This is a fun way to help your children learn about colours while improving their gross motor skills at the same time. While I was teaching in Japan, I made a ‘colourful tree’ to liven up the classroom and incorporate a little more fun into my lessons with 3-5 year old children. It was a great hit, so I thought it was time we had some fun here in our own home.
The making of our colourful tree took place last summer while we were doing our camping themed activities. You can see it here as a backdrop to the tent in the living room.
How to make this colourful tree
I made a rough outline of a tree shape on a large piece of cardboard. Then we had some fun choosing the colours we wanted our tree to have from the construction paper and printer paper we had.
We used some fancy-edged craft scissors to cut out random shapes from the paper. Using the craft scissors gave a little more interest to the finished tree, and it made the construction of the tree a little more exciting. The kids felt they were being like Mommy using these scissors.
When the paper had been cut, we glued the pieces onto the tree shape making sure to have all of the cardboard covered. Once this was done I cut out the tree shape from the cardboard and added a little detail to the trunk. For a little extra fun we added a rainbow and a bit of used gift wrap that had a picture that looks a bit like my parent’s cat the children loved so much when they went to Canada last Easter.
The final step to making our colourful tree was to use sticky-backed plastic to laminate the tree so that it will be more durable and easy to wipe clean if we use it for writing on.
How we are using our colourful tree for bean bag tossing
We didn’t use it too much last year, but yesterday Kallista was playing with the Bean Bag pancake Tristan made for Shrove Tuesday. She was throwing it on the floor and calling out the colour which was on the top: brown! White! White! Brown! This gave me the idea to go into the closet and bring out our colourful tree for her. I placed it on the floor and then she threw the bean bag onto the tree and called out the colour it landed on: Blue! Pink! Green! A fun game was born! This kept her quite occupied for some time.
When Tristan came in from helping his Dad outside, he wanted to play as well. He already knows his colours, so the challenge for him was to call out a colour first and then toss his bean bag onto the tree and try to have it land on the correct colour. This is a little more difficult as the bean bag slides a bit on the plastic covering, but it just adds to the challenge.
If you don’t have a bean bag, simply use a small bean-filled stuffed animal or a pair of roll-up socks.
What other uses can you think of for a colourful tree?
Did you like this post? Then you’ll love our ‘snot shot‘ coordination game!
Visit our pages, learning about colours, summer fun, and indoor camping for more fun ideas.
