This post has color matching palettes for flowers and butterflies and a free printable. Colorful flowers and bright butterflies catch the attention of children enjoying the outdoors. Their interest in color and beauty can help introduce color gradients (or color families). This post has activities and a free printable for matching multiple color swatches cards to pictures of flowers and butterflies. In the warm up activity, we used the color tablets we made with dollar bin colored clothespins to match some basic colors. The clothespins were useful in several activities. Color has been catching our eye! So we looked further at flowers and butterflies with tray activities.

We were lucky enough to notice our Linden tree come alive with yellow swallowtails and for a few days this past summer. It smelled heavenly. Have you had that experience, also? It was so nice when while it lasted. Things were really buzzing as the bees were enjoying the pollen, also. However, thankfully the bees were too busy to take notice of us. Anyway, we hope you have a similar experience with your local butterflies and plants or trees.

Matching Color Palettes

I set up shelves with activities I will explain in the rest of this post. The flower picture pages to use with dabbers are included in the free printable. The rest of the activities were just DIY with items we made with items on hand.

Dabbing for the first time ever! Success!

Matching the flowers with the colors orange, blue, and black to their pots (upper right hand tray) was made with little pots I painted, craft sticks, wooden circles and construction paper.

More trays

One tray had some plastic flowers that were added to a vase. Then scissors were used to help fit real flowers in to a vase. For a first effort, this was done so nicely!

The middle right tray had color gradient flowers: the blue family, the red/pink family, the yellow/orange family, and the purple family. This was the first introduction to the color gradients so with only four options it was fairly easy to select the correct center match. We have just started to discuss the variations of a single color.

Get Crafty

Another activity with single color construction paper flowers that I simply cut out free hand and laminated. Children just have to clip one colored clothespin on the matching color. For an even younger child. one flower could be held up and the child asked to find the matching one (not using the clothespins). I made these to match the dollar bin clothespins. However, the clothespins are darker than the construction paper flowers. One three year old was talking to herself and said, “This is pink but the clothespin is red, so we are going to call this red.” Construction paper is actually a gradient of red, so that was good for her to notice.

So, matching construction paper (laminated) with pre-painted clothes pins did not match exactly, but helped us see color families (gradients).