This month in the toddler room at St. Nicholas, children have demonstrated an interest in exploring the concept of colours. It started off by children wanting to colour with markers and bringing it home to show mom and dad. When an educator leads a painting activity, children have rich discussions such as their favourite colour, what certain colour reminds them of and as well as what colours can mix to create a new colour.
The toddler educators were trying to come up with ideas on what to do for Father’s Day. Through much observation and following the children’s interest, the educators in the room decided to do a Father’s Day gift that involves painting and tie dying, as this would continue to foster their interest and learning in colours.
Educators asked parents to please provide a shirt so the children could decorate it, and the parents jumped in at the opportunity. Ruth started off by letting the children choose their colour to paint the words “Best dad ever,” on their shirt. Noemie, Roman, Abigail and Vivaan shared with Ruth, “I want red because red is my favourite colour,” They also picked another colour knowing that it is their dads’ favourite colour. The children started off painting their letters and wanted to switch colours to make it colourful for their dad. Once we let it dry we decided to do hand prints on the shirt. Nolan and Michelle shared it was ticklish on their skin when we brushed paint on their hand. Most of the children appeared to enjoy seeing their hand print on the shirt and wanted to do it again by adding another hand print but with a different colour. Many of the toddlers shared they were very excited for their dads to see their special shirt.
Our next step was to do tie dye the shirts, one by one the children chose 3-4 different colours that represents their love for dad. Abigail shared she wanted a rainbow for dad, as she worked on her project, she was happy to get all of the rainbow colours that she had hoped for. Noemie and Aariv were intrigued by seeing all of the different colours mix on their shirts. Aariv focused on black, brown, and orange, wondering what his shirt would look like. He even asked grandpa to stay and watch while he worked on it. Noemie expressed she wanted a fire on the shirt, she asked educator Liv, “What colours are a fire?” With the reply, she focused on adding orange, red a bit of blue and brown. She then stayed and stuck around to watch all of her peers tie dying their shirts, as she encouraged her peers to add the same colours as her. Many of the children were very eager and excited to see their shirts and how they turned out.
This experience supported several developmental domains; social, communication, and cognitive. The children have demonstrated each of these domains. Looking at social, the children have social interest and perspective taking, as many of the children they would join in group discussions as well as one on one. With communication, forming sentences with each other as well as with peers, they also focused on expressive language as they used expressive choices of words. Lastly, with cognitive they were able to use their memory skills and tell us what their dads’ favourite colour is. The children also got to experience first hand watching the colours mix, many of the toddlers asked rich questions such as “What does purple and yellow mix?” And, “What does red and yellow make?” The children were very intrigued. This also allowed them to participate and observe a science experiment going on. This made the children want to sit down and watch their colours expand and merge with others. When the whole process was done, Abigail noticed her shirt was not so colourful and she made lots of comparison until Ruth hand washed the shirt, she noticed it was light pink everywhere. She squealed and shared, “Dad loves pink because Abigail likes pink.” We will continue to provide more science experiments and more colourful activities.
