Preschool Education - Colors

Teaching Basic Colors to Your Preschooler

Colors - Everything has a color and every color has a meaning.  Red stop signs, green or brown grass, pink bows and blue ribbons.  Children love bright and vibrant colors. It gives their world excitement and meaning.   Teaching children basic colors can be fun and learning to associate those colors with the specific things is a necessary part of life.  

There are many ways you can teach your preschoolers their colors.  Remember to just use basic colors. Trying to learn colors such as lavender or tan can be a little frustrating for small children.  They can learn these different shades once they are in elementary school.  Using red, green, blue, purple, pink and so on will be a great place for them to start.  Don’t forget black and white.  These are important colors also even if they don’t stand out for children to take notice.

One way of teaching preschoolers colors is by using flash cards.  Make cards out of poster board and color them with markers.  Hold them up for the children to see and call out the name of the color.  Have them repeat it back.  Once they have that down then hold up a card and have them call out the name of the color and something they see in the room that is that color.  This will help them to learn color association as well.

Use paint, crayons or washable markers to help children learn their colors.  Take a piece of poster board and draw an object onto the poster board.  Draw a frog onto the poster board and have the children color the frog.  You may come out with some strange colored frogs at first but before you know it all the frogs will be green and hopping around the room.

Play games that will help children learn colors.  There’s a great game call I See Something You Don’t See and the Color Is_________.  Make it simple in the beginning.  If you have blue curtains and blue carpet in your classroom then say the color is blue.  The children will call out either curtain or carpet because those were the easiest things for them to see.  As they learn their colors better go to harder items for them to find. 

You can also take the children outside to learn colors.  Thinks of the different colors nature has to offer.  Point out the different colored leaves, flowers, grass, birds, the sky, the sun and the items are endless.  Be sure to say to them things like see the blue sky or see the brown bird.  This will help them to associate colors with items and in turn will help them remember those colors.

Our world would be very plain and boring if we didn’t have different colors around us all the time.  Teaching preschoolers their basic colors and the role they play in our world can be fun.