“The craving for color is a natural necessity just as for water and fire. Color is a raw material indispensable to life. At every era of his existence and his history, the human being has associated colour with his joys, his actions and his pleasures.”
Fernand Leger, French painter, sculptor, and filmmaker
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Good day Dear Moms & Dads,
Anyone who has children understands the joy of your child saying his or her first words. Among those first words are probably names, food and water. Then come the colors!
It’s super cute when your child can point to something and tell you what color it is. But how can you teach colors to your kids?
Read this article to find out all you need to know about how to teach colors to toddlers, including some links to recommended toys.
So here are some important info about the process of learning colors:
When to Start Teaching Colors to Toddlers?
It’s usually in the preschool years that children begin to think about differences in color. It is believed that being able to tell colors apart is a measure of the cognitive development of a child, and can form part of testing for letting children into schools.
Being able to identify colors and the color names is a key step, creating that important link between the words they hear and the objects they see.
What is a Color, Anyway?
It’s hard for us as adults to understand, and impossible to remember, but children have a hard time dealing with concepts. We can point at a blue stuffed elephant and say ‘blue’ as many times as we like, but the child doesn’t know that the sound ‘blue’ doesn’t mean elephant, or soft, or small, or one. Repeating that scenario over and over again probably won’t help.
Having said that, teaching children how to identify different colors is usually quite straightforward. They tend to go for brightly colored objects anyway, which is why you’ll notice most toys and games for young toddlers are colorful. Perhaps that’s why most toddlers want to be outside all the time: there’s a world of colors out there.
Why Teaching Colors is an Important Early Step?
Children need vocabulary to describe the fascinating world around them: they need adjectives! Shape, size and color. It helps them get excited about verbal communication. Without adjectives, children can’t tell us about their lives, and this means their language won’t develop as quickly as it otherwise would have.
Learning colors helps them in the development stage of sorting and classifying: one of the key early developmental stages. Shapes help with this too. It can be important for health and safety reasons too: red can mean danger, as in stop lights or stop signs. Yellow and black could spell danger too, and blue could mean something is freezing cold.
So, what are some of the options for aiding my child in learning colors?
Let’s take a look…
Awesome Books to Teach Colors for All Types of Children
Books can be a great way for toddlers to learn about colors, depending on the toddler. Some kids see mom or dad pick up a book and stagger over to take their place sat in their parent’s lap, ready to absorb the experience. Others couldn’t care less for books, and just want to play.
There are many interactive books these days where kids read along and push colored buttons, but there’s something to be said for the old classics if your child is into them. Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do you See? is a charming children’s book for learning color, with different colored animals on every page.
Fun Games to Teach Colors that Don’t Cost a Bomb
You can always crack out your old Twister mat and get your toddler messing around on it by spinning for colors. This will help them learn both color words and body parts. Other games can include fruit matching to colored pots, or the like. You can always do this with household objects, or even real fruit, if you can trust your toddler not to bite it!
Another option in the games bracket is the mix and match puzzles, like this one:
Fish Colors Mix ‘n Match Peg Puzzle – 10 pieces or the Soft Shapes – Colors from:
Take $5 Off Orders Of $50-$74.99 and $10 Off $75 Or More at Melissa & Doug With Code Springit
Toys are All Colorful, but Which Ones Actually Teach Color?
Most toys, other than flashcards, normally have a color-matching element to them, but also mix that in with shape-matching, like this really cool shape and color matching game with eggs. And most toys, as we said before, will have different color elements.
Flashcards Can Still be Fun if Done Right
Flashcards are another option, but interest depends on the child. Some just won’t sit still and play like that. Here are some attractive-looking standard flashcards that are available right now, although I’d be more tempted to opt for flashcards with textures, like these.
Just try to avoid the teacher inside coming out.
Other Options for Teaching Colors
How about some color bath drops to liven up bathtime for your toddler! How cool! Or Play-Doh color games? Awesome!
Outdoor Color Searches in Natural Areas
Are you lucky enough to have some woods, a coastline, or some kind of natural open space near you? Take your toddler on a color search there! Prepare a chart of the colors you want to find, and take it with you. Point out the color you want to find and let your toddler roam free looking for it. It’s a lot of fun!
Teaching colors can be as fun as you want it to be!
Wow it is so true that toddlers can’t differentiate blue from elephant when youre talking about a blue elephant great way to explain it!
Thanks for your advice! These are great ways to teach your child to distinguish colors!