Shape Rainbow

Today was such a cold, dreary day I thought we could use come color! We made a rainbow collage out of construction paper shapes. These cutouts were from an earlier project I tried with the boys with no success. I had spent hours tracing shapes onto multiple colors of construction paper and carefully cutting them out. When the lesson was all ready to go, they did not want to cooperate at all. Today was a different story. Thomas has been interested in colors lately, asking about mixing colors and talking about all the colors of his trains.

This project was a little beneath Thomas' level because he already knows all the colors and shapes but he was excited to play with glue. Ever since we went to Toddler Thursday at the High Museum last week where he got to use liquid glue (as opposed to glue sticks that we have at home) he's been begging to use the "squeeze glue," as he calls it. This was perfect for Jacob, though. I know he is picking up on everything Thomas is doing, but I worry that I haven't spent enough time with him one-on-one working on the basics, like colors and shapes.


We've also been listening to music about the colors of the rainbow. We go through phases, listening to the same CD over and over again until someone, either me or one of the boys gets sick of it. Last week I checked out this CD from the library, Color Wheel Cartwheel. It has a song for each color of the rainbow and in between the songs the narrator says the names of the colors in different languages.

While we're on the subject of color, I have a book recommendation to share:  
The Magic of Color by Tracy Kane.

This beautifully illustrated book starts with a dreary, black and white world (kind of like it was today). With the addition of primary colors, the inhabitants of this world mix their colors together to create new ones until the whole place is filled with all the colors of the rainbow. The author even slips in some color jargon along the way. It's a cute introduction to colors but it's even better after you've learned about primary and secondary colors. While I was reading, Thomas said to me "They only have red, yellow, and blue. But that's ok because those are the primary colors so they can make any colors they want with the primary colors." I was so proud!