Materials
- A paper bag for each child
- Markers, optional
What to do
1. Give a bag to each of the children. They may wish to decorate their bags.
2. Explain to the children that you are going to go on a nature walk, but this is not just an ordinary nature walk. It is a color nature walk! Tell the children that they will look for colorful natural items, such as a red leaf, a green piece of grass, etc.
3. Younger children can collect all of the colors. Older children can be grouped into "color teams," each assigned a specific color to look for. For example, the yellow team collects only yellow items.
4. Let the children explore the natural environment and have fun collecting.
5. Once back in the classroom, each child or group discusses what they found.
6. This is a great activity to do in the fall and spring to explore the seasons as well as reinforce color recognition!
More to do
- Art: Make a collage with the items that were collected.
- Language: Ask the children to record, in small books, what they collected. Younger children can draw pictures and dictate words. Older children can use inventive spelling to write the words.
- Math: Make a graph of how many items the children found for each color.
-Amy B. Lieverman, Oxford, MA
