colors in a jar

It’s a rainbow of colors around here–between the end-of-summer flowers still desperately hanging on and the leaves beginning to change, it’s gorgeous.

So I thought I’d put to use some of the containers I’ve been holding onto and really give Maddy, Owen, and Cora a chance to realize just how beautiful it was in their very own backyard, especially when we isolated each color.

• Color Jars: I wrote the name of each color on a label–red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, and white–and stuck each label on its own container.

These containers are from rice, cous-cous, peanuts, pickles, pretzels, really they’re just the large ones with great lids that I couldn’t bear to recycle quite yet.

And one afternoon when Maddy, Owen, and Cora were all out back playing, I brought out the containers and just said, Everybody grab a container. There are a ton of beautiful colors out here right now–we’re so lucky! Today, we can pick what anything we want. Let’s go on a color hunt and see how full we can get each of our jars!

purple, pink, and red color jars

So that was it. Maddy and Owen each took a jar, and Cora and I worked together to find everything we could to shove in the ‘green’ jar. And then we put them on the table and admired how beautiful the colors were, all smooshed together in the same container.

It was an awesome activity–easy and simple–and fun to finally freely pick the flowers we’ve been growing all summer.

And then Maddy started crying because she didn’t want summer to be over or the pool to close (it’s been closed for weeks), and she wanted the pink flowers to stay around all year long, and she didn’t like the yellow mums we have because she only likes pink and purple and she didn’t want me to take away the summer flowers, and she didn’t want our tomato garden to stop growing.

So I tried–unsuccessfully–to explain everything a mom tries to explain when her five-year-old daughter is over-tired and won’t stop crying, but that didn’t work. So we called Nanny, who many times is the only one who can help in this kind of situation, and (thank goodness!) she did.

I have a bunch of posts ready to go that involve tutoring, just like I promised, but I couldn’t help myself today. This was simple, sneaky, and way too fun.