Red, Blue & Yellow

Conversations with Bree are less and less one way these days. I did a lot of the talking in the past. Her input was minimal when she first started talking. A lot of the things we used to talk about daily were pretty much the same stuff. The intention was to recycle words and reinforce concepts. Today, Bree does just as much, if not, even more talking than I. LOL.

Through describing things, Bree has learnt the names of basic colours like red, blue and yellow. She learned from real examples around her and blue is the first colour she recognised. Red was quite easy for her to identify as well but for some reason, Bree found it hard to say ‘yellow’. It just sounded funny. When we are out and about, we are always on the lookout for things of a certain colour, e.g. a red car, blue sky, a yellow taxi, etc. Recently, she has taken an interest in identifying brown, black and green.

In the previous post, I mentioned the sorting game Bree and I played using the bear counters. I still bring the bears to work with me at least once or twice a week. To make it more interesting, I try turning up with bears of a different colour for a surprise. So, instead of bringing 10 blue bears of two sizes, I brought with me 10 red or yellow bears of two sizes. Ten green bears of two sizes are next to visit the little Miss. After that, maybe next month I will introduce sorting by colour. For that, 10 baby blue bears and 10 baby red bears will be needed to sort them into two colour groups. Bree will be concentrating on sorting the bears into two groups at first and will be encouraged to sort up to 4 colours later on. Since the idea is for Bree to sort by colour, it is important that the bears’ size remains constant and thus is the reason that only baby bears will be used for now. As Bree’s powers of observation and concentration increases, I might eventually throw in the big bears for her to sort by colour and size but that won’t be for a while yet.

Helping my charges learn is one of the best parts of being a nanny. In the process of helping them learn, I too become a learner. Studying the intricacies of how children learn is something that I am totally passionate about.