Red Day!

Bennett has shown an interest in colors for a couple of months. It has been funny to see him learn a new color name and then spend a few days or weeks proclaiming everything to be that color. Lately it has been "geen". Everything seems to be "geen".

My sweet friend Alli once told me that she did an all yellow bath for Chapman. They put in all his yellow bath toys and spent the bath time talking about yellow. I thought that sounded like a great idea and made a mental note to try it with Bennett.

Then I decided to take it a little further and so on a dreary, rainy Monday we celebrated Red Day. (Sadly, I'd left my camera at friend's house over the weekend so I only have grainy iphone pictures.)

The morning began with Bennett picking out a red outfit to wear. I planned to include strawberries in our red breakfast, but when I pulled them out I found them to be moldy so they went to the trash and strawberry yogurt (although pink) with the appropriate color bowl and spoon was an acceptable substitute. When paired with a red delicious apple and cereal that came in a red box we had a deliciously theme-y start to our day.


Ridge came over in his red attire and spent the day with us. We all had so much fun! I had the darndest time trying to get a decent picture of the three kiddos together. Bennett looks super-cheesy here but it's the best I could get. (Why is it impossible to get two toddlers to look at the camera at the same time? I'm not even asking for smiles...just facing the same general direction for but a moment!)


While Dayton napped I attempted a somewhat structured activity with the boys. A Red Race! I put items collected from around the house in two laundry baskets at the end of the hall. I assigned each boy a basket and instructed them to run down the hall, find something red and bring it back to me.


I might have been over estimating the instruction-following abilities of two year olds.

They got the running part right away. And on the second try understood they were to find a red object and not just push the whole basket down the hall. They never quite caught on to race aspect. Usually they'd find something, hold it up and then start playing with it or looking in the other basket or something. And the "found" item wasn't always red. But they tried and had a blast just the same. It was pretty cute.

They ran the race over and over again. I got a little bit of it on video. And then they wanted to watch the movie of themselves over and over. And over. And then one more time. They found themselves quite entertaining.

I didn't have a lot of red food options for lunch so the best I could come up with was spelling out "red" in ketchup for their beef franks and veggie lunch. Not a very appetizing picture, I know.


Bennett was so excited about Red Day that he didn't want to go down for his nap (something he usually asks for if I put it off too long). I had to assure him that it would still be Red Day when he woke up.

Ridge went home after nap time and we headed to the grocery store store where Bennett helped me "find" all sorts of red things...flowers, strawberries, balloons, meat. Jeff got home from work, changed into his red shirt and we used red plates and red napkins to fancy up our (un-red) dinner of fried rice and sesame chicken.

Chapman came to play Monday evening, of course wearing his red pjs! (Best picture I could get, sorry. I can't imagine why they didn't find sitting nice and still for me to be a fun activity.)


Our festive day came to a close, appropriately, with the idea that started it all, a red bath. (Well, the day actually came to a close with a fit about not wanting to get out of the red bath and then another tantrum while getting dressed and a consequence of not getting to read any books...but we'll not mention that.)



When I asked Bennett what he was writing/drawing on the wall he said "muh-mer (number) five". Five is his new favorite number.

We had such a fun time with our color-themed day that I think I might try to do a different color each Monday. I have a few ideas for other colors floating in my head - a nature walk to collect green items outside and reading "Green Eggs and Ham" on Green Day, for example. We could also listen to Green Day. Or not.

(Maybe I'll listen to Green Day during nap time. It will take me back to high school slumber parties singing "I went to a shrink, to analyze my dreams...". And then I'll remember when my dad confiscated the Dookie CD I'd borrowed, read the lyrics and then made me return it. I won't rat out which friend had such an unholy music collection. That would be tacky.)

Did I begin rambling off topic again? I do apologize. Bad habit.

Anyway...do you guys have any thoughts? I'd love any other suggestions you might have for toddler friendly color activities!