This post may contain affiliate links. If you use these links to buy something we earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Powerful Mothering is supported by its audience, thankyou!
Welcome to another fabulous week of Playful Preschool!
As always you can catch up with us on social with the hashtag #playfulpreschool and remember to check at the bottom of this post for more ideas on this weeks theme!
This weeks theme is: PUZZLES!
Oh my, we just love puzzles. To get us started today we made our very own puzzles and they came out super cute! This one is going into our busy bag collection.
The aim of todays creation is to teach color as well as counting.
To make gather 10 plain popsicle sticks. These are the thin ones but a jumbo stick does just as well!
Some tape.
You will need some water paints, plus a small tip paint brush. This is just what we use, any paint will work.
My kids were so enthusiastic to paint they didn’t even wait for me to tape the puzzles together!!
To make these puzzles. Tape the 10 craft sticks together with tape on the back to keep them still while you paint. Take a look at my more detailed post on how we do just that on this craft stick puzzle tutorial.
Paint a rainbow on your craft sticks. Now here you can go with either a rainbow that arches and your preschooler can match the puzzle by that arch or you can paint the rainbow across which will require the reading of the numbers provided.
Now I will tell you that I do not have the color indigo on my water paint set! Isn’t that always the case, a missing color! So, what I did was paint that stripe blue and paint over it with the violet, tadaa indigo or something close!
I used numerical numbers on one side of the craft stick.
Then the words on the other ends of the craft stick. This encourages association. (which I hope is actually rubbing off!)
We also made another puzzle to study the rainbow as colors more closely. We learned that the rainbow has 7 colors. Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. Most know them as ROY-G-BIV. (as a south african I have never heard of this!)
I then numbered the sticks 1 to 7 and wrote the corresponding name of color on the opposite end. See what I did here? MORE word recognition.
Have fun playing with your rainbow puzzles!! We certainly did.
Pin for Later!
For MORE Puzzle Play and Learning:
- Beginning Sounds Matching Puzzles with Stickers by Mom Inspired Life
Learning Your Name Playdough Puzzle by Growing Book by Book
Can You Follow The Puzzle? by Learning 2 Walk
Animal Puzzles in a Sensory Bin by Life Over C’s
Turn Your Child’s Artwork Into A Puzzle by Capri + 3
Rainbow Art Puzzle for Kids by Fun-A-Day!
Trace, Match, Write | Fine Motor, Math, and Literacy Activities with Puzzles by The Educators’ Spin On It
Rainbow Craft Stick Puzzle by Powerful Mothering
Preschool Made Puzzle Activity by Tiny Tots Adventures
Rainbow Name Puzzle by Still Playing School
Natasha says
What a great way to work with colors and numbers. I really like this idea.
Jodie @ Growing Book by Book says
Such a fun way to work on colors and numbers.
Danielle says
Fantastic idea! It really is a beautiful too. 🙂
Theresa says
I love that you put numbers on the puzzle in both words and numerical form. What a great idea !
Kim says
This is such a great idea! So simple, but great for learning numbers and colors!
Amanda says
Fantastic on so many accounts and perfect size to throw in your purse for learning on the go!