Learning the Color Brown through Science

Welcome to the Learning Colors, Shapes & ABC’s through Science preschool series!

My goal is to introduce my preschooler to his colors, shapes and letters through scientific activities. My hope is that this will increase his observations skills and make learning these basic facts more interesting. We will also be adding in art activities, books, notebook pages and other motor activities, which I’ll share with you along the way.

What I share in these posts is my plan, some weeks we will actually do all of these activities, most we won’t. The idea is that each week, I’ll have a buffet of activities to pull from to introduce my son to these fundamental concepts.  You can read more about my plans for this series in the Learning Colors, Shapes & ABC’s through Science introduction post.

Mud Pies

You will need:

• Dirt
• Water

Have the student observe the dirt. Ask them questions like:

• What does the dirt feel like?
• What does the dirt smell like?

Emphasis the color brown with your students as they observe the dirt. Add a little bit of water and talk with your students about the changes that occur. Add enough water to make mud out of the dirt.

Then, let the students play with the mud and create things from it. Talk with them about how the mud feels and looks different than the dirt.

Take if Further: Repeat the demonstration, except this time use potting soil to see if it acts differently. Be sure to emphasis the colors black and white as the students observe the potting soil.

Book List

Here are several books on the color brown, black, and white.

• Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? by Bill Martin Jr. and Eric Carle
• Mr. Brown Can Moo, Can You : Dr. Seuss’s Book of Wonderful Noises by Dr. Seuss
• Bear Snores On  by Karma Wilson and Jane Chapman
• Home for a Bunny Margaret Wise Brown and Garth Williams
• The Black Book of Colors by Menena Cottin, Rosana Faria and Elisa Amado
• Ten Black Dots by Crews, Donald
• The Black Rabbit by Philippa Leathers
• Pete the Cat: I Love My White Shoes by Litwin, Eric and Dean, James
• White Snow, Bright Snow by Alvin Tresselt and Roger Duvoisin

Additional Activities

• Art: Make hand-print turkeys with your students. Follow the directions found at this website.
• Fine Motor: Finger paint with chocolate pudding.
• Notebook: Create a page in the students’ notebook for the colors brown, black, and white. On the page place stickers or pictures that match the color. Also spend some time reviewing the shapes pages that you have already made.
• Movement: Take a walk outdoors to look for trees in your neighborhood. Have the students make bark rubbings of each of the trees using a brown crayon. Label the page with what tree the rubbing came from. Once you get home, you can put the pages together to create a booklet.
• Snack: Have chocolate pudding and chocolate milk for snack.

Here’s a link to brown themed songs, poems and fingerplays.

I hope you and your students enjoy the activities above. Please feel free to share your experiences or link to a blog post that shows what you have done in the comments below!

Our Experience

Our son absolutely loved this week’s activities. He is after all a boy, which means he’s a big fan of messes! I definitely recommend doing the hands-on activity outside with old clothes on as it will get very messy.

Other than that, we made our hand-print turkey’s just in time for Thanksgiving and made a book of the bark rubbings from our trees. It’s been a great unit for us and I’m really pleased that our son did retain quite a bit from this study!