Red Rockets and Rainbow Jelly

We've been playing with the story Red Rockets and Rainbow Jelly by Nick Sharratt and Sue Heap this week, following on from One to Ten and Back Again last week!  The children love the bold, simple illustrations which give them so much to look at and talk about.

I read the story with L.  She likes looking at all the detail in the pictures and talks about her favourite bits.  Today, her favourite was the purple page.  She loves the purple fairy and the purple flowers.

Then we go on a "purple treasure hunt", finding as many purple things around the room as we can.  Here's what we found:

Later on in the week we read it again and this time the yellow page comes out on top!  So the children are invited to explore some lemon scented yellow play dough with lots of yellow coloured items for mark making.

Later on, we play colour snap - it ends up being a game of matching cards as they are too little to play a proper game of snap, but even the littlest ones start saying the names of the colours by the end of it.

And then a bit of heuristic play with wooden bricks and different wooden containers - the children sort the bricks in to colours, stack them on top of one another, and thread the ones with holes in to make a long connected line.

Start off with a story and take the spontaneous learning opportunities that arise.  We hadn't planned a purple treasure hunt - it just happened - and these are always some of the best learning moments.  I did make the lemon dough in advance but the yellow tools were a sudden inspiration to go with our colour story-inspired play.

Enjoy!