Are you listening to me?
Did you just hear what I said?
What did I just say?
I know I ask my children these questions all the time, and sometimes their responses are spot on for what I just said; however, sometimes, they don’t have a clue because they weren’t listening. I tell my talkative son often,
“God gave you 2 ears and one mouth so that you would listen more and talk less.”
Listening is truly a skill that has to learned and taught. It’s how we can truly participate in conversations and show others that we care. Who would have thought that a coloring page could help with that?
For the month of July, we have been on an EcoVenture with our Experience Early Learning curriculum. We have explored a week of trees and now we are into exploring the air around us, including Listening to Air.
Our day started with reading one of my daughter’s favorite books, Listen Buddy. It’s about a bunny, named Buddy, who has been blessed with huge ears, but does not listen. It takes an encounter with the Scruffy Varmint to teach him how important it is to listen.
After reading the book, we looked up and the leaves in the trees were rustling hard! A storm was about to blow through, so we went outside and listened to the air and the children told me what they could hear.
When we came back inside, I told them that we were going to practice listening some more, but also color. My Experience Early Learning teacher guide suggested for me to “Give each child a Listen & Color sheet and crayons. Prompt children to color objects with specific colors. Challenge children by giving multistep directions.”
One way I challenged my listeners was to say, “Color 5 circles in the tree orange and the rest red,” or “Use a dark green and a light green to make a pattern in the pine tree.” These challenges were mainly for my 6 year old, but my 3 year old wanted to do the same thing. They worked so hard on this listening exercise! It took at least 15- 20 minutes but after that time, my son was done and most of his page was colored.
This is his FIRST coloring page where he actually has tried to stay in the lines! I was so proud of him for not only listening but working hard on his coloring.
My 3 year old son was so proud of his work too! I told them both that they had listened so well and I was really impressed with how they both were careful in their coloring. This was such a great activity and such a simple way to teach a listening lesson with a coloring sheet!
