Montessori Colour Box 3 Extensions
Practical Life Activities With Colour Grading for Preschoolers
Oct 31, 2009
Children in Montessori preschools develop colour knowledge through pairing and subsequently grading activities with the Colour Boxes. Practical life activities, for example, can also be planned to prepare the child for colour grading as well as to reinforce this skill.
Colour Grading in Pouring and Transferring Activities
By manipulating the amount of food colouring and the water used, children can enjoy creating solutions of different colour values while practising their pouring, spooning and squeezing skills. Here are some activities:
- They pour water into equal containers (such as muffin or ice trays) and experiment with the amount of given food colouring to get darker or lighter solutions.
- They add the same amount of food colouring (using a measuring spoon or a syringe) into containers of different sizes. They then estimate the amount of water they need to pour to get solutions that are darker or lighter.
- They pour water through a funnel into identical bottles, but to different levels. Children add food colouring using an eye dropper to get solutions that reflect their colour grading skills.
Children can also mix the colours, for example red and yellow, to produce the different orange shades between the darker reddish orange and the lighter yellowish orange. In all these exercises, the challenge in getting solutions of the different colour values serves as a possible point of interest that can sustain the children’s continued practice in pouring and transferring liquids.
Colour grading is also applied in daily activities that involve pouring and transferring. For example, when mixing a glass or jug of cordial, by paying attention to the colour intensity of the liquid, the child can estimate if the drink is too diluted or too thick, even without tasting the solution.
Colour Grading in Threading, Weaving and Sewing Activities
The materials for these activities include beads, thread, yarn, string, laces, ribbons, cloth and buttons which are easily available in colours of diverse values, giving children chromatic pleasure as they practice threading, lacing, weaving and sewing.
Some possible exercises include the following:
- Children who can thread large beads on a shoe lace can sort and grade beads by their colour shades to thread them into key-chains, bracelets and necklaces.
- Children who have been introduced to weaving using strips of contrasting colours can move on to use cloth or paper ribbons of different colour shades in their weaving practice, or even nipah or coconut leaves of different shades of green to weave small table mats.
- Children who are familiar with simple sewing cards can be provided with lace, string, yarn or thread of different colour shades. They can have colour fun with their sewing or lacing cards as they produce sewing patterns that display their colour grading skills.
- Children who can sew buttons are challenged to sew a line or circle of buttons of different shades of one colour, using thread that is closest in colour to the given button.
Colour Grading in Practical Life Activities That Develop Classroom Skills
For activities in this area, teachers can provide sheets of paper that come in shades of one colour. Children can practice hole punching or snipping these sheets, refining their ability to manipulate the hole puncher or the scissors. The pieces of paper or little circles can be collected and glued on a sheet of paper to produce a colour graded collage. This gives them practice in using the glue stick. Children can use this art work to wrap gifts or to make a paper folder to store their class work.
Even sharpening of pencils and colour pencils can lead to a colour grading activity. The pencil shavings that come in different shades of brown can be collected and used for artwork, giving children another opportunity to practice their colour grading skills.
Colour Grading in Care of the Environment
One of the activities may include ensuring the orderliness in the art corner. Children can employ their colour grading skills to arrange colour pencils, crayons and paints. These are sorted by colour, and within each colour, by shade from darkest to lightest.
Colour grading skills may also come in handy when arranging flowers for the classroom as well.
In short, when colour grading is included in practical life exercises, there is refinement of the colour grading skills. The chromatic pleasure in playing with the colour shades and tints also provides further motivation for the child to continue to practise with the practical life apparatus.
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