Home Preschool - Teaching the Color Green

This is a post I would have normally put up on my personal blog, but since I had a lot of free and/or inexpensive ideas I thought I would share it here.  My daughter was 2 in November and I am now watching a 3 1/2 year old little girl each day.  I have started preschool with both of them.  I have made a lot of homemade preschool tools that I figured I would share with you.

I love this age.  I love showing them something and then watching them learn and understand it.  When my 6 and 7 year old were this age I started home preschool with them.  By the time they went to Kindergarten they had most of the basics down.  Colors, shapes, numbers, writing their names.  I am hoping for the same thing with the girls.

Here is a picture of our preschool area.  It is my dining room.  On the walls I have a color, shape and alphabet poster, a calender, a pocket chart (shown below), and an area to show the color of the week.  The white cabinet in the corner is our craft cupboard and holds most of our art supplies and materials.

I decided to start off teaching colors.  My plan is to choose one color each week and focus on that.  Our crafts, books, and activities will revolve around the color of the week.  Last week our color was green.  Here are some of the things we did.

We read books about the color green, including a couple of frog books and made a craft to go along with the books.  The craft was simple-the girls were to paint the circle with green paint.  I traced their hands for the legs and then I helped them with the eyes and draw the face.

Here is a color matching activity that can be used in many different ways.  I wrapped empty toilet tissue containers with colored cardstock.  I cut colored pipe cleaners in half and you have your toddler/preschooler match up the colors.  I have also seen these with numbers on the back so that you can place the correct amount of pipe cleaners in each roll.  I will be adding numbers to these as we get closer to learning them.

One day we made homemade green playdough.  For added fun, we put in some gold glitter.  The girls really loved that!

Another day I had the girls dress all in green.  I gave them this pan and told them to walk around the house to find green items to put on it.  By the time we were done half of the couch was covered in green things!







Here is another cheap and frugal idea.  I got these pocket charts at Target on the dollar spot a long time ago.    Pocket charts are very versatile.  For this activity you can have your toddler/preschooler match colors.  I put one of each pair in the pocket and then the child had to find the other and match it up.  I picked up these fun Mickey Mouse cards from the hardware store.  They were paint color samples.  The best part?  They were free!