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Preschool Playtime: Colors of the Rainbow (March 28, 2012)
Meets Wednesday Mornings from 9:15-10AM

Each session of Preschool Playtime has a fun theme which distracts the children enough to not realize all the hard work they are accomplishing with their large muscle, fine motor, and sensory work. Today, our theme was Colors of the Rainbow.

Today the children and I learned about different colors. The children sorted colored balls by using their visual scanning skills to find the balls matching color on the carpet. The children caught rolled balls, using eye hand coordination, and rolled and passed balls to their friends.

Once all the balls were sorted, the children worked on gross motor skills in the gym. The children, lay on their stomach on a bolster on the floor, and walked forwards on their hands, rolling their body over the bolster. This worked on arm and core strength as they held their body weight on their arms, against the pull over gravity. Next the children crawled through a tunnel, increasing body awareness and spatial relations. Holding onto a trapeze with their hands, working on arm and hand strength, the children kept their feet off the surface as they swung in the air, than crashed onto a pile of soft mats, receiving proprioceptive input.

The children worked to position their body as they climbed over a tire swing, and onto the rainbow bridge, working on balance and body awareness. At the end of the obstacle course, the children found piles of toys, sorted by color. The children picked a toy and transported it by carrying it, pushing it on a scooter board, or pulling it in a crate with a rope and used their eyes to search for the colored square that matched the color of the toy.

After all the toys were sorted according to color, the children made colorful flowers at the table. The children used a pincer grasp to squeeze food coloring with an eye dropper onto a coffee filter. As the colors mixed the children recognized that new colors were created (i.e. blue and yellow make green).

While their flowers dried, the children sat on the floor and made a fruit loop bracelet. The children practiced their fine motor coordination and eye hand coordination skills as well as bilateral hand use, as they held a string with one hand and placed a fruit loop on the string with their other hand.

To make their flowers, the center of the coffee filter was pinched to form the flower and a pipe cleaner was used as a stem, and twisted around the pinched center of the coffee filter.

With a beautiful flower and a yummy fruit loop snack, the children returned home!