Tuesday, June 5, 2012

Living - Colored Compartment Activity For Kids!

I have been brainstorming and searching for ideas to keep the kids active in learning and exploring this summer.  Knowing how much my kids love to be outdoors, I decided it would be fun to add a twist to our trips anywhere we will be outside.

These fun colored compartment containers (or "partment tainers" as my 3 year old calls them) are simple and cheap to make and can be utilized in so many ways.  Here are just a few ideas that the kids and I have come up with so far while heading to great outdoor places:
*Explore all over for items to put in each compartment, based on the color.
*Search for bugs that may fit the color of each compartment
*Type up a scavenger hunt to have kids search for specific items to fit in the container (great for kids who are learning to read, to keep them active on reading this summer)
*Ignore the colors and just use them as fun collection containers
*If you are working on counting with your youngster, you could ask them to find "3" brown items, "3 black items", etc.  This will help them count out the number of items you want to work on.
*On rainy days, use indoors searching the house for items to put in the the different compartments based on color or again, create and indoor scavenger hunt

You can make many of these ideas just a leisurely and fun trip, or team up in pairs and compete (maybe for older kids). 

And here is how to make your very own "partment tainers":

It all starts with a trip to Dollar Tree to grab the twice a day pill organizer, for you guessed it $1.  (If you want fewer compartments, you can grab the 1 a day pill organizers they offer.) 

These are great containers with 14 compartments that each snap shut to hold their goodies inside.  Don't have a Dollar Tree around you, I have seen the pill containers sold in many other stores like Walmart, Target, etc.

The next step is to color each compartment with different colors.  If you want to make a couple compartments the same color you can do this as well (for example: brown is a popular outdoor color, so you may want to make 2 compartments brown for the kids to grab a couple things that are brown), since some of the colors I have shown are a little harder to find. :-)

To color the compartments I used paints I had on hand to save on cost.  You could also use permanent markers. 

One of the compartments I chose to paint white and added some silver glitter to it.  This is the compartment to use if they find something sparkly.  And one of the compartments I left "blank".  The kids are encouraged to put a surprise item in there to show us when we are all done.  They can talk about where they found it, or why it was special to them, etc.

My kids have had so much fun with these.  It has also sparked some interaction with other kids while at the park (my kids are a bit shy at meeting new friends, so this has been great).

Some of the fun things the kids have found to add to their compartments:
walnut pieces
feathers
penny
weed flowers (all different colors)
sand
grass
rocks
tree bark
ants
sidewalk chalk :-)
and so much more!

I hope you enjoy!  Be sure to come back and share your stories!

1 comment:

  1. What a great idea! I'll have to try these with my daycare kids this summer.

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