Colors

As I was adding posts to the “Ultimate Montessori Homemade Materials Lists” I discovered two things: My posts from last year on colors are a little confusing to read now, and my color cards download had strangely disappeared from my 4shared page. By an even stranger coincidence, due to a mix up, the files were also no longer on my computer. So I decided to put everything I've posted about color materials (plus a new idea) into one clear post and remake and upload the color cards.

First off is the train. You can download the train cars here, printable in three sizes. The smaller sizes can be used to sort color cards or objects like this:

The full page cards are fun to “load” like this:

This is still my son's favorite activity with color. He got it out again just the other day. You probably recognized from the pictures that the images are taken from Freight Train by Donald Crews. That way they can also be used as an extension to go with the book. (Our other favorite book for learning about color is White Rabbit's Color Book.)

The color match cards can be downloaded from here. They are 2”x3” and feature pictures from these fabric panels, which I have seen at many Walmarts. These are good for color sorting, or if you made a book or quilt from the fabric panels, you could use the cards for matching to the book/quilt. The colors included are red, yellow, blue, green, orange, purple, pink, brown, gray and black.

These are the color tablets we use:

They are printed from a file Jojoebi sells on her Montessori site.

The other day I had my marker drawer out, and Beeper was playing with the markers, just sorting through them and looking at the colors. I remembered being a kid and how much fun it was to sort through a big pack of 30 markers. That's what Montessori is all about, right? Materials that will draw the child's interest.

So the idea for my new version of the color tablets was born:

I went through the brand of markers I had the most of and pulled out any colors that had several shades of the same color. I ended up with 4-6 each of blues, greens, oranges, reds/pinks, and browns. I rubber-banded them by group and put them in a cute bucket. Beeper loved it and ended up grading four of the five bundles in one sitting. That is more interest than he has ever shown in the color tablets.

My next step is going to be teaching him how to use watercolors. He should really enjoy that, and it will be a good chance to do some more color mixing activities and make a color wheel. Then maybe we can make a connection between the color wheel and what we've been learning about rainbows...

I'm getting ahead of myself again.

Remember, if you have any posts you want to share about materials you made, or you just want to see what ideas other people have had, click on the button below: