Toddler Color Book

I am always on the look out for new ways to teach my almost two year old new things. Pinterest is a great place for this but they can also become overwhelming and make you think you aren't doing nearly enough for your kids. Sometimes it just stresses me out with all the rainy day activities, new food recipes, potty training tips, sensory activities, and things I didn't even know existed that I'm supposed to be doing.

So sometimes I turn to other websites (*gasp!*) for when I have a specific idea. I know it's a little early, but I decided that teaching my daughter her colors might be fun, especially now that she is starting to color with crayons more. I turned to etsy for product ideas to achieve this.

I found a color book that looked very simple to make (and they were asking a significant amount of money for it) so I gathered my supplies. I used paint chips, stickers, and book rings. Basically, you decide on how you want to lay yours out. I wanted a book format so I needed two paint chips of each color. The different shades, I believe, will help the kids learn their colors faster because it's not one specific shade and then they learn that another lighter/darker shade is also called the same color. I can see how that would get confusing for them but I have no science to back this up. Then I just dotted the pages with various stickers in that color. Some things are that color in real life (i.e. a red wagon) and some things are only that color in sticker format (i.e. a blue monkey).

Here are some examples of my pages to give you a better idea

I know the pictures are kind of hard to see.  They were taken on my lap for one thing. But hopefully you stil get the idea. I will also mention that I did two book rings to make the book sturdier and more book like (rather than flipping them over the ring) but those were the only two spots where I could make holes in every page because I had poor planning when it came to putting the stickers on. So if you do one, be sure to mark where you're going to punch through so you don't put stickers in the way.

I also used (okay I made David do this part) tacky glue to glue the pages back to back so you don't have the backs of the swatches in between each color. This is pretty self explanatory once you get started assembling.

I haven't used it with my daughter yet but I plan to once she's up from her nap! Hopefully she likes it :)