Colour Play

Markers have been my top choice of art supply for a toddler's first experiments with colours. I like their vibrant colours that will definitely attract young explorers, not to mention that they are less messy compared to other choices. 

As pictures speak louder than words, I love to use them to depict the learning process of my children. 

Here are some of the pictures of JE exploring her new set of "toy".

She tries different ways to grip the markers.

She learns to open and close the cover of the marker. 

And when she got tired of scribbling with them, we played a little game with the colourful sticks. 

JE looking at the markers and decides which one she wants to  knock  down and...

it's the yellow one!

All Things Yellow

When it comes to teaching JE, I have been using a similar "syllabus" as what I did with JS. However, the activities may vary as they are different individuals with their own personalities and preferences. I would try what I did with JS but if she doesn't show much interest, I would change the method or work on a different activity based on my observations of her - the things she likes to play with, the activities she does on her own, etc...

Here is one such activity that focused on colour recognition which I did with JS several years ago. To make things obvious for JE, I would give her toys of the same colour to play with. The towel which I used as the base, was meant to let her concentrate only in that area. As we play, I would say (in this case) "yellow pin", "yellow star", "yellow banana", etc...

Below are some pictures of how the activity went.

JE playing with all the yellow toys.

JS joined in an pretended that he was a yellow duck.

JE feeding the "duck".

Fine Motor Skill Activities for Toddlers

We have started JS  with formal schooling in weekday mornings and so now I have more one-on-one time for JE. She has just started walking, about two weeks ago, so she is enjoying her new skill and exploring in many new ways. 

During the day when we have time for ourselves, I would let her play with certain things that helps to improve her motor skills.

Some of the activities requires her to sit down for a while and the rest would require more movements. 

Here are some of the activities she enjoys.

1. Playing with simple jigsaw puzzles. Besides learning how to fix and unfix them (motor skill) she also learns the names of the objects. 

 2. Flipping pages of books and lifting the flaps to see the pictures behind. This also involves motor skills and language. 

3. Playing with Lego is obvious a motor skill activity but it also helps to instill creativity and I here, I let her play with one particular colour so she could learn the name of that colour. 

4. Putting this into and taking them out of an envelope. This also involves motor skills and walking too because if the object drops and rolls off she would go and take it back. I purposely gave her round objects for this activity so it rolls further and some walking is necessary. 

To her all these are just plain P.L.A.Y. but lots of learning involved!

Blue Chrysanthemums, Anyone?

I remembered seeing blue chrysanthemums at some flower shops a long time ago. I knew there weren't any blue species around for chrysanthemum but it did not trigger me to find out how they were produced until recently when I came across a post on one of the many pages I Liked on Facebook that shared an interesting experiment on absorption. In that experiment, roses were used. It was mentioned  that this test works particular well on roses and carnations but they are quiet pricy here where we live so we decided to try with chrysanthemum instead.

We got our flowers last Friday and did the experiment. 

We used blue, red and yellow food colouring. 

This was the result after six hours. The flowers in the blue food colouring were obviously blue while the yellow and red food colouring still looked white.  

The flowers in the red food colouring looked a little yellowish after 20 hours or so but the ones in the yellow food colouring still looked the same. 

This is the result after four days. The flowers in the yellow food colouring finally showed some difference and looked a bit yellowish while the ones in red food colouring looked a little more yellowish. It never became red. 

Then we did another experiment where we slit the stem of the flowers into two and put them in two different colours - blue and red. 

We also tried out using green food colouring. 

This was what we observed the following day. Two of the flowers turned blue while the rest remained the same. 

The red food colouring was strawberry flavoured and so, some of the flowers also smelt like strawberries!

Art and Craft - An Important Tool In A Child's Learning

I was not good in art when I was schooling and I found art classes kind of intimidating. I envied those who could draw and paint very well but I did not really put much effort in improving my own skills in this area. Perhaps because I had the idea that it was a non-academic subject which was insignificant. How wrong was I!

Having realised that art and craft actually played an important part in helping a child to pick up various motor skills on top of instilling creativity and patience  (just to mention a few), I made it a point that it is the most important part of JS' learning. It is not only rewarding to see his motor skills gradually improving, but it has always been the activities that he enjoyed the most. By the end of the day, he would proudly show Daddy his work and expecting him to say, "Wow! You did this? Well done!"

In this post, I would like to share with you one of the few artworks that I enjoyed doing during my schooldays which is very simple to do yet its result is simply awesome. It is one of the many paint resistant arts. Here we used candles and poster colour. 

During these busy days when I have to divide my time between JS and JE, this activity seems to be a good choice as it can be done in less than 30 minutes. 

So, here was what we did. 

First, JS had to write his name with some candles on a drawing block. Since he could not really write yet, I held his hand and we wrote his name once with a red candle. Then he had to trace it again using all the rest of the coloured candles we had (we had seven colours altogether). 

Next he simply doodled at the top and bottom part of the drawing block and he was ready to paint over the drawings and see the amazing result. 

He chose prussian blue, which was his favourite colour. 

Look at the artwork. It was simply amazing, wasn't it?

Eggshell Colouring and Collage

JS' obsession for eggs continues here with another activity using eggshells. They are the eggshells left over from his egg-shaped popsicle project. We did not have any specific plans as to what we were going to do with them so I thought perhaps we should dye them first and keep them for later use. 

JS colouring the eggshells. 

It so happened that we were doing the letter "e" for his alphabet collage project and I thought that the eggshells would make a great collage for it. 

Instead of the usual glue stick, he had to use liquid glue to trace the alphabet so that the eggshells would stick well. 

JS tracing the letter "e". 

JS arranging the eggshells.

And here are the alphabet collages we did so far. 

Salt Drawing

Sometimes, when JS is not interested in drawing using colour pencils and papers, I would get him to draw on his magnetic board. So there was this day when I did not have any specific plan in mind but we had some spare time for a little fun. I have read about writing and drawing using salt so I thought JS might like the idea too. True enough, he loved it! 

Since we just dyed some salt a few days ago, we mixed all of them together for this activity. 

Here are some of the things he drew. 

I don't quiet get it but he kept on saying that this is a Jelly Bean. 

This is obviously an 'I'....

and this, a square, but JS says it is a house. 

I think this looks like a smily face or a smiling lion, but again, JS says it is a Jelly Bean.

And he says this is a seahorse while I really figure out what it is. Perhaps a dragon?

Salt Colouring

The first time JS used a weighing scale was about a year ago when I thought him how to make pancakes. At that time, I simply let him "play" with the tool without knowing it's main purpose which is to help us measure the correct amount of flour we needed to make the pancake. 

Two months back, I introduced to him the skill of measuring with a ruler (when we made a plate of spaghetti) and this time round, I thought he would be able to pick up the skill of measuring with a weighing scale. Since we were making coloured salt, I thought I would introduce this skill to him by getting him to measure the amount of salt to be dyed. 

JS wanted to use 4 colours so I told him to prepare 4 bags of salt, each of them weighing 100 grams. 

Next, he had to use a dropper to put some water into 4 of the holes on the palette where he would mix with the paints he has chosen earlier. 

Then he used the dropper to add the paint mixture into a bag of salt, 

fasten it with an airtight bag clip 

and mix the contents evenly. 

After his nap, we made an artwork with the coloured salt. 

I gave him a piece of A4 paper (I chose green because it seems to be the contrast of the colours he used for the salt) and a roll of double-sided tape to work with the salt. 

Pouring the excess salt back into the bag was also a new skill he picked up from the activity. 

So, this is what he did.