Play School: Colors (week 1)

Now that my little guys are two I've decided I'd like to introduce a bit of organized "school time" a couple days a week.  My reasoning behind doing this is to give both them and myself some more structure to our days and to begin working on concepts and themes in a fun way along with practicing listening and following directions.

We are just getting started and I'm sure we will adapt and change as we go along but for now this is what we are doing.  Each week I will choose a theme; this first week is colors.  Soon we'll do Halloween for sure.  At the beginning of the week I will put together a tote bin full of the materials we'll be using that week.  Books, games, puzzles, etc.  I'll bring the tote out at our Monday play school time and then it will stay in the living room for the rest of the week for them to explore.  This also works out well for us since most of their toys are kept in the play room upstairs; this tote will give the boys a rotating group of items to play with while they are downstairs too.

We'll probably only do an organized play school session twice a week, Monday and Wednesday.  But knowing we have a theme each week will help me to point out things that go along with our theme even outside that time.  I'm aiming for 30 minutes a session.  10 minutes of storytime, 10 minutes for games/crafts, and 10 minutes for outside/dancing/singing time.  I'm not going to stay too firm with these times.  If they are enjoying a craft or game we'll stick with it for longer, if the activity is a bust we'll move on.  But I do want to try and encourage sitting still for the first two activities as much as I can.

Here is a quick run down of some of the things we've done so far this week while learning about colors.

Books:

Where is the Green Sheep by Mem Fox
My Very First Book of Colors by Eric Carle
Blue Hat, Green Hat by Sandra Boynton
Crayola  Let's Discover Colors (found this in the $1 bin at Target)

Activities:

First up was a color sorting box I made from a jewelry storage box I found at The Container Store for $5.  I just cut out some construction paper squares to fit into the little compartments and used double sided tape to secure them.  I put in some poms and pieces of pipe cleaner for the kids to sort.

Next I brought out some construction paper cards that I covered with contact paper (to keep them from being immediately destroyed).  My intention was to move to a new activity using those but as soon as Aaron saw them he started matching the poms and pipe cleaners to the cards, correctly even!  So we did that for a few minutes. Then I gave the boys six trains that matched the colors of the cards and asked them to drive the trains to the right "sheds".  As you know, my guys love trains so that was a big hit.

Lastly I brought out a puzzle.  When we do this puzzle we usually talk about the shapes but this time I asked them to find the blue piece, red piece, etc.

Outdoor Time:

After the indoor activities wound down we went outside and I shouted out directions regarding the different balls in the back yard.  Like, "kick the blue ball" or "throw me the red ball".  

This was a great activity because the boys were following two part directions and we were all running and playing in the beautiful weather together.  Sorry for the lack of pictures of the boys playing....I was too busy doing my part! :)

Overall I was really pleased with the way the boys listened and attended to what we were talking about and I was sooo impressed with how well they did matching the colors!  The first session really did great and I'm so glad I decided to start doing this.  I think it is going to be a great experience for us all.

This post is linked to Artsy Play Wednesday so if you are looking for even more ideas to entertain your little ones, be sure to click over!