Each week DaddiLifeForce brings you special tips, curated from the community, to help you create more winning dad moments. This week, we’re looking at how dad can re-think the ways their child plays and develops, with colouring games.
“Babies see pure colour, but adults see colour like language.”
Did you know that when infant eyes absorb a world of visions for the first time, colours are processed purely, in pre-linguistic parts of the brain. As they grow into adults, colours are processed in the brain’s language centres, refracted by the concepts they have built an understanding of. That means the way our children can develop and grow with colour can be full of possibilities for their own fine motor development.
Let’s take the colour game to the next level.
Lego Pattern Cards, by @acraftyliving
If you have a child who’s OBSESSED with lego, then put that to good use with the addition of some pattern cards. This is a superb bit of thinking by ‘A Crafty Living’ that will put their fine motor skills to test too. It will also be a dab hand to improve their hand – eye coordination, problem solving, and sequencing skills.
Ideal for: Toddlers and Pre-schoolers (who happen to love Lego too!).
What you’ll need: Some light card / cardboard, cut into strips, and colouring pens to draw the colour games sequence.
Time / Cost: Each card will take around 2-3 minutes, and will have your child thinking and doing for much much longer.
Kinetic Sand, by @three_busy_boys
Kinetic Sand may just be one of the best secrets about to be uncovered for dads! It’s 98% sand, and 2% magic, which means you can actually shape it, mold it, twist it, to create some pretty useful sand sculptures. It flows through fingers like real sand but when pressed together sticks to itself and keeps. Think of it like Play-Doh, but in sand form!
Ideal for: A whole range of different ages. It’s seriously addictive.
What you’ll need: To buy some, and mix it with other textures and coloured objects to get the games and problems solved all the better.
Time / Cost: A box of it costs around £20, and it’ll probably end up taking more of your time playing than you think!
The Dotty Rainbow, by @tinystepsmakebigstrides
Colouring games can take on a whole new meaning when you imagine new shapes and objects. We loved this idea from the guys at Tiny Steps Make Big Strides to make a rainbow from different roughly circular shaped colour blobs.
Ideal for: 12 months + to explore their creativity to the max.
What you’ll need: some light weight coloured paper, cut into different circular blobs (don’t have to be perfect), some adhesive and a large canvass / cardboard to stick it all on.
Time / Cost: This is a perfect weekend activity on a post breakfast where you’ll have a bit more time to dedicate to your child’s rainbow.
What’s your #daddilifeforce move?
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Let’s keep those dad-moments strong. ?
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[…] for 1-2 hours and then give them a “present” each that they can open, which is say a colouring book or small […]