How Green is My Garden?

The foliage in my garden has now all appeared and as usual various shades and hues of green predominate. So we have been playing the matching the shades game. I first saw this played in an outdoor centre in West Yorkshire with some teenagers, but I didn’t see why it wouldn’t work with younger children. I used some colour paint charts picked up from my local DIY store


We then had fun collecting leaves and trying to match them to the different shades of green for good 15 minutes. I have realised that if you want to get an exact match it is nigh impossible. Nevertheless it is a great game for the outdoors – fun, educational and providing the opportunity for stickers at the end of it. It really got my son looking at the foliage and thinking which shades were lighter and darker. We had a little chat about the variety of green colours in nature and how the leaves were different in size, shape and texture.

If you don’t have access to colour charts a set of coloured pencils may work just as well. Matching different colours is obviously an easier game. It would work well for younger children and help them learn their colours.

We are off to Scotland in a while and I hope to get some walking in. There will now be a couple of colour charts in my rucksack so we can play the spot the colour game as a way to help keep little legs moving.