Paint Sample Rainbow Fan

I love looking at paint colors!  It seems like every time I go to Lowe’s I end up coming home with a stack of paint samples (good thing I don’t go very often).  :)

Here’s a fun little activity to help your little one learn to recognize colors!  It can also be used in a variety of other ways too.  Go on a nature walk and have your child match items to their colors.  Throw it in a bag to take with you someplace where your child is supposed to be quiet (like church or a doctor’s office).  It’s adapted from an idea in The Preschooler’s Busy Book.

Here’s what you’ll need:  an assortment of paint sample cards, yarn or string, a hole punch and a brass paper fastener.

1.  Let your little one use the hole punch to put a hole at the top and the bottom of each paint sample card (try to center them as much as possible).  Depending on the age of your child, you may have to help them squeeze the hole punch.

2.  Put a brass paper fastener through each of the paint sample cards to attach them.

3.  Thread a piece of yarn through the top holes of each of the paint sample cards.

4.  Tie the end of the yarn severaltimes so that it makes a knot too big to fit through the hole.  Repeat on the other end as well.

You’re all done!  And look how nice and compact it is!

Isn’t it beautifully colorful?

A Color of His Own by Leo Lionni

This book is appropriate for older preschoolers and introduces children to the concept of mixing colors.  Three adorable mice come across three jars of paint. One is red, one is yellow, and one is blue. Thinking that the jars of paint are Mouse Paint, the three climb in. Next, they set about dipping their toes in other colors, creating entirely different combinations. Thus, kids learn that when a red mouse dances in a puddle of yellow paint, his feet will eventually turn orange. By the end of the tale, the mice are painting all sorts of colors, mixing and matching shades in all sorts of new and exciting ways.