Thursday 21 February 2013

Make Your Own - Colour Pattern Activity

No Toddle Table Tuesday this week because we were away but I did make the following colour pattern activity for Little Boy Blue and his busy bag collection and wanted to share it with you to prove that anyone can 'make' activities for their children, this one was so easy.

Supplies:

Card. (from my own supply)

Bottle tops. (£1 for Willko)

 Self adhesive Coloured Dots. (98p for Supersave)












Instructions:

1. Measure and cut out strips of card, make as many as you want and adjust length depending on how complex a patten combination you desire.

2. Stick the self adhesive colour dots in different combinations onto the cards.

3. Stick the self adhesive colour dots on to the inside of the bottle tops.



4. Once the cards and bottle tops are made put in a ziplock bag and add to your busy bag collection.

The object of this activity is to help little ones with colour recognition and introduce the idea of patterns, the child covers each dot on the card with the same coloured bottle top. 

One thing I would suggest is if your little one is like Little Boy Blue make enough colour tops to cover every activity card, I had originally made enough tops for a few activity cards thinking they could be taken off and reused for the next card but as you may see in the photo he wanted to cover all the dots on all the cards!



The bottle tops could be used for lots of different activities like dividing into colour groups, as a manipulative for counting/graphing or as play pieces for board games. Let your imagination run wild and let me know what you come up with.

12 comments:

  1. Excellent idea. I have not seen the bottle tops in Wilkos before- will go and look. We did some pattern work the other week using an idea from the Imagination Tree- I will give this one a go too.

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    1. Unsure if all stores are set out the same Susanna but I found them in the Kitchen stuff where there is a section for making your own wine/beer. Hope you enjoy the activity it's so cheep and easy to do.

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  2. Super cute idea! Great for playing with.

    Maggy

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    1. Thanks Maggy, I love it when you see endless possibilities for something and when the kids come up with some of their own too.

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  3. Thanks for sharing this idea on TGIF! Pinned it and will use it!

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    1. Glad you like it Debbie and hope you get some use out of it too.

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  4. What a great idea (and so simple to make), so double points for thinking and sharing it :)

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    1. Thanks Enchanted Schoolroom. When your busy it's great to create something quick, simple and inexpensive but effective too!

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  5. Wonderfully simple! My oldest loves doing pattern work, my youngest, not so much! I think she'd enjoy this activity though!

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    1. This is a simple introduction to pattern work as it's not asking for the next (missing) pattern piece which is what I think puts some kiddies off, hope you give it a go and that she enjoys it.

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  6. I love the bottlecap idea! We have started to introduce patterns, but my son doesn't quite get it yet, but this is a great way to keep him interested. I pinned this to my Tot School Board! Thanks!

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    1. Thanks Nicole, Little Boy Blue loves colours so this has been a great activity to introduce the concept of patterns plus you can let them play with the tops making up pictures or pattens of their own. A big thanks for pinning it too.

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