familiar with like grey, gold, silver, etc.  

If you're looking for more ideas to bring some "colour" into your classroom, you might want to check some previous posts under the label, COLOUR ACTIVITIES, on the right margin of my blog.   

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Stuck for Some new Center Time Activities? Try these!

I'm on a roll with creating new center time games since returning from Christmas break. With the start of a new year, it seems only fitting to have some fresh, new activities to keep the kids stimulated!

Here's what I created this week.

Game #1 - MARBLE TEE TIME GAME

For this game, students use a set of plastic tweezers to pick up the marbles and place them on the golf tees. 

With this activity the children are practicing their fine motor skills and more specifically, the pincer grip necessary for holding and manipulating a pencil.  

I recommend placing this game on a tray to catch any stray marbles.

Here's a closer look at the base of the game.  

I found a square piece of styrofoam and then used a glue gun to cover it with pieces of yellow and green foam.  

Not only does the covering make the game look nicer, it will help increase the lifespan of the styrofoam.  

We once brought a piece of styrofoam that was unprotected into the classroom and it "died" a quick death.    
After 10 minutes, all that remained was a mysterious pile of white crumbs.  Lesson learned! 

If you'd like to adapt this activity for younger students, craft pom poms can be used instead of the marbles.  They're much easier to pick up with the tweezers.

Game #2 - COLOURED CHAIN DROP GAME 

 

For this activity, the children pick up coloured objects and drop them into the tube of the same colour. Again, the objects can be picked up using tweezers.  
  

I saw this activity on a number of Pinterest boards, but it was played using pom poms.  (By the way, don't look at the ugly tape I used to hold up the cardboard tubes!  Not so pretty.  I'll have to buy some of that cute patterned tape next time!)


We didn't have an abundance of pom poms to recreate the original version of this game, so we used our collection of coloured chains instead.     

Some of the chains were linked into groupings that were all one colour.  Those that were linked with a mix of colours could be dropped in the rainbow coloured tube.      

The children seemed to have particular fun trying to get the long chains through the tubes.  It was definitely more of a challenge!
  

3 Center Time Activities to Add to your Repertoire!

We are always creating new center time games to challenge the students and keep them engaged during our free play period. Hopefully you'll find some new ideas here that you may like to try, too!

In the past week, we added shredded paper to our sensory bin and then "hid" our collection of plastic multi-colored buttons underneath.   

The students search for the buttons, and when they find one, they drop it into the canister of the same color.  

There's something so satisfying about dropping items into a slot!  The sound of the item hitting the bottom, the way the item disappears...  
Not to mention the piggy bank connection.  Who doesn't love dropping coins into a piggy bank?!   

If you don't have enough cans for all of your button colors, just double up the colors on one can.   You'll see I did that with red and black on the can in the photo.   
Doubling up also saves on storage space!

If you want to save even more storage space, use a variety of can sizes so that you can stack them one inside another when not in use.  

Another center activity that has been popular with our class is a fine motor activity for which you'll need toothpicks (preferably colored), and a little spice container such as the one in the photo.  

This idea was brought in by my co-teacher.  I believe she purchased the the plastic spice container at the Dollar Store.    

The children pick up the toothpicks and insert them one by one into the tiny holes.  

When all the toothpicks are inside the container, the students can twist off the lid (another great skill to practice!) and dump them back out for the next person.

If you want your students to practice counting, one option could be an activity similar to my Cupcake Candle Count game below.

The children count the candles on the cupcakes and then place them on the plate with the corresponding number. 

When all the cupcakes have been placed in their spot, we often sing the Happy Birthday song and pretend to blow out the candles.   

I added a dot of peel and stick velcro to the back of the cupakes and then to the plate to add to the fun.
It's much more satisfying to play this game when you can stick and unstick the cupcakes with the velcro!  

We have a wooden tray from an old Melissa and Doug puzzle that we use to hold the pieces for games such as these so that they are kept orderly (and from falling off the table!) while playing.

This Cupcake activity is part of my Cupcake Crazy Unit which features a number of colour and number games.  If you like this game and want to save yourself the time of making it, you can check out the unit HERE.  It contains a number of different activities, songs, and felt board stories to teach colors and numbers.

I hope this post gives you some new ideas for your class.  
Have a great week, everyone!

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3 Games to Develop your Preschoolers Fine Motor Skills

I have been busy creating my Christmas Unit so I haven't been doing much posting lately.

My Christmas Unit is basically done now (I may post about that tomorrow!) so I thought I'd like to take a moment and share some classroom ideas from the past week or two. 

I  don't know about you, but I am always looking for new activities that would be fun for 

center time.

 Sometimes I think I like variety and new challenges even more than the preschoolers.

Vive la difference!  (I don't know exactly what that means, but it seems to fit!)

Here is one of the activities we set out this week.  Colour sorting!

We use buttons for a variety of activities.  

This is one way of setting up a colour sort that allows the children to practice their fine motor skills at the same time.  

If you don't have a sorting tray, you can also use a muffin tin and just line the cups with round paper shapes.  

This center activity features a tray of salt and some "challenge cards." 

We started the students with the shape cards and then moved on to some trickier ABC cards.

One day we also placed this salt tray on the light table to add another element of interest.   

Incorporating the light table was a fun idea, but one that I may not repeat.  

This activity can get a little messy.  

There's always one or two little dears that create their own game and start removing the salt from the bin and sprinkling it around the table. 

We'll see how our light table works the next time I turn it on!

Here we have a fun activity that requires a thin layer of oil, droppers, and water tinted with food colouring.  

The children loved seeing the drops form in the oil and then watching the colours mix to create new colours.

Their favourite part was towards the end when there was a grayish brown puddle in the bin. 

The class was delighted.  "MUD!"  Of course it was their favourite colour of all.

Here is a picture of me and hubby out in some mud.  And "riding" a buffalo.  

Just a typical day...

Not really, but I'm including it to encourage all you hardworking parents and teachers out there to remember to take some time off for yourselves.  

I know I need reminders to do it more often myself.  Balance = sanity!

Take care of yourselves!  

Corinne

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