Montessori Monday: Colours

We have been working on learning colours as of late with Mr J.

One of our tools that has greatly helped is a collection of puzzles that we have bought through an amazing local sale. Although, they are not approved Montessori materials, because we are learning a home, we flex the definition a little to help it fit our world.

Each of our puzzles also has other steps that can be added in, one has shapes, one has counting & shapes, and one has sizes & shapes. For now, we have just concentrated on the colours.

Here are the puzzles we current use:

I sit with Mr J and talk to him about the different colours – at first, I concentrated just on the primary colours of red, yellow and blue.

After a while of talking about each one and having him watch my mouth to see how I form the words, he inevitably will purposely get one wrong and then giggle. So we move on to just doing the puzzles and enjoying the harmonious colours.

I think the key in this activity is encouraging the child to match up the colours on the puzzle. After I showed Mr J this several times, he caught on and was able to do the puzzles on his own. We situated the puzzle box on the top of the shelf in the playroom where he can reach. In the last few weeks, I have also left a colour puzzle or two out on his table upstairs. He especially loves sitting doing puzzles especially as I make dinner.

One of the books we have also utilized for colour learning is One Sheep, Blue Sheep. It’s a great tale that involves 5 different colours, including primary ones and it has a great rhythm to it. You can get it through Scholastic.

He keeps telling me his favourite colour is blue! Just like mommy.

Have you done any crafts or activities lately with colours?