Learning About Colours: 31 Activities For Preschoolers

The development of color perception in children is crucial. Here are 31 fun activities for teaching youngsters about colors.

Many of them are still appropriate for kindergarten students, and they are excellent for introducing colors to toddlers and young children.

Why Is It Important to Learn Colours?

A child’s cognitive development is marked by the early childhood milestone of learning the colors.

Children’s visual perception, or the brain’s capacity to accurately interpret what the eyes perceive, is developed via exposure to and instruction in the colors. This is a crucial pre-reading ability.

How Do I Teach My Child Colours?

Colors are all around us and a part of daily life. The best way for kids to learn these things is to play with and experience them.

Children require several encounters to learn about colors since they cannot be taught to them in a single lesson.

Take advantage of each chance you get to talk about color and draw attention to it in your surroundings. Ask your youngster to hand you the blue hat and the pink rabbit. Make it clear that he is using the purple crayon to sketch.

Be careful not to fall back on worksheets at a young age; there are a lot more effective ways to teach youngsters about color in a way that will stick in their minds.

Kids may learn the colors via games and activities that are hands-on, participatory, and enjoyable.

Colour Activities for Preschoolers and Toddlers

Here are a few ideas to try at home or at school.

1. I Spy With My Little Eye

Play a game of I Spy With My Little Eye. Identify objects by colour and add in more details for clues:

“I spy with my little eye something blue that you wear on your head.”

2. Colour Collage

Utilize paper tearing of only one color to create a color collage. Provide the paper tearing for small babies, but let larger children locate and rip the color in a magazine or packet of colored papers.

Use different collage materials for this, not just paper.

3. Sorting and Grouping

Teach kids to see the differences in colours by doing sorting activities.

Sort beads, buttons, blocks or coloured counters into separate baskets, containers or egg boxes.

4. Matching Cards

Match the pairs of cards in the traditional memory game using only cards with solid colors. You just need two of each color to make these; they are simple to make.

By obtaining the FREE set of printouts at the end of the article, you may create your own set of memory game cards.

5. Park the Cars

Play with different-colored automobiles and construct little parking structures out of boxes or paper. You may even use chalk to sketch them on the pavement.

Make each parking space a distinctive color, then instruct children to place their vehicles there.

6. Object Sort

Sort the colors of various items. Gather toys and household items with one unique color and organize them together based on that color.

7. Label the Environment

Label the most frequent goods and areas in familiar settings like a school or bedroom using little colored labels that have the name of the color printed on them.

8. Bean Bag Toss

Playing with bean bags can help students study while getting some exercise. Kids are required to call out the color of the beanbags before they contact them while they are being thrown towards them in various shades of color.

9. Colour Hunt

Go on a color hunt indoors or outside. Each child should receive a basket that has a different color. They have to go looking for things in that color and put them in their basket.

10. Listen and Draw Picture

‘Listen and draw’ drawings are excellent for teaching concepts like form and color as well as for improving listening skills.

Tell kids to:

Draw a green hill.
Draw a black sheep standing on the green hill.
Draw a blue flower at the foot of the hill.
Etc.

11. Car Games

To keep youngsters amused and learning at the same time, play games in the car. Choose a color, then count how many vehicles in that color pass you.

Set a goal for yourself, such as trying to reach 20 yellow vehicles before you arrive at your destination.

12. Colour Plates

Draw or paint strokes of the colors along the plate’s edges using some colored pegs and a white paper plate. Encourage children to attach the pegs to the proper colored areas.

You could even make a pattern, such as blue-yellow-yellow-blue-yellow-yellow.

13. Picture Hunt

Use a magazine or other children’s book to do a photo search. Kids should be challenged to look for images of various colors in their books.

For example, point out all the green items you can in this Dr Seuss book, or cut out all the blue items from this magazine.

14. Tissue Paper Tearing

Tearing is an important fine motor activity.

Encourage children to rip up tissue paper in a few different colors, then use glue and the pieces to make a picture.

15. Colour Mixing

Provide the three primary colors of red, yellow, and blue for a color-mixing project, and have students combine them to make the following hues:

Red and yellow make orange.
Blue and yellow make green.
Red and blue make purple.

By adding white or black to make the colors brighter or darker, you may introduce kids to the idea of shades of color.

16. Matching Socks

Luckily for parents, all kinds of domestic chores provide great learning opportunities. Give your kids a pile of socks to match according to colors and patterns.

17. Sort the Laundry Basket

Continue after that. Ask your child to separate all of the folded clothing into piles according to color while you fold the laundry.

18. Fruit and Veg Sort

Had a trip to the market? Get your kids to categorize the fruit and vegetables by colour.

Ask your kids to help you while you are cooking by saying things like, “Please fetch me those three orange carrots and that packet of green baby marrows.”

19. Songs about Colours

Sing songs about the colours. Here are lots of fun rainbow songs to teach your kids.

20. Books about Colours

Discuss the colors of the people and things in colorful books with your children, or just read them books on colors.

21. Colour Bracelet

Use macaroni that has been food-colored or cereal loops to create a colorful bracelet. Make it all one color, or use two or three colors to create a pattern.

22. Colour Patterns

By creating or sketching color patterns using things like blocks, beads, or counters, you may teach children how to follow patterns.

Use no more than two colors in a design for smaller children, and more for older ones.

23. Light Table

Children can play with and learn about the characteristics of color by placing transparent colored items or materials on a light table.

24. Sensory Stations

This can be a great way to incorporate colour into sensory play. Set up stations with coloured rice and coloured materials or use some of these sensory station ideas.

25. Bathtub Fun

Bring colour into bathtub fun by dropping in ice blocks (coloured with food colouring), watching coloured bath fizz balls disintegrate or letting kids draw with bath crayons.

26. Coloured Playdough

Allow children to play with colored playdough. When producing a batch of homemade playdough, they may also combine the playdough colors or combine food coloring to create a new color.

27. Finger Painting

For children, finger painting is a pleasant sensory exercise that teaches how colors blend. The colors on the paper spontaneously blend together as you combine them, exposing new hues.

To allow children to see how colors blend, only give two-color paints.

28. Pass the Parcel

Wrap each layer in a unique color of tissue paper or gift wrap as you play the Pass the Parcel game. The youngster who is unwrapping the layers must identify the color as they are removed.

29. Categories Game

You may use the categories game to teach any idea. It’s a fun circular game.

Go around the circle, identifying items that are generally associated with each color after choosing one. Without repeating anything, each youngster must add one thing to the list.

You may also undertake a round of identifying colors with older children as an alternative option. Kids will begin with the simpler colors before having to recall less frequent hues like peach, magenta, maroon, etc.