One day, I was out and about with the little boy I nanny, and we needed something to keep ourselves busy. I came up with the idea of a Rainbow Hunt, not only to give our outing a purpose, but also to reinforce color identification (and give a little informal assessment...not necessary as a nanny, but interesting as a teacher to see if he could identify the colors in an organic setting). I will definitely be using this activity in the future, with my own children and in a classroom setting. Here's some of the items we found.
Red
orange
yellow
yellow
yellow (we got really into yellow that day!)
green
green
pink
purple
This actually spun off into a fire hydrant study...now whenever we're out walking around, we have to stop at all the fire hydrants and take their picture, to be cataloged later. There are actually a ton of different kinds of hydrants in his neighborhood, and it's become a great inquiry unit, in the broadest sense. I'm now working on a photo album of all of our pictures we've taken on our walks, organized by color. I can't wait to see how he interacts with it, and what he remembers.
Would you do this activity with the children in your life?
