The following  is a post from Angie.

In my capacity as founder/editor at The Homeschool Classroom, I find that we frequently get asked on our Facebook page about how to start formal schooling with very young children.  While I am not personally a proponent of formal schooling at a very young age, I think that lots of exploring, music, games, and reading are wonderful ways for young children to learn.  Some basic skills, however, that are also great fun to work on are colors, shapes, letters, and numbers.

The colors and shapes activities that I’m sharing today are hands on activities that will make learning fun and interactive.  Some of them can get messy with very young children, so plan to be with them.

Everyday Conversation

When I was working as an in-home developmental therapist for several years, I often suggested to parents, who wanted learning activities for these concepts, that they just incorporate colors or shapes in their everyday conversation.  Instead of saying to your child, “Can you get the towel for me?”  You can easily say, “Can you get the blue towel for me?”  (You can do this even if the only choice is a blue towel.  It’s not about choosing, it’s about giving that color a name.  Of course, as they get a little older, distinguishing between colors becomes another thing to work on.)

Art Activities

Art activities are boundless when it comes to the ability to work on naming shapes and colors, from coloring, to finger painting, to sidewalk chalk, and so much more.  Art, by its very nature, is often about colors and shapes.

For younger children, talk about colors and shapes during art projects.  Allow them time to just work, but also take time to ask them about the colors or shapes they are using.  For older children, you can move on to harder, more complex shapes as well as concepts like color mixing.

Making Color Mixed Crayons:

It’s fun to talk about the colors while using old crayons to make new crayons that are a mixed color. It’s also a fun opportunity to make a variety of shapes. (Directions for making mixed color crayons from old crayons.)

Shape Pictures

While these are also art activities, these are a fun thing for slightly older children (preschool and kindergarten).

A Shape Caterpillar:

I worked on this with my preschool-aged co-op class once, and they had a ball.  (Kids love their glue sticks!)  We used foam shapes in a variety of colors and worked on everyone recognizing the shapes and colors that they used on their papers.

Shape Collages:

This is one that I did with my children of a variety of ages.  While I wasn’t worried about the older ones naming shapes, my youngest and I talked about the shapes and colors on the page.  In this particular activity, we worked on making buildings by cutting various shapes out of construction paper and putting them together to make the finished product.  This is also a great activity for working on scissor skills.

Making Jewelry

While some people may not think to do this with boys, I have found in my co-op classes (and at home) that young boys liked doing these activities just as much as the young girls.  If you are working with small children, of course, they will need constant supervision as some small pieces could be a choking hazard.

Some examples of jewelry making projects that we’ve done include:

Pop Beads (as shown in first picture):

These are good not only for colors but also for fine motor skills.  Some Pop Bead sets come with various shapes as well as the traditional rounded shape.

Plastic Pony Beads:

Pony beads are also available in various shapes and colors.  Whenever I use them with younger kids (or even older ones), I like to tape the end of a string to the table so they don’t get frustrated by the beads falling off the other end.  Keep in mind that sometimes beads of this size are discouraging to young children.

Stringing Colored Pasta:

This was one of my favorite activities that I ever did with my preschool co-op class.  We made pasta necklaces for their mothers for Mother’s Day.  Pasta comes in many shapes, and you can dye them in a large variety of colors.  Leftover pasta can be used for other art projects or sensory bins as well.  (Here are step-by-step directions for dying pasta for kids crafts.)

Sorting Activities

As children get older, sorting is a great way to learn about colors and shapes (and many other things too!).  Being able to distinguish a color or shape from others is a higher level skill than naming a shape or color.  A favorite activity of ours was sorting fun size packages of M&M candies.  All of the children made predictions about what they thought they would have the most of and the least of color-wise.  For my youngest, she just worked on sorting after that, while my oldest kids worked on ratios and other math concepts.  (Everyone ate their materials afterward!)

There are also many wonderful educational toys to work on shape and color sorting.  Some of my favorites from my developmental therapy days include:

• Melissa and Doug Stack and Sort Board

• Fisher-Price Shape Sorter

• Melissa and Doug Pattern Blocks and Boards (I didn’t use this in therapy, since I saw very young children, but it is a great learning toy)

Worksheets and Activity Books

For older children (preschool and kindergarten), it can be a nice reinforcement to do an occasional worksheet or activity book to solidify colors and shapes.  I really enjoyed this colors worksheet from Mama’s Learning Corner, as it worked on matching up color names (and then working on the spelling of those) with the color.  Lauren also has worksheets on sorting shapes.

And, of course, The Happy Housewife has dozens of free printables for all ages here!

The ways to work on colors and shapes for all ages are too numerous to share in one whole blog, let alone one blog post.  I would love to hear some of the activities that you’ve done with your children while working on various aspects of learning about colors and shapes.

You might also enjoy:

• 13 Early Learning Activities Using Balls
• Homeschooling with Toddlers

The following is a post by contributing writer Angie.

Photo credit: Wikipedia

One of my favorite stories from my childhood is The Missing Piece by Shel Silverstein.  It has become a favorite of my children as well, so we have shared it often.  One day, while I was looking at it several years ago, I realized that the simple wording and pictures were something that my own children could imitate.  Thus began our multi-day journey of creating our own “Missing Piece” style books.

While we chose The Missing Piece, I encourage you to look through some of your family’s favorite picture books to see what you might be able to use for your own family.  For younger children, such as mine were at the time, books with simpler wording and illustrations might be better, while older children will be able to make more elaborate drawings and write longer passages.

Before Beginning Our Project

Prior to beginning, I talked to the children about my ideas for our project.  We then moved on to reading through both The Missing Piece and The Missing Piece Meets the Big O.  As we read through each story, we talked about the way that Silverstein had used simple drawings to convey bigger ideas.

We followed this up with a discussion of what things we especially liked about the books.  This helped to lead in to talking about ideas for their own stories and drawings.  When one of the kids told me all of the parts of the two books that he wanted to put into his own book, I reminded him that while he could use some things from the book, it might be more fun if he made up his own situations as well.

In order to give the children time to really think about this project, we finished working on it for that day with only having discussed it.  The kids couldn’t help themselves but to continue to come to me with ideas while waiting to start the project the next day.  I love that the delay between discussing the project and actually starting it increased their excitement, as well as giving them time to think about what they wanted to do in their stories.

Prep Work for Mom/Dad: Cut out papers that you will be using all to a uniform size.  Be sure to have more than you think you’ll need!  Gather all the supplies you’ll need, including any special writing implements, colored pencils, stamps, or anything else that is unique to your chosen book.

During the Project

I wanted this to be a fun project for my children, so I opted to have them complete just a few pages of their stories each day for several days in a row.  While my kids were enjoying it, my boys can get easily burnt out on a lot of drawing and writing (especially at that age, as they had more pronounced fine motor delays than they have now).  This allowed our project to remain fun throughout the whole process.

Each day, I would set out only a few pages, as to not overwhelm the kids.  Prior to starting, we would read through their entire stories that they had created up to that point.  We would then talk about their ideas for their pages for that day.

One of my sons opted to mimic more of the actual events in the books that we read, while my other son created new characters that were in similar (but different) situations than in the book.  I was not concerned about my son that didn’t create his own events.  Instead, I looked at it as a project in which he would learn by modeling, and perhaps the next time around, he would find himself better able to create his own stories.  As to not leave out my daughter (who was an early preschooler at the time), I had her join in, but let her work on it as mostly just an art project.

After the Project Was Finished

Once we finished our stories, the children were able to read their books to family members.  They were very proud to have created their own Missing Piece stories.

Making multiple stories in the same school year can be a wonderful and fun record keeping tool to see a child’s growth in areas such as handwriting, spelling, composition, and art work from the beginning to the end of a school year.

• Fun Ways to Improve Writing Skills
• Ditch Copy Work – Just Write!
• Find an assortment of writing activities for all ages in our Curriculum Review page

Angie, a domestically-challenged artist and writer, is a homeschooling mom to three children and writes about everything that happens in their lives between all the loads of laundry at Many Little Blessings. She is also the founder of The Homeschool Classroom, Catholic Mothers Online, Tiny Owl Designs, and Just a Tiny Owl {Etsy shop}.