Last time I talked about fun ways to teach your toddlers about shapes. That got me thinking about other essential things we often start teaching them early. One of the things that are an important addition to the basic alphabets, numbers, and shapes routine is colors.
Recognizing the colors and naming them is a fun exercise that kids anyway love to do. Teaching them about picking up different hues is even more fun because they will keep pointing out things that match the things they have learned about. Here are some fun ways to teach your kids about colors:
Finger Painting
Finger painting is one of the favorites when it comes to entertaining children. It is the embodiment of chaotic fun that makes the kids giggle.
- Name the colors as you take them out.
- Name them again as your toddler uses them.
This will help them get a visual representation of the words, and they will start associating the color with its name. It makes it easier for the child to remember. This also gives you a chance to teach them things that are often the same color as the ones you are using.
Get Inspired by Youtube Trend – “I Only Ate Yellow Food for the Whole Day”
A recent trend that hit YouTube was using just one color and basing your day around it. Eating the color was the most popular adaptation of it. The Youtuber would eat food only a certain color for the whole day. You can incorporate this in your day and make your child have fun with the learning.
- Eat just one color food the whole day – red apple, red watermelon, red (arrabbiata) pasta, salsa, etc.
- Wear a color on a certain day and try to match different things with it – matching the light green grass with your dark green shirt, the pastel green shed with your shirt, and so on.
This will help them learn about the different hues of the same color as well.
Play a Game – “Color color, which color do you want?”
No, this isn’t the paper version. When I was young, we played this game, which involved running, tagging, finding colors, etc.
- There is one person who is tagged, and the other players will ask him, “Color color, which color do you want?”
- The tagged child will call out a color, say black.
- All the other players will run to grab something that is black – hair, railing, bike, etc.
- The tagged person starts running as soon as he yells the color. If anyone hasn’t touched the color, and he catches them, then they are “it.”
- And the cycle continues.
We did have a lot of games that helped us learn things. We didn’t even realize that. When I sat down to write this article, I didn’t have this game in mind, the memory just surfaced. Ahh, nostalgia!
Final Thoughts
Teaching is all about including methods that help your pupil. Toddlers want to play and have fun. Including lessons in their play is the best way to make them learn without it being too out there for them. This also gives them practical understanding than just theoretical knowledge.
