Our guest post today was done by basically my favorite person in the world... my twin sister Elise 🙂 I am especially excited to feature my darling niece in this post. I think she is the cutest little girl ever, but I am obviously very biased. I hope you enjoy this fun and simple 4th of July activity that they came up with!
Materials needed: Multi-colored balls in primary colors (various sizes, including red and blue), American flag, kiddie pool (optional)
Directions:
Part I:
1. Find a big open space in your backyard or a room in your house and pour out all of the balls that you have into a big pile on the ground. They can be various colors and sizes, but you will want to make sure to have some red balls and some blue balls.
2. Show your toddler how to sort the balls by color, making one pile with red and blue balls and one pile with various colored balls. Let your toddler play with the balls and as she picks up the various balls emphasize which color she is touching.
After you have helped her sort the balls, you can play various games with the balls. Since my daughter is still working on crawling, I used the blue and red balls to help motivate her to crawl across my yard. I would throw out a blue ball and then tell her to go find a "blue ball". I repeated this with red balls and other larger blue balls.
Part II:
3. Fill up your kiddie pool with water. While we were waiting for the pool to fill up, I gave my daughter an American flag and tried to show her that the flag had red and blue in it like our balls. She had fun playing with the flag and practicing waving it around.
4. One at a time, slowly throw all of the blue balls into the kiddie pool. Each time you throw a new ball into the pool, repeat that you are throwing in a blue ball. After you have thrown in all of the blue balls, repeat the same step using the red balls.
As your toddler plays in the pool encourage him/her to throw you a blue ball or a red ball. You can also encourage your toddler to keep waving the American flag as he/she plays.
This was a very simple activity, but helped me foster conversation with my daughter and helped me introduce her to patriotic colors in a fun way. Later in the day, after we were exhausted from all of our activities, we watched a few videos of fireworks and patriotic songs on YouTube on my iPhone. These were our two favorite videos...
What a great hands-on and visual way to talk about colors! I also love how you embedded some motor skills practice into this activity and made it fun for her. Thanks Elise!
Elise is a mom of a happy and talkative one-year-old. Not only does she operate as her daughter's social and activities coordinator, but also runs Ginger Editorial Services, and coaches lacrosse for Skyline High School. She loves traveling, running, coaching, and throwing parties. Elise blogs about her family's adventures at Non-Stop: Our Jet-Setting Life.
Leave a Comment