Colour Trails
Suggested age/ability level: This activity is accessible for almost everybody - the person just needs to be able to see - even limited vision is good enough here.
Estimated time:
Preparation time: Depending on the resources you choose to create to support this activity it can be as quick as a few minutes but may be up to a few hours. (Read further down the post for more details.)
For playing: As long as you like!
I have written a lot of blogs about inspiring and exploring creativity and play in children and neurodivergent, learning disabled people but this is perhaps the simplest one I have and it is - I have always found - surprisingly joyful!
If those you care for are very young or have greatly limited intellectual ability, you may feel like so many of the parenting blogs out there just aren’t written for you and your situation.
You need something simpler; much simpler, to get started.
This creative play idea can lead to a truly beautiful adventure for you and those you care for.
This activity is a simple and fun way to reinforce basic education; it helps support speech and language (if that is something your child is able to reach for), nurtures curiosity, creates an opportunity to encourage focus in easily-distracted individuals and can be a great motivator for children who tend to err on the side of lethargy as it gives that walk outside a fun purpose!
A Colour Trail is like a nature trail (see image above) where you go off into the woods to find an oak leaf, an acorn, a pine cone, a woodlouse etc… but for this you’re just looking for colours.
What you need:
Paper/card
Colouring pencils, pens or paints
Laminating sheets and laminator (optional)
Camera to track your found items (optional)
Velcro or blue tack (optional)
How to Play:
If you want to try this as a one-off you needn't do this step, but if you'd like to follow how I started this themed-week idea, begin by creating a series of theme boards. (Read further on for more ideas of themes for this activity):
Create your colour swatches. I made these on the computer using basic art software then printed them out, but you could easily use pens and pencils on little bits of paper. These colour cards were used for all sorts of different activities and games (more of which I'll share here soon!)
On a sheet of paper or card write 'Colour Of The Week' or 'This week's colour is' and leave space below to be able to place the colour swatch for each colour. (This is a grand opportunity to make use of cereal boxes, delivery parcels etc...)
You can see from the image below that I created a rainbow panel to hang from the theme board as well to act as the first place we could find the colour together before starting our colour trail. (I used pieces of felt I had leftover from a card-making activity.)
You may laminate these colour swatches if you'd like to keep them for a long time and have the resources to do so. It means they are rain/juice/food-proof for if and when you'd like to take your colour trails to the dinner table or outdoors!
Take your colour swatch with you and go looking for that colour! When you find it - if you can get close to it - place the swatch next to it! If it's too far away, just pointing to it will do.
(Optional) Take a photo of each find if you want to keep a record of the activity (helpful if you want to offer this activity up another day so the child has a visual reference of what you're suggesting to them!)
That's it! It's so simple! We have played with this idea SO MUCH over the years!
Read on for more variations on this activity.
If you're new here to the Sonshine Art blog, here is a very brief overview of our parenting experience for you: Our sons are now 15 and 10 years old. They're both Autistic, they are both learning disabled (but to very different degrees), they've both had complex issues with communication - particularly with their speech, which our eldest still finds incredibly difficult. It took a LONG time to get appropriate speech and language therapy support and the right SEN school placements for our sons so I took upon myself to do a lot of homeschooling when they were little. My sister was a primary school teacher and some of her ideas inspired my own. I adapted them to make sense for the ability levels of our boys. Almost every idea in my blogs here comes from that time of our lives when my husband and I worked every day to support their learning and life skills. (We still do of course, and we still play and learn at home using a lot of these activities as the basis for learning and fun.)
When our boys were little I used to have themes each week that would inspire a lot of our day to day activities. I had a number of the week, a letter of the week, a shape of the week, a phonetic sound of the week and a colour of the week. Each day we would try to find examples of each of them and I would usually photograph them holding or pointing to the thing or if we could gather something we’d do that and add it to the theme box.
I remember that our colour trails were often the times our eldest son would say a word for the first time as we were repeating the word over and over with a visual reference each time to cement in his mind what that word, that sound represented.
I created a series of laminated cardboard sheets for each theme subject and we could take these outside with us for our hunts.
Remember, this activity does not need to be limited to colours, try it with letters, shapes and numbers too!
For children who are able to, you can make this activity more complex by looking for specific leaves, flowers or words and also, as my boys got older and their ability for more complex language skills increased, I used this activity to explore opposites too. So instead of colours, numbers, shapes etc... we'd go looking for opposites; big and small, rough and smooth, hot and cold, short and long.
It is one of those basic activities that can be adapted and upgraded as the person you care for grows and learns.
Have a wonderful time exploring together and do let me know if you find a favourite theme!
If you enjoyed this blog do check out the others I've written and sign up for emails so you're told first when I publish a new one. The subscribe button is at the top of the screen.
Take care and happy playing!
Amy (Sonshine Art Mama)
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