Colors, Shapes, & Sorting

Well, this house has taken a little break from Letter of the Week. Life is slightly more busy now than our crazy summer so I haven't had (or made) the time to make lessons. Instead Babycake is learning on the go, or in the moment. The first "subject" I remember focusing on for a period of time with Babycake around age one or younger, was colors. She loved how I would point out colors of things we saw around us- where ever we happened to be. It was a bit of a game for us. After a while I started including shapes. "Look, that sign is a yellow triangle," "the store has a big red circle on it," etc.

Since I am taking a hiatus from creating lessons, this game we once so often played has returned. We've even made it into our own "eye spy." "Eye spy with my little eye something that is blue," and she runs to whatever blue thing she can find. Being two years old, it's too difficult to understand that when Mommy says she sees something blue, it is not the same blue object that she happen to see, or even the second or third blue thing. That gets very frustrating and the game is no fun. The whole point of our game is 1) to practice our colors and make sure we understand them 2) a little play interaction for Mommy and Babycake 3) a time for Babycake to be busy doing something and not getting into mischief. Really this game is a huge hit and a great game for when some of our little friends come over. Babycake also enjoys being the spyer, though this version is always played differently depending on the day and her present mood ;-)

Another activity I have been having Babycake do in the evenings (primarily at dinner preparation time) is to sit at the table and sort some foam shapes I found in the dollar section at Target. I love that section. My husband won't let me enter it on my own if he happens to be with me. Thank goodness I usually shop while he's at work! Anyway, The shapes are all different colors. So I'll ask Babycake to put all the green stars together, then once she's done that, all the yellow circles, and so on. This game is very fun and it's difficulty can progress after a few of the tasks have been accomplished. Like once she sorts all the shapes into separate piles, I'll giver her some toddler chopsticks (another $ section find!) and a small bowl. She then is to put each group one by one into to bowl using the chopsticks. When we first started this game a couple months ago she had to use both hands to work the chopsticks. Now she is able to use one hand completely gripping it, and eventually she will be able to properly hold and use the chopsticks. This is such a fun way to learn fine motor skills.

Since Babycake knows her colors, and shapes pretty well, this is also a great game for her to understand adjectives. "Put the blue square in the bowl." If you said put something blue, or put the square in the bowl, she would put the correct object in, but I've noticed that saying 'blue square' is really making her stop and think. She is starting to realize that more than one word can describe something- this thing is a square, it is also blue. Shapes have always just been shapes before, and colors have described anything and everything. This is a whole new concept of speaking/describing. We're moving from "the bird is blue," to "it's a blue bird."

As I'm writing this, I temporarily thought "well that's silly, those sentences are saying the same thing. This really isn't that big of a deal." Wow. Um. No. This is big. Babycake is learning our language and the different ways something can be described. Yes the message is the same in each sentence, but to understand that the message is the same despite word order changing, and a couple of words changing, is a very big step. It's also not simply that she hears what I say, sees what I'm motioning to, and understands the message, but she can now verbalize messages of her own in a similar fashion.

Watching a child learn and grow is so fascinating, exciting, and if you're lucky enough to be a part of it, it's incredibly rewarding.