Color Trays

When I first introduced LM to color activities, he was about 18 months old. The idea of a color tray was to immerse him in the particular color that I was introducing.  It was a hit with him.  He loved picking up each item and showing them to me.  We would talk about it and the color.  Great for beginning communication skills as well as the concept of color. 

What can you put on your color tray?

Anything that is that color basically. But here are some suggestions:

-a crayon

-a little car

-a lego

-pom-poms

-a piece of felt

-a piece of foam

-a piece of colored paper

-shapes

-small pictures or flash cards

-toys/stuffed animals

-a small ball of play-doh

-a button

-a cookie cutter

-ribbon or yarn

-blocks

-items from nature (leaf, grass, flower, acorn, etc)

-food (apple, pumpkin, lemon, avocado, etc)

I also use a color sign that has the name of the color and items on it.  These wonderful cards are from the $ tree.  Inexpensive, but very useful.

For the color orange, I had a coloring sheet to go with it as well.  See the carrot above. Another idea would be to let your child find some of the items for the tray.  They can add 3 new items and go on a color hunt throughout the house!

Our most recent tray was purple.  I shared this purple tray with a variety of activities over at Creative and Curious Kids!  Now a sneak peak for you... the red tray I will be using with the kids this week.  (ages 1, 2.5, and 3)

Written by Jen