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Little Blue and Little Yellow activities

My children absolutely adore Little Blue and Little Yellow by Leo Lionni. The fact that it’s available in the board book version makes it so much easier for the little one to ‘read’ it on his own (i.e. flip through the book). I’ve borrowed this title countless times from the library and every time it never fails to please.

If you aren’t familiar with the book, Little blue and little yellow is about Little blue and his best friend Little Yellow. One day, they can’t find one another, and when they finally meet, they are overjoyed. They hug until they become green and when they return home, neither set of parents recognise them. Read the story to find out for yourself what happens. 🙂

So on to the activities we did for the reading of this book. Back when I was pregnant with my boy, here’s a simple activity I did with my girl.

First, we explored what happens when we mix paints (blue and yellow of course was one of the combinations):

And the colours ‘hug’:

Then I gave her a blob of blue finger paint and a blob of yellow finger paint on her palms and asked her what she thinks would happen when little blue palm and little yellow palm meet.

And boy did she enjoy squishing the paints in her hand as she demonstrated what happens when Little Blue and Little Yellow hug, using her palms. A great sensory activity if your little one isn’t adverse to paints.

Make coloured ice-cubes:

We’ve previously done mixing of colours too on a separate occasion using coloured ice-cubes (blue and yellow, as well as other colours). Make coloured ice-cubes using food colouring. Let the ice-cubes melt and watch the colours change.

Exploring Little Blue and Little Yellow with two kids:

Now that my boy is older (20months), he gets to take part in activities and I try to pitch activities at his level. Here are my two kids painting with blue and yellow. They started off with getting their palms all blue and they made a flower with their handprints… but well, you know the flowers don’t quite stay as flowers as the painting progressed.

Wheeee!!! Squish the blob of paint!!

My little one had so much fun with the paint he kept asking for more and we nearly used up the entire tube of paint!

And my girl, the seasoned ‘painter’ was as usual elated to be able to paint with her hands:

After this painting activity, my boy was able to recognise the colour blue and he could point at something blue and say its colour. I guess he must have picked it up while we were painting as we were constantly talking about both blue and yellow. 🙂

Since the kids were super dirty after the messy paint session, we went off for a shower and we continued with our activities for Little Blue and Little Yellow with shaving foam:

Shaving foam with food colouring

I gave each of them one small tray with the shaving foam and food colouring and they were to mix the colour evenly:

And they were free to paint the bathroom walls and shower screen with the coloured foam:

I couldn’t resist playing with the foam too… not when the colours were so pretty!:

Scooping and mixing coloured water:

This is an activity that’s great for kids because they seem to always be so engrossed when it comes to playing with water. I gave them two big bowls of two different colours (blue and yellow in this case) and provided them with scoops and small plastic jugs.

And that earned me at least half an hour of time to myself!

These activities take no time at all for setting up so do give them a try when you pick up this book from the library!

View our other literature-based learning posts if you’ve found this useful! 🙂

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Simply wrapped in pure love

When I had my first child, my uncle’s wife gave me some wonderful advice – be seen doing housework and when the child is older, involve the kid in your housework. I didn’t really understand what she meant earlier but I gave it a go anyway. It sounded great – I could get some laundry, ironing and cooking done while my then 5-month-old watched me, and I wouldn’t feel the least bit of guilt. Of course, cooing at her and making conversation every now and then is a must to engage her or I risk letting all hell break loose. Once my little one became a toddler, I got her to help peg the small items or remove them when they were dry. You know that makes an awesome fine motor skill activity, right?

See, I started her ‘training’ really young! (Exposed her to pegging at about 2 years old, and here she is, pegging well two months before she turned 3)

Well, and so it’s been like this ever since. My daughter and I would spend some girly time together preparing meals or hanging the laundry or folding the clothes. In particular, she loves to help out with the laundry and these days, she really is quite a great help and she makes the boring chore a lot more enjoyable as she’d be busy telling me about what happened at school and who her best friends are (mummy is of course her BFF!). Who’d have thought that warm, fuzzy motherhood moments could be experienced while engaging in such a mundane activity?

Barely 5 years old, she always volunteers to peg the small items and put the clothes on the hangers. And now that we’ve started using a fabric conditioner because the towels have gotten a little too stiff for our liking, she’s even started helping out with pouring the softener into the washing machine before the cycle starts:

Being able to help with pouring the softener into the washing machine is quite a highlight for her these days because it’s her newly appointed task and the Comfort Ultra Pure fabric conditioner just smells sooo good! When she sees me putting the laundry into the washing machine, she’d be sure to exclaim, ‘It’s my turn to put the softener!’

Comfort Pure is a hypoallergenic fabric conditioner that is specially formulated for delicate and sensitive skin and its dermatological test formula is safe even for babies. Back when I had my second child, we stopped using a fabric conditioner because I was afraid that my boy’s delicate skin might not take well to it. After comparing with a couple of other brands, we finally decided on Comfort Pure Ultra (he’s over a year and a half now and we were sure he’d appreciate being dressed in super soft clothes and Comfort Pure’s supported by the British Skin Foundation too!) and we’re glad to say that we’re very satisfied with it! Not only does it make our clothes amazingly soft, the fragrance it leaves on the clothes really impresses! Oh, did I just mention that it smells great, again?

Part of the laundry routine with my girl is asking her to help keep the clothes and we’d fold them together at the sofa. With four of us in the family, you can expect that this happens just about every other day, with the little ones contributing most to the pile of laundry. After we get all the clothes to the sofa, I’d inevitably catch her doing this:

Now when the clothes smell this good, you just can’t help it.

I’ve also discovered to my delight that after we’ve washed our clothes with Comfort Pure fabric conditioner, the clothes are so soft that it makes ironing easier (and you know I’m really into ironing, so I just had to give this a mention!).

So, if you’re looking for a meaningful activity to do together with your child, look no further. A half hour spent chatting over the bamboo poles while hanging out the clothes together is a marvelous activity – it’s a sensory experience too, if you use Comfort Ultra Pure.

Disclosure: This is an advertorial. All opinions are 100% mine.