Crayon Day

I recently purchased a really cute book for the kids called, "The Day The Crayons Quit."  It is so witty and the girls laugh every time that we read it.  A week ago, I saw an idea online where we could incorporate the book into a Family Fun Day in our household and decided to expand on it.

One rainy morning, I quickly drew some large crayons on paper and let Samantha write the names of each of the colors on the crayons.  Blue, red, green ...

Then, the girls took turns drawing and coloring different objects on the crayons that corresponded to those colors.

This activity really captured their attention for quite some time:

They took turns coloring various objects until all of the crayons were filled.  They even took turns exchanging ideas for the crayons.

Then, we went upstairs and taped the crayons on their closet door.  A constant reminder of one of our fun projects ...  Samantha chose the order.

Afterwards, the girls sat on the couch (Jack was watching a show in the other room), and I read various passages out of the book and the girls had to work as a team to figure out which crayon was doing the talking.

For example, "All right, listen.  I love that I'm your favorite crayon for grapes, dragons and wizards' hats, but it makes me crazy that so much of my gorgeous color goes outside of the lines."  (purple)

Or, "I hate being used to draw the outline of things ... things that are colored in by other colors, all of which think that they're brighter than me!"  (black)

Or, "I need you to tell orange crayon that I am the color of the sun.  I would tell him but we are no longer speaking."  (yellow)

I love how they huddled together.

And finally, to round out the Family Fun Day, we made sugar cookies and used mini M&Ms in them.  While I mixed the batter, I had the girls separate their respective bowls of colors into piles. 

I thought that this was the most interesting thing: Sophia opted to grab a handful of M&Ms all at once and then separate them into the designated piles that she had made on the countertop.  This was very time-efficient and she was done long before Samantha finished sorting her colors.

Sam, on the other hand, chose a different technique and began to individually pick out one color at a time.  She separated all of the blues first ... and then the greens, etc.  This took a lot longer to do, of course.  And it made for a good learning lesson for the girls when we discussed their different techniques afterwards.

Of course, Jack "joined in" on this little activity by sampling his M&Ms.  (He was given some peanut ones because I was not going to be using any that he touched in the cookies.  Ha!).

 

 

This was such a great learning day for us and I have plans to do a few more of these "lessons" throughout the summer.  With just a bit of planning, it makes for a wonderful Family Fun Day!