Teaching little ones to recognize and name the colors has many benefits. Scroll down to learn why it’s important and find fun activities you can do at home together!
TALK ABOUT COLORS
When you make art, play a game, or take a walk and talk about colors, you’re building your child’s vocabulary so they can learn to describe the world. The more words they know when they start school, the easier it is to learn to read those words.
Find games and activities you can use to teach your little one about colors below. You can also pick a color of the day and look for it everywhere. Older kids can keep a tally and see who can find the color the most times. Or go on a scavenger hunt outside. Can you find the colors of the rainbow in nature?
PLAY WITH COLORS
Learning can be fun! Playing games will help your little one learn the names of colors and math skills like sorting, logic, and matching. And they’ll learn school readiness skill such as turn-taking and following directions!
PLAY A CANDYLAND STYLE GAME
If you picked up a library supply kit, use the game board and color squares to talk about colors while you play. You can print one by clicking below.
Find small items at home to be game tokens, such as a coin or a Lego. Each player needs one.
Shuffle the squares and place them in a stack color side down. The first player turns over a card and moves to the first dot that matches that color. Now it’s the next person’s turn. If you land on the dot by the short cut, you can choose that path. See who can get to the end first. You have to draw pink to end the game!
PLAY A COLOR MATCHING GAME
Use the colorful squares in your kit to play a matching game. If your child is young, start with just two or three pairs of colors. Mix them up, turn them color side down, and lay them out in rows.
Let your child turn two squares color side up. Do they match? If not, turn them color side down and it’s the next person’s turn to look for a match. Take turns until all matches are found.
Talk while you play!
WRITE
When we use the word write for pre-literacy, we don’t always mean to literally write letters. Before a preschooler learns to write the letters of their name, they need to learn to hold a pencil or crayon and have the hand strength to do that. Both of these activities help build hand muscles, and you can talk to build vocabulary while you do the activities too!
MAKE COLORFUL PROCESS ART
Use tissue page squares and a pipette for an easy art project for toddlers and preschoolers, that builds hand muscles needed for writing and let’s your child explore colors and water.
Prepare a work surface by putting paper towels, newspaper, or a tray on a table. Place a blank piece of paper on top. Let your child layout the colorful squares of tissue paper over the blank paper anyway they want. Now let them use the pipette to drop water over the tissue paper.
The colors will bleed onto the paper. Peel the tissue paper off to see the colors!
Young children are more interested in the process of creating art, not the product. They’ll have fun learning to use the pipette and watching the water make the tissue paper wet. You can let them use a crayon the paper first and see how the waxy crayon resists the water and shows through.
Talk while they create to help them learn how to describe the colors and how they mix, and the way the tissue paper feels.
Let the artwork dry, then display and talk about it more as you show friends and family.
SORT THE COLORS
If you picked up a supply kit, you’ll find a baggie with a striped paper and pompoms inside.
Let your little one push the pompoms to the matching color to help practice sorting, an early math and science skill, and build fine motor skills. When they finish, shake the bag and start again!
SING ABOUT COLORS
Singing is a great way to build vocabulary, help your child hear the parts of words, and have fun. Sing along to this rainbow song!
LYRICS
Take a cherry and put it in the pot.
Stir and stir and stir a lot.
Take it out and what will it be?
The prettiest red you’ll ever see.
- Orange (orange)
- Lemon (yellow)
- Lime (green)
- Blueberry (blue)
- Grape (purple)
- All the colors… The prettiest rainbow that will ever be!
READ ABOUT COLORS
