Teaching Young Children About Colours

Teaching Young Children About Colours

Family Tips: Teaching Young Children About Colours

Learning about colours can be difficult for some children, while others seem to pick it up quite easily. Here are some tips on how to introduce ‘colours’ into your child’s every day life – so they can learn them with ease.

Teaching Young Children About Colours in Day-to-day Activities

Bath Time Fun

A few drops of food colouring in the bath provide yet more opportunities to surround your child with colours. Let them choose and don’t forget to make up new combinations with your basic colours!

Meal Times

Fruit and vegetables offer tremendous opportunities for colour learning! Point out to your child what colours are on their plate – i.e. orange car- rots, green broccoli, white potatoes etc. Perhaps they could eat in a colour ‘sequence’ – for example, eat something green, then white, then orange. An added benefit may be that focusing on the colours could provide enough distraction to get wholesome veggies into even the most reluctant eater!

Out and About

Try to make a habit of noticing colours on your travels with your child. Point out a yellow house, a red letterbox, or count how many green cars you see in one trip. Find opportunities to introduce colours.
“Look at the RED fire engine.”
“Doesn’t the BLUE sky look lovely?”
“Do you see that GREEN truck?”

Declare a ‘Colour’ Day

If your child is having trouble with a particular colour – let’s say orange, declare an ‘orange’ day! Try to find something orange for your child to wear. Go on an orange ‘hunt’ around the house, making a collection of all the orange things you and your child find. Have an orange meal, i.e. pumpkin soup with carrot sticks, followed by an orange.

If this is not possible, perhaps you could manage one orange thing at each meal throughout the day.

Go for an orange walk in your neighbourhood. Invite your child to put a mark on a piece of card each time they spot something orange – then count them up together when you get home.

More Advanced Colour Learning

If your child has already grasped the basics, you could extend their colour learning with these ideas:
Colour mixing – paints are probably the best medium for this activity. Let your child dabble and mix and discover what they can by themselves first. Then slowly introduce each colour combination and let them mix it.

12 Segment Colour WheelPrimary Colours
Yellow
Red
Blue

Secondary Colours
Yellow + Blue = Green
Red + Yellow = Orange
Blue + Red = Purple

Tertiary Colours
Red + Violet = Red Violet
Blue + Green = Blue Green
Red + Orange = Red Orange
Blue + Violet = Blue Violet
Green + Yellow = Yellow Green
Yellow + Orange = Yellow Orange

Children who have a good concept of the basic colours can begin to learn about shades and pastels. For older children you could even introduce colour names like Lime, Aqua and Peach, plus the many other wonderful colour varieties.

 

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