Hi everyone,
My little girl is 20 months old. She just started saying some color words like pink, white, blue and we draw with crayons on poster board almost everyday. If I show her a pink crayon and then show her the big pink star on her shirt, she will point to the start and say “pink” and then to the crayon and say “pink” again. But I just think she’s following my lead. From what I can tell, she really doesn’t understand what pink looks like.
Any good methods for teaching colors, especially to someone under 2 years old?
I started to teach colors at 18 months, using Brillkids presentation http://forum.brillkids.com/downloads/?sa=view;id=13
Child liked to watch this; it was her favourite presentation. She learned colours within 2 months. She voluntary started to name colours of textiles, dogs, flowers etc.
There are also many advices on the net; google “teach baby colours” etc.
My 15-month-old loves nhockaday’s LR files “Purple Things,” “Yellow Things,” “Red Things,” etc. I like them too. They are very well-made with excellent pronunciation. You can find them in the LR Library under English downloads - Shapes and Colors.
We use flashcards, speaking the colors as we color, placing the words with a picture of the same color up, we call ours a word wall. Sorting and matching socks, or toys, etc, placing them in piles to match the color. once you show the child what to do they will get they hand of it, also we use colored floating ducks, we also use a dry erase board and make rainbows singing a rainbow song. We also use a lapbook filled with colored things. There is a template that we use at www.kizclub.com
When you are dressing or noticing like I spy or my son says I see blue, I see purple, of course their pronounciation may be slight off like my son calls purple ‘po-poop’ and blue he calls it ‘bue’ I know its funny. And of course we use the colored cars file from LR and various other transportation files.
Find something he/she likes and turn that into a coloring file folder game. We take animals like dogs and make several colored dogs with a square of that same color and match them. We have tons of file folder games like that. We also have one where we park the colored car into the colored garage, things like that. Take the things that he/she is interested in and turn that into something teachable.
There are heaps of baby books on colours, and heaps of dvds and videos (get them cheap at a 2nd-hand shop). There are lots of youtube clips on colour. I like the 10cm by 10cm (4 inch by 4 inch) paint colour swatches from hardware shops/paint shops. I am collecting them, and trying to identify the various shades, then writing that label on them and putting them into a flip-book album (used for photos). you can also use them like a bit card, sticking them onto a white background, and writing the colour on the back. If anyone knows were I can find on the net the exact shades, let me know, because at the moment it’s just guesswork. what exactly is chartreuse, aqua, lavender, lilac, magenta, indigo, violet, burgundy, turquoise, cerise, tan, mustard etc?? You can also cut the paint cards into shapes, and label them…emerald green heart, maroon oval, navy blue octagon etc. The dark coloured ones are best labelled with a white-out (liquid paper) pen.
We’re doing colours (and shapes) right now (I have a 20 month old, too).
I have a calendar posted with a large black poster board beside it. On the black posterboard I have a white sheet of paper on which I have a shape drawn with the word below (ie. this week it’s “square”). Just beside this shape paper I have a construction paper with it’s word printed on it (ie. this week it’s “blue”). Below I’ve stuck several blue square things (lid, duplo block, small bag). Daily we look at the black poster board and then stick a blue square sticker (that I coloured and cut out of mailing labels) on to the calendar. Then we say “Today is Monday, November 9th” (not that he gets that part, yet, but one day he will).
During the week we’ll do different square arts (“mosaic” - sticking various coloured or sized squares all over his sheet as he likes, glue a “tower” made with squares, trace them with a crayon, etc). We’ll also do blue activities, too (sort his duplo, go on a scavenger hunt, glue down misc. things to a black piece of const paper (last week we did yellow - a leaf sticker, a feather and a pompom were some). Not to imply that we don’t look at other shapes or colours during the week, but we focus on these colours/shapes more.
We’ll do this for the entire week (Sunday to Saturday - so he can see a row of 7 of the same colour and shape) then change colours and shapes the next week. He seems to like it and he’s really trying to name colours more now. Plus, it’s good hand/eye coordination for him to try to get the sticker in the right spot (believe me - this is probably the trickiest part of it all! )
