Learning the colors for toddlers

9 Simple Ways to Get Your Toddler to Learn Colors

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Once your child has reached the big milestone of turning 1, you’ll notice they become little sponges of information. They start walking, talking, and being so much more independent now that the baby stage is long gone.

Around this age is when you can start introducing them to colors. It’s important for a child to start hearing words often in order to remember it.

Even though they probably won’t be able to fully understand and retain the concept of colors until around 18 months, it’s a good idea to start teaching it early on. This is when learning colors will start to make sense to them, just like learning names of objects made sense to them around the 1 yearmark.

Color matching (putting the red piece on the red spot) is one of the simplest forms of learning colors. It may occur first, along with recognizing and choosing colors when asked for them (handing you the red piece when you say give me the red piece). Lastly comes naming colors (being able to say red when asked what color is this?).

This post may contain affiliate links which I would receive a small commission should you make a purchase.

The key to your child learning colors is over-exposure. As I’ll talk about below, you want to give them tons of opportunities to hear you say the colors names, be asked the color’s names, and see them often.

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I started really introducing my daughter to colors around 16 months old and she got a grasp of the concept quickly. Here are some simple tips to teach your toddler their colors:

1. Start simple

Don’t overwhelm your toddler with too many colors at once. Focus on two at a time and then add more in as they become familiar with those.

Whenever you see those two colors, point them out to your child, but don’t label any other colors yet. For example, choose to teach your child red and green first. Whenever you see anything red or green, point it out. Give them only red and green objects at certain playtimes.

Clearly label and talk about the red versus green objects. Ask them to sort only objects that are red or green. Once they are familiar with red and green and the differences between those two, add in yellow. Of course they will see other colors while they play, but really try to only speak about the few colors that you choose.

Showing them less choices will help them to remember the colors easier.

Related post: Pom Pom Tube Drop: Toddler Fine Motor Activity

2. Use small, colorful objects for sorting

I love using fun, simple objects for learning colors and counting. Toddlers love little pompoms because of their softness and they’ll be excited to learn with them.

I like to group and sort them by color as my daughter puts them into their correct pile. If your child is just learning colors, naming the colors of each pompom works great too.

This Rainbow Counting Bears Sorting Toy makes a fun learning resource for introducing color recognition & basic mathematics concepts such as counting and addition. It can also be used for kids math and counting games for toddlers and great for developing fine motor skills with the tongs.

Have your toddler sort the bears into their same color cup. They can use their hands or tongs . They’ll also have a fun time using their imagination to make stories and games with the bears.

3. Distinguish contrasting colors

It’s best to use colors that are not at all similar to each other so you don’t confuse your toddler. Items that have contrasting colors will stick out more to them when they’re learning.

For example, if you’re teaching colors side by side, don’t put blue and purple together, red and orange, red and pink, etc. Colors that pair well with contrast are red/green, blue/yellow, purple/green, and black/white. There are plenty more combinations to use.

Also, sometimes certain shades of a color will be closely related like a yellowish green will look similar to yellow or a turquoise could look closer to a green or blue. Try to stick to the basic primary colors when teaching them.

Check out our post on the Pompom Whisk Activity for Toddlers where you child can try a fun activity while also learning their colors.

4. Color puzzles

Puzzles are a great activity to develop language, cognition, and fine motor skills. My daughter loves the Melissa & Doug Colorful Fish Puzzle and is always asking to do it.

While we play, I verbally label each color as she puts the piece in the board so that she hears it over and over and can match the color name with what she sees.

Since this color puzzle is using all fish, your child won’t have to focus on the pictures or objects on the puzzle, but will be able to just pay attention to the colors. I think this was one of the best aids that taught my daughter her colors so early.

5. Use the same objects

The concept of colors may be a little difficult for babies and toddlers to understand because it’s a word typically used to describe something else. So far they have been learning words of actual things, like ball, car, mommy, milk, etc.

All items they can see or hold and names of these objects can make sense to them.

To get them to understand the concept of colors better, make sure you’re using two identical objects to point out the color differences. For example, don’t show your child a red car and a blue block because she will just think that you’re naming it differently because the object is different.

Instead, use a red car and a blue car to distinguish the differences.

This activity below works on color matching and sorting which are the first color activities your toddler will be able to do. We used MegaBlocks, but you can really use any blocks or toys that have different colors.

Simply put construction paper on the floor in the colors of the blocks and have your child match their toy to the colored paper. Read more about this activity here.

6. Label EVERYTHING with a color

This will help them to quickly build their language and vocabulary. Anything they see in their everyday world has a color. Make sure to verbally label objects with their names and colors as you see them, pass them, and give to them.

When you’re first starting to introduce colors, you may want to just label the colors on their own so they’re not confused by the color and the name. You’d be surprised how quickly children pick up these concepts and understand that you’re not naming the object, but just describing the color.

Related Post: Sticker Letter Activity: Letter Learning for Toddlers

7. Color with crayons and markers

Coloring is a great skill for toddlers to develop fine and visual motor skills (coordinating their hands and eyes to perform a task). Have your child use crayons to scribble on paper and point out and label the colors that they use.

You can print out free blank coloring pages of their favorite characters or objects hereif using a blank paper gets boring to them.

For little hands, I highly recommend these finger crayons. They are perfect for tiny fingers to wrap around and promote a proper grasp around the crayon. Skinny or chunky crayons just don’t allow your young toddler to hold it the correct way and it will end up tiring them out quicker.

8. In their natural environment

Kids learn best in the context of their everyday environment. Point out the contrasting colors at:

mealtimes (green beans, yellow corn, red raspberries)
during dressing (blue shirt, black pants)
during playtime (red blocks, blue balls)
outdoors (blue sky, green grass, pink flower)

9. Fingerpainting

Sensory experiences where children are actively touching, tasting, hearing or smelling things are one of the best ways to teach your kids new concepts. Your toddler will love trying out their artistic capabilities by rubbing their hands on paper with finger paint.

By just getting 3 primary colors (blue, red, yellow) of finger paint, you can mix them until you make secondary colors (green, purple, orange).

Have your toddler rub their hands and fingers in the paint and just smudge it onto paper. Talk about the colors they are using and ask them what color is on their hands and on the paper.

You can make your own finger paint at home so quickly, which is safe and even edible for your child. Check out this post: Sensory Edible Finger Paint for the recipe!

Related Post: Edible Finger Painting Recipe

10. Songs and Videos

Toddlers and babies love to hear music. Whether it be songs on the stereo, mommy singing, or making their own sounds by shouting at the top of their lungs, they are drawn to it.

Using songs (especially with visuals) is a great way to teach your child new concepts. Putting words to music helps things to stick better in their brain and will give them a higher chance of learning the skill.

Here is a short video that can help your toddler to learn their colors by combining colorful graphics to a catchy tune. You can also make up your own songs and melodies to sing as you show them colors.

Even just saying the colors but having a little rhythm to it will help your child to remember the colors easier.

How to start teaching colors to a toddler (and make it fun!)

You can teach colors to a toddler using fun activities and games. Colors are one of the first lessons that you can start when trying to get your toddler ready for pre-k. Start with the basic colors and then move up, adding more as your little learner gets more comfortable.

When can children learn colors?

In general, children are developmentally ready to learn colors at one year old. At 18 months, children can differentiate colors. Toddlers can name different colors by the age of 2.5-3 years. Use fun activities to guide your teaching at home.

Even though they won’t be able to tell you the difference between the colors until around 18 months, this doesn’t mean that you can’t start exposing your child to the concept of colors before that 18-month mark.

You should! Some kids learn their colors sooner, and some learn them later. Get started with this guide to teach colors to One Year Olds

Benefits of Learning Colors

· Color recognition can boost language skills because learning to identify and describe colors improves the child’s ability to communicate and express themselves

· Learning colors strengthen math skills, helping a child learn how to sort, organize, categorize, and compare.

Early identification of colors helps to create the cognitive link between visual clues and words.

“The ability to identify colors is considered a marker and milestone in a child’s cognitive process and is often part of early screening for the development and educational admittance. ”

Follow the learn through play color lesson plan and start teaching your child colors!

Short on time? Jump to it!

Which colors to teach first?

Young children typically love bright colors. There are many colors in the rainbow, but first. Start with bright bold primary colors (and green).

Red
Yellow
Blue
Green

Introduce these colors first through different activities, and let the child understand the concept of primary colors before you introduce other colors.

How to start teach colors to your toddler

Believe it or not, there is a fun and straightforward process your child’s interest and go as fast or as slow as needed until your child grasps each concept.

Grasping colors is easier if you break it up in a few simple activities.

Create activities around each color. I used to do a full 2-3 weeks or even a month of activities for each color before introducing others. It just made grasping the concept easier once the first primary colors are mastered the rest were easy to learn.

You might like: Weekly lesson plan for color activities: color RED

My son mastered all colors by age 2y3m. I wasn’t in a rush to get him to know them all so fast as my goal was for him to learn them when he reached 3 yrs old that I knew he needed to start learning the alphabet.

Your son/daughter might be faster than Manu or slower and it doesn’t matter the timeline. What is important is that you start exposing them to the colors and keep practicing.

So, let’s start!

Learn Colors through Word Games

The first step into teaching colors is to identify and label colors. Compare identical objects of different colors to help your child discern between colors.

Young children typically attach colors to their objects because the color concept is too abstract for a toddler or a preschooler to comprehend. So, when you use objects to teach your child colors, he will most likely have difficulties to separate the color from its object.

To help children better understand the concept of colors, make sure to use the color words before and after the noun for an object, for example, “This is a green ball; this ball is green.”

Word Activities

Balls Activity

Grab 4 color balls, one for each primary color, and place them inside a basket.
Place the basket in front of your child and take out one by one.
“This is a red ball – this ball is red, This is a yellow ball – this ball is yellow, this is a blue ball – this ball is blue”
Place the balls inside the basket again and let your child take one ball at a time. When he/she takes it out, say the color of the ball.

Toss Activity

Another great activity to practice color words is a color toss activity. Create a color sorting board and color toss each ball into the correct color hole.

Rhymes and Songs to teach Colors

Research shows that music has a strong influence on a child’s development and learning. Sing to your child songs and rhymes with colors as kids tend to remember rhymes easily. Check YouTube for color songs and rhymes that teach colors and watch them with your toddler.

Check out or favorite color songs for toddlers

Youtube Super Simple songs are very catchy and well done. This blue song is a great one.

I love to sing I can sing a rainbow (YouTube) as we wave color scarfs around. I have been singing that song to my son since he was one and now that he is two, he can sing along with us as he picks the right color scarfs.

Learn Colors through books

Books are a great opportunity to teach colors. Use books that are all about colors and point colors often while you read.

A great way to learn colors is to create activities around the book.

Best Books to Learn colors

My Favorite Color Books

Dog’s Colorful Day
- My favorite color book! I used it for sensory class and we played with edible paint after to make the color spots on the dog.
What Makes a Rainbow
- A book that has a story for each color with a textured ribbon, as you pass the pages the rainbow forms. I used this book for our Virtual Mommy & Me class for Spring) and we painted a rainbow using homemade watercolor paint.
- Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? A classic that is fun to read because it’s an easy rhyme to remember and should be in everyone’s library. Use coloring pages of this book and color each animal.

Top Books to learn colors recommended by Teachers

Planting a Rainbow (Best price found on Amazon)
White Rabbit’s Colors by Alan Baker (Best price found on Amazon)
I Love My White Shoes – Pete The Cat (Best price found on Kidbooks)
What color is bear’s underwear (Best price found in Amazon)
The Color Monster (Best price found on Amazon)
Monster Colors (Early Learning Rhymes) (Best price found on Kidbooks)

Learn Colors Through Daily Routines

Use Clothes to Teach Colors

Repeat colors each morning when helping your child to dress and get ready for the day. For example, say, “Today you’ll be wearing a blue shirt and yellow pants to daycare.”

Allow your child to pick pieces of clothes for him/herself and ask which colors he has choosen.

Repetition throughout the day with different activities will ensure that your child learns the colors easily.

Eat Colorful Meals Together

Involve your child in grocery shopping and meal preparation activities. Allow them to choose, touch, and play with raw fruits and vegetables while you’re shopping and preparing food at home.

As you cook and serve food, introduce each food item with their color and say, “This is a green cucumber. This cucumber is green.”

Create opportunities for choices. While showing them each item, allow for them to choose what they want. For example, Ask your toddler “do you want a red apple or a green apple”

Use Nature Walks to learn colors

Exploring nature is a wonderful way to teach colors to young children. While outside, introduce the colors of flowers, the sky, grass, leaves, birds, butterflies, tree trunks, and so on.

Repeat colors while you and your child are spending time outdoors. Children are naturally curious and interested in nature. They love to observe various things in nature such as flowers, animals, or clouds, and ask many questions.

Observe Colors in Nature Together and go on scavenger hunts together. Collect flowers, sticks and other found items in the colors you are practicing and working on.

You might also like: Tot School Free Color Lesson Plan

Play iSpy

Review each color of the rainbow. Start with the first color and try to search for items that are that color during your walk. You can both participate – do not expect your child to do all the finding. It’s more fun if you both do.

Match Colors in Nature

You can help your child learn colors faster by setting up activities that provide matching opportunities.

Matching colors is a math skill as being the very first lesson to helping a child learn how to sort, organize, categorize, and compare.

Take a color wheel of color flashcards and play a matching activity. Find different color flowers, rocks, mailboxes etc.. and match them to the right color flashcard.

You might have to do all the matching at first, but be patient and repeat the activity often, eventually your child will surprise you and start looking for the flashcard that matches the plants/flowers they collected.

Learn Colors With Invitations to Play

While a one-year-old might have trouble verbalizing the name of the color, he/she can still identify each color by matching it and sorting it.

Check this out: Easy Indoor color Activities

Use color puzzles to practice colors

A great matching activity are color sorting activities using puzzles. These activities not only teach children colors but also encourage problem-solving skills, cause and effect, math skills, attention and focus, language skills, fine motor skills, hand-eye coordination, and cooperation.

Play with color matching puzzles that can be sorted by colors. Only use the red, yellow, blue, and green pieces first and continue with other color pieces as this skill gets mastered.

Using sorting worksheets sort each color item to its matching pair.

Use color matching printables to practice colors

A great opportunity to work on matching colors is through worksheets. This allows your toddler to match the exact same color and item for a true matching exercise. You can use your toddler’s interest to make the activity more interested.

If your toddler loves sharks like mine does, the shark worksheet is awesome! Does he/she love cars, trucks and other transportation equipment? Then follow their lead.

When playing the matching game, always verbalize the color that your child is holding. If they are holding the yellow shark and are ready to match it with the yellow, say “yellow shark good job, that is the yellow shark, yellow and yellow” (as you point to teach shark)

Learn Colors Through Sorting Activities

If matching has become too easy, then color sorting is the next level up in learning colors.

Provide a set of activities where you toddler can sort items by colors. Have a cup of each color and a few toys in a basket or tray and allow your toddler to put like -with-like.

This activity is also a great activity to practice fine motor skills as they learn.

You can get super creative setting up activities and sensory bins to work on sorting. Get the lesson plan book for a full list of ideas.

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Parent tip: During sorting activities, ask your child “can you show me blue?” and allow him/her to point at the colors. Repeat with the rest of the colors.

If they point out the wrong color, say “That is red. Can you show me blue”

If they continue to show you the wrong color, stop asking and just continue to play the matching and sorting activities and verbalize the colors you are playing and touching as much as you can to continue the name association.

Use Coloring Pages to Practice Colors

Provide coloring pages with black-and-white illustrations that are associated with that color. For example a yellow sun, a red apple, etc. Ask your child to use crayons, markers, or colored pens.

Learn Colors through Art Activities

I love to take full weeks and focus on just one color. This means we would go on nature hunts to search for things that are that color, we will dress in clothing that has the selected color, we would include the color during snack time and we would do tons of activities related to that color.

I love art, and even though at one and two years old, art is just process art and it’s job is to explore materials I love to involve paint activities and all types of art supplies to our learning week.

Children are naturally curious and love to experiment with colors, materials, and textures. Make sure to provide safe, non-toxic art supplies such as markers, crayons, colored pencils, and brushes and encourage your child to draw and paint. Art activities not only teach colors but promote fine motor skills development, boost cognitive abilities, creativity, and imagination.

Different types of painting and a variety of coloring supplies like chalk, markers, or finger painting, will spur your child’s interest and spark their creativity.

When doing art, always name the color of the crayon or marker that you’re working with and encourage him/her to repeat it. Engage finger painting not only to teach your child colors but to enhance creativity and sensory skills as well.

Parent tip: If your toddler can match the colors correctly, can sort colors to its own, and can point to the correct color when asked, then you can now point to a color and ask “what is this color” and allow your toddler to correctly identify it.

Offer playdough and other brightly colored craft and sensory materials such as squeeze bottles, pom-poms, water beads, kinetic sand, stickers, etc to create craft projects to practice each color.

Introducing Secondary Colors

Once your toddler masters primary colors a fun activity to introduce new ones is with a mixing paint activity using washable paint.

Tape paper to table so pre-toddler doesn’t pick it up and makes a paint disaster
Choose two primary color paint (I used @crayola finger paint)
Place a few dabs of your first paint on the left side of the paper
Place paint #2 on the right side -let pre-toddler spread the paint and be amazed at the new color created
Clean up messy hands when done
Hang art project proudly

Last thoughts on learning colors

These activities are fun ways to teach colors to your toddler. Start with matching, then sorting, as you practice pointing and naming them.

Remember to start with just a few colors, (primary color are best) and then move on to others until you complete the rainbow.

Throughout all of the activities look for opportunities to teach children color recognition but also encourage them to practice fine motor skills, hand-eye coordination. All of the activities above work on helping improve their language development, and boost creativity and imagination, therefore nurturing all aspects of your child’s development.

teaching colors to a toddler with Pre-made Color Lesson Activities

Sometimes is easier when you have a complete package with all the lesson plan, activity ideas, printables, art projects etc. Start learning the colors at home.

I created the Play & Learn Color Bundle so you can start implementing all of these ideas at home

teaching colors to a toddler with the Color bundle:

Quick & Easy Activities
Coloring Pages
Matching Activities
and more…

Learn colors - colors for children.

Learning Colors with a Child - Practice Activities - Child Development

How to Learn Colors with a Child

Learning colors is very important for children. There can be no full-fledged development of the baby without this knowledge. Learning a varied color palette - what could be more fun for the little ones and how can a child be interested in learning them? How to make classes useful and fun? This will help you with practical tasks that are posted on our website. They are characterized by the following:

1) Simplicity and efficiency. Classes require time, perseverance and patience. And also creativity and knowledge, which are not enough (not all parents have a pedagogical education). A modern approach to children and old-fashioned ways will help you, as a parent, to teach your child colors. Learn colors with kids and Childdevelop!

2) Individual approach. How to teach a child colors? It would seem that such a simple task, but the child stubbornly confuses colors, does not want to listen, is naughty, it is difficult for him. Are you running after him and want to achieve results? Certain tasks, games and the experience of specialists in pedagogy and psychology will help you solve the problem and methodically approach this task. And you will see concrete results very quickly. Colors for children will no longer be an impossible topic to study.

3) Learning colors with a baby. It has long been no secret for specialists where to start, how to learn colors with a child, in what order they should be taught, and what practical tasks to use for learning colors for children.

4) Job benefits. How to teach a child to recognize colors and distinguish them? Our tasks will help you get your child interested in learning colors. These methods will push you to use not only when learning colors, but in the future - for learning numbers, letters, sizes of shapes and more.

5) Step by step instructions and good advice. Perhaps you will understand your mistakes in teaching colors to children. For example, few people know that you should not often use (and it is better to exclude at the first stage) diminutive forms (call the colors blue, green, etc. ), otherwise it will be difficult for the baby later, as he will perceive this form as initial. Learning colors with a child correctly!

6) Age features. Not everyone knows the age characteristics of children. For example, the color perception of infants differs from that of an adult, and a child under the age of seven (upon reaching a certain intellectual level of development), as experts say, has every right not to distinguish shades. Learn colors for the youngest children with practical tasks from Childdevelop and get 100% result!

Learning colors in pictures

Our website Childdevelop will teach you what, how and at what age to demand certain knowledge from a child! How to teach a child to distinguish colors? This can be done in an easy and accessible way. To do this, go to the site and download the necessary materials. We recommend that you pay attention to the study of colors in pictures - this type of task will definitely appeal to every child! Learning colors for children - it's so interesting and informative!

Learn shapes and colors for kids

Description

Learn Shapes and Colors - Educational and educational games for kids and toddlers.

Together with the rabbit, we will go to visit his girlfriend. Along the way, we learn to distinguish shapes and colors, solve logical problems, sort objects, and train our memory.

There are 6 fun games in the app:

- COLORS: find the object by color
- SHAPES: determine the shape of the object
- LOGIC: a logic game with colorful shapes
- MEMORY: a game for training memory and developing intelligence
- OBSERVATION: find the same objects
- SORT: find the shapes

"Learn shapes and colors for kids" application is aimed at developing spatial thinking, fine motor skills, memory training.
Children's game "Learn shapes and colors for kids" will help your baby to distinguish colors and shapes.

The game is intended for children aged 2-3-4 years.

We also advise you to pay attention to our other educational applications for children. We not only learn fun letters, sounds, the alphabet together, but also numbers, shapes, colors, simple mathematical operations. We create children's educational and educational games for you and your children.

We are open to all your wishes! Send your suggestions to [email protected].
If you like our application and want to continue, please rate it.

5 Feb. 2018

Version 1.6

The app has been updated by Apple to display the Apple Watch app icon.

Spring is coming. The rabbit cleans the snow, buys carrot seeds and fixes small bugs in the app.

Ratings and reviews

ratings: 842

Great game ‼️

I liked everything very much

smart rabbit

A good application, my son and I really liked it 1. 8, it’s only with my help to drive around the screen, but it solves tasks, it’s very useful, and you need to think and move pictures around the screen, just for development)) plus live pictures and various interesting tasks! For children after 3 years in general, I think it will not be interesting already. A huge plus there is no annoying ads and the application itself is free! Thank you)

Excellent!

Super game. My daughter and I really like it, and she began to learn figures with pleasure!

Developer OLGA NIKOLENKO has not disclosed to Apple its privacy policy or data processing practices. Detailed information is available in the developer's privacy policy.

N/A

Developer will be required to provide privacy information when submitting the next app update.

Information

Provider

OLGA NIKOLENKO

Size

73.