Colours, Colours, Everywhere!

As those who have read My Montessori Classroom and Supplies know, I skipped over the first and second colour boxes. By the time we began a structured "school time," Ella would not have found them the least bit challenging. So I simply ordered the Third Box of Colour Tablets. I knew she wasn't quite ready for it, so rather than putting all the colours and shades out, I put two shades of each of the nine colours in a box.

I'm not specific as to what order she puts them in, as long as the two tablets in the same colour but different shades go together. She likes laying them out like a railway track. Here's Ella making sure that the "railway track" is nice and even.


As you can see, she has put every tablet next to the matching one:


The colours, because of the flash, are difficult to see, so I shall list them (from left to right): dark grey, light grey, dark orange, light orange, light purple, dark purple, light blue, dark blue, dark yellow, light yellow, dark brown, light brown, light green, dark green, light red, dark red, dark pink, light pink.

Because she now was finding the dark/light matching a bit too easy, I ran into the office next door (where I keep extraneous supplies) and got another shade in each colour - a medium shade.

Here she is naming the new colours. Then I had her add the third colours to her "railway track" in the proper position (between the light and the dark). This task proved a bit difficult because she wanted to keep her "railway track" perfectly straight. She started with the medium orange:

Despite how it looks, it's not really an easy task. Especially if you're working with all nine colours, each with seven shades. The darkest orange is remarkably close to an orangey-red, making it hard to differentiate between it and the lighter red shades. And the darkest pink poses a similar problem. The darker shades of grey and brown can be difficult to distinguish, depending on the light. And some of the shades of the same colour are so close that you can only tell which is lighter and which is darker when they are in context with all the other shades of that colour which are already in order!

For now, however, three shades each of nine colours is enough of a challenge. Here she is going after the reds:

Having already matched the darkest and the lightest, Ella had little difficulty putting the medium shades between the correct colours. I shall have to add a fourth shade soon!

The addition of another shade for each colour really seemed to add to her fun - and it made her railway track much longer!

Ultimately, I hope that she will be able to use the colour tablets to make more elaborate designs, such as the colour wheel I made:


Because we're not yet to the point where we're using all the shades, I bought a cardboard box at the Dollarama to hold the tablets currently in use. If I add one more shade, I'm going to need a new box!