Today I’m sharing an easy activity for teaching colors. I was noticing the other day that my youngest (22 months) kept calling everything green. I know he’s still young, but I thought I would just try an activity to introduce him to some colors.
For this activity, I used a plastic tray (from The Dollar Tree), pom poms, 4 colored balls, paint swatches (from Menards). I taped the paint swatches down to each section. I knew my toddler would grab them and try to move them, so I was just being proactive. 🙂
I tried the game out with my oldest (3.5 yrs. old) first. It was easy for him, but was still a good practice for sorting. He ended up counting a lot of the pom poms while sorting, too!
For my youngest, I gave him 4 colored balls. We talked about their color names. Then, one at a time, I had him find the matching color swatch. Since this was new to him, it took a little while for him to catch on. But he did!! He now knows 4 colors and doesn’t call everything green!
Now here’s the cute part…I left this game on his dresser in his room. After he got up from his nap he kept saying “this” and pointing in the direction of his dresser. I finally figured out that he wanted to play the game again! To my delight, he remembered ALL the colors right away! He seemed pretty confident with the colored balls, so I tried the pom poms. He did so awesome! I gave him one at a time and he sorted over twenty of them! I just love watching kids learn! I loved it as a 4th grade teacher and I love it even more as a mom. Happy day to you all!
HI, do you have a link for the tray? Thanks in advance 🙂
I’m sorry, I don’t! I just got it at Walmart.
Thanks for all your ideas! They’re really helpful!
I made another color matching game last night that my 20 month old enjoyed. She LOVES Dora, so we were playing blocks yesterday and I put some together and sung,
“yellow yellow yellow yellow pink, do do do do. Blue green orange orange white. Grab your back, blue blue, orange purple. You can lead the wa-ay!” and she said, “Hey! Hey!”
I later heard her saying, “yellow yellow yellow yellow pink”. It was the last thing she said before she fell asleep. Putting a familiar tune to it really worked.
I am concerned that most of these activities you post for toddlers involve choking hazards. As these are recommended as activities that your son can play with on his own, it worries me. Even if he doesn’t usually put things in his mouth, other parents may not see the danger for their own child who does. Pom poms and pieces of pipe cleaner, the soft blocks, etc. Maybe you could reimagine these acitvities with larger components?
Thanks for expressing your concerns. You state valid points. My son is always right next to me when he is doing independent activities. Of course, if a child puts things in their mouths then it would not be a good idea to play with pompoms. I trust that parents would use discretion on knowing what their child can handle for activities. I agree that larger components would be a safer option.
Hi would you mind sharing which blog platform you’re using?
I’m planning to start my own blog in the near future
but I’m having a hard time making a decision between
BlogEngine/Wordpress/B2evolution and Drupal. The reason I ask is
because your design and style seems different then most blogs and I’m looking for something completely unique.
P.S Sorry for being off-topic but I had to ask!
Kerstin recently posted…Kerstin
Thanks! At the bottom of my blog, it says my theme and my web designer. I am on WordPress. Good luck!
I made this today! Thanks.
Yay!! I hope it was fun for your little one. We keep playing this game because my youngest LOVES it! Thanks for sharing.
Fantastic use for paint swatches! I love the paint sections in Home Depot and Lowes! was so excited to find textured paint swatches! Will turn them into alphabet letters! I’d love to see a list of other uses for these!
Oooh. I totally missed those trays! I am getting ready to share a post showing how we’ve been working on OUR color matching too.
Lisa @ Farm Fresh Adventures recently posted…Wordless Wednesday for July 10th