Learning & Teaching Colors. Toddler style!

Hi everyone, it's that time with my little girl. Time to introduce the actual learning stage, you know the lets sit and have "school time" stage. Toddlers have short attention spans, so, this list is a great hands-on list of activities to introduce colors. For the first 2 years you can show and explain and teach allot of things to toddlers, and even some "school time" type of activities but once they get a little older you can drive it in a little more. You can actually get them to keep attention on something for an amount of time, you can bring out the real fun! Learning colors is something easily made fun, and over the last couple weeks we have been doing allot of activities to show our little Annabelle colors and what an exciting couple weeks it has been! Remember to keep inserting the color names and explaining things to them. These are fun activities for parent and child, you can have fun watching them learn, and it's fine if the match up wrong colors every now and then too, you just work with them and show them differences and so on. Here is a list of some things that we used, keeping in mind that all activities listed require supervision, yes some less than others but these are meant to be things you do with them anyhow!

C-O-L-O-R-S!

12 GREAT Color learning/teaching activities for toddler: To teach and to simply introduce the colors to the little ones!

1: Baking, baking is ALWAYS a hit with toddlers. 

------Bake some simple sugar cookies from a mix or from a recipe and using some sprinkles (I used wilton crystal sprinkles). Do different color sprinkles on different cookies and talk about and introduce which colors are which. Also, when eating, they can pick out and tell you which color cookie they want to eat. 

Another great idea would be using a little food coloring to mix into the cookie dough to make colored cookie would be fun!

  

  

2: Colors by fruit

-----Using either colored cups or what I did is used colored tape on clear plastic cups seperate the fruit into matching cups. Just cut up the fruit and leave them with it! Helping them sort and get it right! Ideas...Grapes, Blueberries, Strawberries, oranges, banana, lime, lemon, clementine. Annabelle LOVES fruit so this is an awesome thing for her, and when it's done it makes an awesome and healthy snack time!

3: Colored rice
-----Color rice using a little vinegar and food coloring. About 1tbsp vinegar to each cup of rice. Mix the vinegar and food coloring keeping in mind that it will be a lighter than what the liquid is in the bowl or bag you mix it in. Once you mix the color and vinegar and then add in rice and coat well, lay out on foil lined baking sheet and let air dry. Time to dry varies by how wet it was and how thin you spread it on the sheet.  The rice can be used for pouring, playing in or making like a sand art project in bottles. This is a great addition to any hands on activity your little toddler likes to learn from.

 

4: Crayola color bath tablets!

 

 5: Sorting Blocks/balls
-----The kiddos love to play outside so we used chalk to draw big circles in different colors and brought out the baskets of the blocks and balls and let her go at it. Of course there is coaching going on but this is something you can let them do and they can learn from trial and error and you work with them. She had a blast with this and brother thought he was helping too.
 

 

6: Basic Crayons

-----Crayons are fun, the kids feel in control, creative and proud to create their own artwork. You can also use this to help with shapes, draw some shapes and color an edge on it and let them match the color crayons with the color and fill it in. 

 

7: Markers

 

 8: Felt color matching
-----At walmart or any craft store you can buy a little jewelry findings storage box that you can use, and it also serves as a storage container for the felt pieces when you are thru. Alright this is simple, you need some felt in different colors, scissors, the box, glue gun! Cut a small piece of felt for the bottom of each little square and glue to the bottom. Using the rest of the felt cut out small shapes, triangle, square, rectangle etc. Lay out all shapes and let them match the colored shapes to each square. Also, I threw some little colored pompoms in the mix too. Another favorite for my Annabelle.



9: Fruit Loops and baking cups for sorting! AND of course, snacking!

 10: Color wheel and clothes pins matching game
-----What you need: Craft paint (8-9 colors), clothes pins (3 for each of the colors), large cardboard circle cut out (I just used an old diaper box we had I think). Using a marker or something to keep straight lines create the sections for each color and then paint each section with different color. Paint 3 clothes pins to each color. This is a great matching game, you can add in rewards or what we did, just did it for fun, getting it right and the excitement was reward enough for her. This is her absolute favorite color game and it doesn't take up too much space to store or take somewhere with you, would be fun for a car ride too!
 

11: Colored water

-----Kids love to shake, play in and do whatever with water most times. All you need is a bottle of water, we used mini ones and either food coloring or paint (I'd suggest keeping the bottle closed and for shaking activity only if you use paint). And I realize now I didn't get a picture of these finished when we did this so sorry but you can picture, it's fun for them to see the water change when the shake the bottle.

12: Colored tape

-----Like I used in a previous activity you can use it to distinguish the clear cups to each color or you could use in place of chalk in a sorting activity like in #5. This is a universal tool to play and craft with. Also, cream masking tape is great for a substitute to what colored tape you cannot find in store, just color with a marker.

  

Hands on learning is one of the best things for kids in my opinion, it makes it fun, exciting and interesting! This was such a fun blog to write, and to look back on this fun we have been having and continue to have. Truly, I believe that colors are one of the funnest activities to do with kids. This list is my compilation of activities, there are so many fun things to do but I hope this blog brings some fun, hands on learning for your kids! ENJOY!