Pre-KG 2023/ 24 Blog 6
Colourful world
The world around us is colourful!
Red tomatoes or watermelons, green grass, pink cherry blossoms or blue sky - we always enjoy the stimulation and beauty of colours.
A friend of mine turned blind with age and lost the joy of reading as well as the joy of seeing colours.
But not only full blindness deprives people of seeing colours, but also colour blindness.
Quote: “Colour blindness (colour vision deficiency, or CVD) affects approximately 1 in 12 men (8%) and 1 in 200 women. Worldwide, there are estimated to be about 300 million people with colour blindness, almost the same number of people as the entire population of the USA! There are different causes of colour blindness. For most colour blind people their condition is genetic, usually inherited from their mother, although some people become colour blind as a result of other diseases such as diabetes and multiple sclerosis or it can be acquired due to ageing or from taking drugs and medications.”
In previous years, I had some children (all boys) in Pre-Kindergarten who had difficulties seeing colours, but they all were fine by the age of 4. Before that they could match different items of the same colours to each other, because they could see different shades of grey.
One of the reasons that “Colours and Shapes” are the subjects of my first unit in Pre-Kindergarten is to make sure that the children are aware of the different colours and have lots of opportunities exploring them.
So this week we did many activities to foster colour recognition.
The Pre-Kindergarten children started with sorting foam shapes in 4 colours (rot, blau, gelb und grün) into corresponding baskets, then constructed with them and after that did more sorting. A bit of trying and everyone could do it ! Bravo !
We sing the rainbow song in morning circle and the children get a colour stick to hold which they raise when the corresponding colour is sung.
It is a multifunction task of listening, looking, action and collaboration and the children enjoy the song and the movement very much.
They also love playing ball hockey !
On another day, the children chose a colour and we then went to the nearby Kobbeco Land to play, but this time we also had a mission for the children : Please find an item in the playroom in the colour you have chosen !
The children went on a search, they did a great job and they were very proud of their findings !
When we had a day with a breeze, we decided to take our learning experiences to the green field. Beforehand in the classroom we had looked at cones in 5 different colours which we brought along.
I positioned the cones in a line on the grass and the children were supposed to run to the cone in the colour that I had called out.
Alas, this proved to be more difficult than expected for most children and we repeated the game.
Whether it was the distraction of the field or the joy of just grabbing any cone regardless of the colour, we decided that we will practice again in order to make it to the right cone next time.
There was a great discussion among the children though which would have been the correct colour.
The Pre-Kindergarten children also worked on their colour recognition combined with their math skills.
The classroom has a wonderful puzzle from Germany that consists of many colourful fish, ideal for learning colours and counting. There actually is a very big difference between narrating the numbers and finding the right amount. The expectation for 2 year olds is just to understand the concept of two.
The children really love the little fish and had fun counting in a playful way.
As we do most of our activities bilingual, in English and German, here are more links to Ms.Andrea Thionville’s videos which might give some inspiration to all of our Pre-Kindergarten parents to learn a bit of German along with their child.
Next week is Oktoberfest……so, eins, zwei, drei, viel Spass beim Deutsch Lernen und ein schönes Wochenende !
Herzliche Grüsse,
Anita Ursula Mönch
DSKI Pre-Kindergarten homeroom teacher
Playgroup / EY German
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