I have a thing for color. I was just emailing with a friend that I was kicking myself that I didn't buy a ream of pastel pink copy paper at Office Depot when I was there. She wanted to know what I used it for.
Well, I like color. White is boring to me. When I was in high school, I bought colored paper spiral notebooks and my grades shot through the roof. I also bought a set of thin line makers and would come home from school and re-write all my notes in those colored makers. Weird, huh.
I buy little packs of 100-count pastel paper at Kmart. It's expensive compared to buying a ream at an office store. I like them. Pink is the color I do all my planning on. It's easy to find when I'm looking for some specific plans. My son likes the green. All his math facts sheets are in green pastel. Blues and yellows I use for other things, mostly for me.
I bought a pack of "brights" at Sam's Club at the beginning of the year. The red and blue was too dark to do school work on. We printed everything in orange paper at Halloween.
At Walgreen's the other day, I came across a pack of 100-count colored notebook paper. It's not pastel, it's very bright. Tommy's been doing practice math problems on that. He seems to like color as much as I do. I'll have him do his writing on that this summer.
We still use white paper, mostly for mapwork or if I'm out of pastels. The colored paper makes things more fun and peppy.
I read in a book while I was doing research for homeschooling that if children have difficulty focusing, that you should put their favorite color on their desktop. It will help them to focus. I haven't tried that yet, but it is worth a shot. Tommy has troubles with focus if I'm not in the room. Maybe a trip to the dollar store is in order. I could buy a green poster board and put it on the table.
I also like colored 3x5 cards. We don't use a lot of 3x5 cards, but when Tommy's math facts inexplicably escaped his brain last week, I made my own set of flashcards. I asked him which color he'd like his 9's on. Green. I made flashcards for all the upper multiplication and division problems on separate colors. As I started to make them, he requested certain color Sharpie markers. He told me that 9 is green to him. Six is blue. As much as I love color, I have never put colors with numbers.
Is it any wonder that my kitchen is pink, my hall is blue, my bedroom is purple, Tommy's room is yellow and blue? I really do like lots of color all around me.
11 comments:
Hey, Frankie,
I've been meaning to tell you for ages that JC Penney has a whole line of kitchen appliances, tools and gadgets in pastel pink. I thought of you when I opened the catalog!
Heath
Too cool! I actually have a small JCPenneys in my small town! I think I should go get a catalog. Thanks
p.s. Do you still not see me as the pastel type? lol
Frankie, does your son see other things as colors or hear shapes?
Have you ever heard of synesthesia?
http://www.mixsig.net/
I don't know that I've ever known anyone who did this, but I've heard of it before and find it really interesting.
Samuel, I asked Tommy if he saw other things as colors and he laughed and said no. Then he states pee is yellow. Then he laughed. Kids.
He thought it was weird when I asked if he heard shapes, so I take it that's a no, too.
Imagine that, pee is yellow. He's all boy.
and ... color is a science, in part, thanks to Sir Isaac Newton.
http://www.colorsystem.com/projekte/engl/08newe.htm
Google "color science" ... personally, I use color because I have a feel for it, not because of its position on a color wheel. :)
p.s. I like your color paragraphs.
oops, that's me, btw ...
Love the colors -- too funny, and perfect for spring.
Now I get it -- pink (or any different color) for the planning pages : ) . But with three kids and so much paper and color everywhere anyway, I find white nice and calming and basic. In part because we have an apple green living room, pale green (think Martha) hallway, bright yellow kitchen, pale yellow master bedroom and dd's room, and the boys' room is a sort of Wedgwood blue. We like color too lol.
I never knew about synesthesia until I was in college, but that's me. For me, two is yellow, three is red, four is blue, five is orange, six is green... Weird, eh? I was so relieved to learn that other people "see" things in the same way.
That's funny! My boss files with color (on the walls, no less!). The colors mean different things to her that don't make any sense to me, but if red folders mean grants we didn't get, then red markings and red folders I will make. It works for her. And it's a cheery office space. Yellow seems to be the color for things she's excited about. It has it's own internal logic, I guess :).
Synesthesia was the subject of the book, "The Man Who Tasted Shapes" by Dr. Richard Cytowic. There are other books in print dealing with synesthesia, as well as several websites and groups. My daughter and I have mock battles about the color of numbers and letters. To me, 1 is white, 2 is blue, 3 is green, 4 is purple, 5 is red, 6 is yellow, 7 is brown, 8 is a bumblebee black and yellow striped, 9 is black, and zero is quartz crystal clear. Every two digit number has an overdye of the first digit with the second digit giving an underlieing color somthing like two layers of netting in a dress. My daughter tells me I am insane for having those colors connected with those numbers. Hers are entirely different. But, I tell her, there is no way I can change them... they have been there since I can remember hearing numbers. I figured other people were just handicapped in some way by being unable to have colored hearing.
Annette
:-)
When I was a classroom teacher (tech drawing), I'd do my master sheets in pastel pink... I could run them through the photocopier without the copies having grey smudges on them, but _none_ of the kids in my classes (all boys) would take the master copy to use! Saved me having to redo them again and again:-)
Visual spatial learners really like color, too, not just synesthetes. It helps me classify quicker.
I learned this year that the Excel spreadsheet has conditional formatting. I can pre-pick colors to go with conditions and the color of the cell changes auto-magically as the data changes. So cool. I manage a summer concert band, and the color helps me define which subs I need and which subs I've hired for each week's concert.
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