As a parent, I worry all the time about the level of understanding my children have – especially at certain ages. Each child is different, and as such learns at different stages. My boy, 2.5 years old, still can’t tell his colours apart and it worries me hugely – especially because colour-blindness runs in the family!
Teaching your kids about colour doesn’t have to be complicated, so here are a few things to start us off:
- When you speak to your child about an object and are talking about it’s colour, be sure to label the object and then use the word “colour”. For example “here is a ball, and it’s colour is blue” or “here is a chair, it’s colour is red”.
- Start with the easy colours first – red, blue, green and yellow. Don’t complicate things by introducing too many colours at once.
- Have days where you focus on one colour e.g. “Today is the colour BLUE day!” and focus on all things blue
Once you have decided on which colour you want to focus on for the day, here are 15 ways to teach your kids about colour:
- Make Jelly in that colour
- Get your child to pick out their clothes in that colour
- Use a colouring-in activity to talk about the different colours being used (focus on the day’s colour in particular)
- When you go out, talk about the day’s colour and all of the things you can see that are that particular colour
- Practice drawing using that colour – I’m loving the colourful Kookie range from Warehouse Stationery for this! Each aisle in-store is a specific colour, which makes it easy to explain and VERY visual. See below.
- Make a game of finding everything in the house with that is the day’s colour
- Use a specific coloured bath bomb in the bath
- Play with play-dough in the colour
- Bake food and use specific food colouring depending on the day
- Head into the Warehouse Stationery and check out their Kookie range – focussing on the colour of the day
- Practice cutting pictures from magazines that are the day’s colour
- Get your child to pick out all of their toys of the day’s colour
- Get outside and collect (or point out) items that are the day’s colour
- Give your child a selection of foods in the colour of the day
- Blow up balloons in the colour of the day
If changing colour each day seems too much, just do a weekly colour.
Our latest colour activity involved a family trip down to Warehouse Stationery. They have an amazing range of colourful stationery and accessories called Kookie – and it starts at only $2.99, bonus! When my children and I popped in-store, we walked down each aisle and talked about the different items and their colours.
The kids picked out some of their favourite products in their favourite colours, took them home and then used each of the colours in a wee colouring activity. We split all the colours up into their colour groups (red, yellow, green and blue), and then used each colour specifically while colouring in things that would appear in that colour.
Here are some of the things we picked out:
A big thing to remember is that learning about colours doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time and patience, and no two children are the same. Repetition is key to learning anything in life – even for adults. So the more you talk about it, the more they will learn and remember.
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