The Preschool Children had time to talk with the educators about rainbow colours and research what colour preschool friends liked.
The children looked into what colours were included in the rainbow and who liked which colours with an educator. This was done by creating a chart with the rainbow clolours and we asked friends and educators alike what their favourite was. Among the many rainbow colours, surprisingly, purple was the colour children liked the most. The children counted how many were distributed in each colour and explored alphabet letters through their names.
A few days later, we created purple play dough as per the colour that the most children and educators liked. Children discussed with the educators how to create the purple colour. "What was the favourite colour for the most friends last time?" Educator Mia asked. "Purple," they said. "Today, we're going to make purple playdough. Now look at the colours I brought," Mia said. As the observed closely they replied, "Red!" "Blue!" in a loud voice. "Now, look. What happens when you mix the two colours?” Mia showed them the process of mixing the two colours to make purple. But the food colouring didn't come out completely purple yet. "It's strange, we don't have purple yet. So, what should we do?" Mia asked. Children had a variety of ideas, like, we need to add more red, and more blue. Finally, children and Mia finished creating the purple food colouring and mixed it with flour dough to make purple playdough. We went through a variety of activities to further explore colours that help develop children's emotional and cognitive development.
For one of the activities, the children traced their hands on paper and then painted with “nail polish” using the colours that they made by mixing paint colours, creating many different ones, including pink and green. As they applied the “nail polish” on the paper they showed great concentration and had eye coordination.
The children also experienced creating associative drawing with colours. Another occasion, children talked about their favourite colours and took turns talking about what came to mind when they thought of the colours.
- "What's your favourite colour, Graeme?"
- "Yellow," he answered.
- "Then what comes to your mind when you think of yellow?"
- "My Sister. And my Mom and Dad."
Suddenly Tyler started to join the conversation. "My favourite colour is yellow, too. It's like sunshine."
After children received the paper in their favourite colours, they started drawing things that came to their mind when they thought of the colour.
Through these various activities, children have developed the ability to think and have an important experience of freely sharing their opinions with friends. These activities not only enhance children's fine motor skills, but also positively affect their emotions by naturally expressing what they think in mind through pictures. The children's view of the world through colour was so beautiful, and it led us all to a world of children's innocence. We wonder what other colours or their various shades would inspire the children to think of or explore. Perhaps this interest in colours will take the children in a direction that we as educators did not imagine they would go.
