How to Teach Your Toddler Colors

Start to prepare your toddler for school by reinforcing basic skills early on. Color is everywhere. Take advantage of every teachable moment by talking about and pointing out the colors in your life.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Watercolor Paintbrushes
• Watercolors
• Coloring Books
• Elmer's Glue-All
• Food Coloring
• Plastic Containers
• Child-safe Scissors
• Colored Chalk
• Colored String
• Bubbles
• Colored Toy Blocks

1. Read. Buy and read books that focus on colors. Your child should be able to recognize color differences by the age of 18 months. The more you show your toddler colors, the faster your child will comprehend the differences in hues and recognize them as different colors.

2. Buy toys that have bright colors to them. Stick to the true reds, blues and yellows, and not the pastel colors. Brightly colored toys will have a greater contrast against the everyday objects in your home and will be easier for your toddler to distinguish.

3. Talk to your child about colors. There are numerous examples in your daily routine where color will come into play. Say things like, "Are you going to wear a blue or red shirt today? Mommy has on green socks. I love your orange ball." You will be teaching your child valuable language skills as well as color differences.

4. Point out colors while you are out of the house. Show your child a red apple at the grocery store. Let your toddler hold a green dollar at the bank. Walk on the yellow or white lines in a parking lot. Slide down the big blue slide at the park. Your options are limitless.

5. Play color games. Put a drop of food color into your bubbles to make beautiful colored bubbles. Let your child chase and pop them. Buy colored blocks and build color towers. Ask your toddler to get the color you are building and add a block to the top of the tower. When you clean up, ask your toddler to pick up the red or blue or green blocks.

6. Paint. Color. Glue. Cut. Art is the best way to teach your child about color and reinforce creativity at the same time. Teach your child to use child-safe scissors and cut colored paper. Put food color in glue and make colored glue designs on white paper.

Tips & Warnings

• Buy your child his or her favorite color clothes.
• Ask your child to choose what color fruit or drink to have at lunch and dinner.
• Your toddler is learning a new skill and will make mistakes, calling red blue and so forth. Don't criticize or reprimand your toddler for mistakes. He or she will learn eventually.
• Color blindness occurs in some children. At this age it is hard to tell, because your toddler is learning a new skill. If your child enters school and is still confusing colors, you should have him or her checked for color blindness. Common colors that color blind children tend to confuse are blue and purple, green and brown, and sometimes red and green.

Who Can Help:

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[IVleague]

on 2/2/2008 For my son who is 2 1/2 he enjoys sorting colored foods into muffin tins. Simply pull out your muffin tins and either a colored cereal like Trix or Cheerios, m&m's, or colored goldfish crackers. He likes it because once he has sorted them he gets to eat them.
Another thing we have done is to take craft pom-poms and glued them to the cooresponding color of construction paper. I first labeled each sheet of paper with the name of the color so that he can start to associate the written word with the color. I tried using a glue stick but you have to use the guey white glue (like Elmers school glue) if you want the pom-poms to stick after it dries. If you plan ahead you can make it so that each paper has a different number of pom-poms and then go back later and use them for counting exercises.

[ariane]

on 11/28/2007 How does baby blue not go with red? You cannot teach good taste in colors. Some of the oddest color combinations occur in nature and are beautiful. Good taste is subjective.

on 7/20/2006 I think the best way to teach your kids colors is to use lollies, like smarties or jelly beans. You will have their undivided attention (of course) and you can start by naming the colors for them. I promise you will see a large improvement in just one session.

on 11/30/2005 I created a book using the colors of the rainbow. The first page of her book is "red". We gatherd up all familiar items in her environment that are red (stuffed Elmo, Clifford book, red balls, play lawnmower, red blocks, etc.) and dressed her in a red outfit and put her in on top of her red ladybug sandbox and took a picture. For the green picture, I dressed her up in green, gathered the familiar green objects, took her outside and sat her in the green grass in front of a green leafed tree. I titled the book, glue the color words printed in the color font, laminated the pages, and put them on a binder ring so we could add more color pages later. She loves it!

on 12/22/2005 I think that we should teach our children to choose the clothes they want to wear, and teach them what goes with what. For example: we should teach them that baby blue goes with white, but doesn't go with red and so on. That will help them have a good taste in colors and learn how to use them.