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SUMMARY: Today’s podcast episode is Part 1 of a two-part series on books about colors. This week we are focusing on books that will help you teach your young children to identify and label colors. Naming colors can be tricky for kids under 5 years of age because children usually learn the names of nouns before they learn descriptive words about those nouns, like words that describe color or size or quantity. This week, we discuss the best practices for teaching your child colors, progressing from being able to recognize the color word, to identifying/pointing out the corresponding colored item, and finally to verbally label and describe an object using the color word. I also give you some ideas for color activities and brain-building toys that you can use to supplement what your child will learn from these colorful concept books.
Listen to the Podcast Episode:
Books Mentioned in this Episode:
Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown
*Little Owl’s Colors by Divya Srinivasan
Little Owl’s Day by Divya Srinivasan
Little Owl’s Night by Divya Srinivasan
Little Owl’s Snow by Divya Srinivasan
Little Owl’s 1, 2, 3 by Divya Srinivasan
*Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? by Bill Martin, Jr., illustrated by Eric Carle
*Black Bird, Yellow Sun by Steve Light
*Blue Hat, Green Hat (the OOPS book) by Sandra Boynton
*Green is a Chile Pepper: A Book of Colors by Roseanne Greenfield Thong, illustrated by John Parra
Round is a Tortilla: A Book of Shapes by Roseanne Greenfield Thong and illustrated by John Parra
*Goodnight, Goodnight Construction Site: Dump Truck’s Colors by Sherri Duskey Rinker, illustrated by Ethan Long based on the illustrations by Tom Lichtenheld
*Bear Sees Colors by Karma Wilson, illustrated by Jane Chapman
Bear Snores On by Karma Wilson, illustrated by Jane Chapman
Bear Wants More by Karma Wilson, illustrated by Jane Chapman
Bear Stays Up for Christmas by Karma Wilson, illustrated by Jane Chapman
Peppa’s First Colors by Scholastic, Inc.
Note: Books marked with * are the focus books of this episode.
Toys and Activities Mentioned in this Episode:
Construction Site Trucks Set 1
Construction Site Trucks Set 2
Rainbow Counting/Sorting Bears
HABA Rainbow Rattle/Clutching Toy
Fat Brain Toys Dimpl Color Wheel
HABA Wooden Color/Shapes Puzzle
Podcast Transcript:
Hello Everyone! Today is Part 1 of a little two-part series we’re doing on books about colors. This week we’re going to be talking about books that will help you teach your young children to identify and label colors, and then next week we’re going to talk about books that will help you teach your kids about the color spectrum and basic color theory, like the concept of primary colors, secondary colors, and mixing colors. In both episodes, I’m also going to give you some ideas for activities and toys that you can use to supplement what your child will learn from these books. And, I tested everything out on my own two little guys when I was teaching them about colors, so hopefully you’ll find them as helpful and fun as we did.
And just one thing I wanted to quickly mention today as an FYI before we dive into the books and activities and toys: if you’ve been listening to the podcast since the beginning, you’ll notice that some of the books I talk about or mention this season also appeared in a few of the episodes of Season 1. For example, I know that I talked a lot about Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? in Episode 1 and that I’ve mentioned Little Owl’s Colors before and that I’ve also mentioned Sandra Boynton’s books in several episodes, including last week’s Halloween episode. The reason for this repetition is because I want you all to know that while it’s of course great to expose your child to new books, a lot of the time if a book is of high quality, it can function on many different levels. I love it when books for children can multitask and as I prepare for these episodes and think about the books I want to share with you, I always, of course, first make certain that the books meet my sometimes admittedly ridiculously high standards of being engaging, brain-building, and empathy-building, but I also try to think of books that can grow with your child and that you can read longer than just a few months before your child outgrows them. You really don’t have to have a vastly extensive collection of books to raise an intelligent, kind, successful child. In fact, I think it’s better to have a smaller collection of excellent, high-quality, well-loved books than a huge collection where many of the books are just mediocre and you and your child are never excited to read them. Now…okay… I have to be honest and tell you that this is a case of do as I say and not as I do because if you follow me on Instagram you’ll be like, “umm, web of lies, Christina, you have children’s books covering every surface of your house,” but that’s because, when I do an episode like this one, I sometimes order and read dozens of board books and picture books relating to a topic, but then I filter out the best of them for you—and for my own two children. There are some books in my house that I’ve read with my boys only once or twice because I don’t think they’re up to scratch and/or, even if I might like them, they don’t pass muster with my kids. So, anyway, this was just a little FYI in case you’re wondering why some books come up again and again on this podcast—it’s not because I haven’t found other books relating to a topic; it’s because I actually think these books are the best ones, even if I’ve already talked about them another time. And the same goes for some of the toys that I’m going to mention this season. Whenever possible, I really like to choose toys that can serve multiple purposes and grow with my kids, so some of the puzzles and games and such that I’ve mentioned before will resurface in other episodes.
Okay, so let’s dive in and start with books that teach your child to identify and label colors. It might seem easy for us, but naming colors can be tricky for kids under 5 because children usually learn the names of nouns before they learn descriptive words about those nouns, like words that describe color or size or quantity. And descriptive words like colors can be easily confused when there is an array of colors present in a large group. For example, if you show your child a book like Goodnight Moon and you point out all of the colors in the great green room quickly in succession, it will be difficult for your child to single them out to learn their names. So when you are focusing on teaching your child the names of colors, it’s great to begin by choosing books that only have a few colors on each page, so that your child can more easily discern which color is which. This doesn’t mean that when you do read Goodnight Moon, you can’t occasionally point out the colors– on the contrary, you absolutely should do this because it will reinforce what you’re teaching her with other books and activities, but when you are actually focused on teaching her colors, it’s best to startwith books that have the colors singled out. So, keeping this in mind, many of the books I’m going to talk about today are what are called “concept books,” which means that the actual purpose of the book is to teach your child a concept, in this case, to identify colors and learn the names of colors.
The first of these concept books that I think is excellent for helping your toddler identify and label colors is Little Owl’s Colors by Divya Srinivasan. (I don’t know how many times I said “colors” in that sentence but it was a lot!)
Now, if you have listened to Episode 1, you’ll know that Divya Srinivasan’s Little Owl’s Day and Little Owl’s Night are two of my absolute favorite, Holy Grail board books for toddlers. Both of my kids were obsessed with Little Owl and so both were eager to see more of him in the spinoff books like Little Owl’s Snow, Little Owl’s 1, 2, 3 and, of course, Little Owl’s Colors. I like that in this book Divya Srinivasan highlights the colors through the various creatures and the forest environment that your child is already familiar with from Little Owl’s Day and Little Owl’s Night. For example, she points out the red cardinal, the red berries, and the red fish for the color red. This is great not only because your child finds comfort in familiarity and might be able to better remember the color word because he recognizes, for example, the orange fox and his color from the other books, but also because when you are teaching your child colors, it’s best to begin with matching like-colored items. So, for instance, by having the red animals and objects grouped together, and the green frog and green grass grouped together, and little owl’s orange feathers and fox’s orange fur grouped together, Srinivasan is actually following the best practices for color instruction, but she’s doing it in a subtle, engaging way.
And, just so you know, usually teaching children about colors goes like this:
First you begin with matching like-colored items as I just mentioned. Red things are grouped together, orange things are grouped together, and so on… Then, you progress to having a child identify the color only. So, for example, you can point to an apple and an orange and say, “Would you please show me the RED one?” (In other words, children aren’t naming the color or forming the word-sound yet themselves, but they are able to recognize the color word and identify the corresponding colored object). And then finally the last step is that you can ask your child to use the colors expressively to label something or to answer you when you point to something and ask, for example, “What color is this truck?” And your child might say, “That truck is BLUE.” And then you say, “Yes! This truck is BLUE!” So at this point they are able to recognize the color and verbally label it.
And also, to give you a timeframe in case that might be helpful—and, of course, please keep in mind that every child is different and might not follow the same schedule—I started to teach my sons how to identify and then label colors when they were both around 17 or 18 months old. Both of my kids started talking around 6 or 7 months and by the time they were around a year and a half old they were speaking in small 3-5 word sentences using nouns and some adjectives, so I knew they were ready to start learning more descriptive adjectives like the names of colors. If your child is not speaking as much at this point, do not worry about it. My kids were both just really chatty from an early age. (And let’s be honest, they definitely got that from me…) But, generally, children begin to babble from around 6 months old and say their first words between 10 and 15 months old. Most start speaking at about 12 months. Then, after they start saying their first words (like “mama” and “dada” and so on), they begin to pick up increasing numbers of words and start to combine them into simple 2-3 word sentences after around 18 months.
So, to return to Little Owl’s Colors, this book is great because when you first introduce it to your child, you can start with Step 1, matching color items, but then on subsequent readings, you can progress to identifying and labeling the colors. AND then, if and when you go back and read Little Owl’s Day or Little Owl’s Night to your child, because the characters and setting are the same, it is easy for you to just casually slip in the color word when you’re reading OR to ask your child to identify the color of the animals as you read. OR you could even make searching for and identifying colors into a game as you read. You can sit down and read the book as you normally would to refresh your child’s memory on the characters and location, but then when you finish it, let your child hold it and ask him to find a particular color in the book. You can say something like, “Now, Lukey, let’s look for colors in our book! Can you find me an animal that is green in this book?” And then let your toddler flip through to find something. Or, if your toddler finds it daunting to flip through the book on his own, you can just choose a page and ask him to spot something green on that particular page. Really the possibilities are endless.
Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?
Okay, moving on. Next up is the classic board book Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? by Bill Martin Jr. and Eric Carle. The reason I love this book is because, as I mentioned earlier, it is such a great multi-tasking book. For example, as I mentioned in previous episodes, not only does Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? first help your baby hone her vision with its bright colors and bold designs, but it also helps your toddler identify and label nouns by showing your child common animals. And then, the lift-the-flap or sliding panels also help her develop her fine motor skills and teach your child object permanence. AND, now, this book has yet another use and that is helping your older toddler identify and label colors.
So here’s why Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? is great for identifying and labeling colors: First, I like that each animal has a color descriptor (brown bear, green frog, purple cat, blue horse, and so on) and that each animal has its own separate page with the next animal hidden behind the panel or under the flap. This is excellent because, again, the page isn’t cluttered with other objects so your child can really focus on one animal and one color at a time. I also like the repetition of each animal and color word, not only with the repetitive “Brown Bear, Brown Bear what do you see?” but then after “I see a red bird looking at me” the animal and its color are repeated again, “Red Bird, Red Bird what do you see?” Children learn by repetition so the more often the word and its descriptor are repeated, the easier it is for your child to remember it. Even before my kids knew what the word brown signified, they attached it to the bear in this book, so when I started consciously showing them other brown things and then compared them to the bear, the meaning of the word “brown” and that it signified a color, dawned on them more quickly. So, for example, I did this by reading the book and then saying, “Look, James, there’s your brown rocking horse.” It’s brown, just like Brown Bear. They have the same color. The bear and the horse are brown. And look, this teddy bear is brown, too. It’s a brown teddy bear, just like Brown Bear. And this bookshelf has the same color, too. It’s brown. All of these things are brown, just like Brown Bear. What color is this teddy bear? That’s right, it’s brown!” It might seem like I’m belaboring the point, and it definitely felt that way to me as I kept repeating brown bear, brown horse, brown shelf, and so on, but that’s exactly what toddlers need at this point to learn a word and its meaning. And, as far as language acquisition, this book also helps to teach your child what color adjectives do—they describe the color of a person, place, or thing—and it also shows them where their placement is in a sentence. Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? is such a deceptively simple little book, but it teaches your child so much, so it’s definitely a great one to have in your child’s collection.
Okay, moving on. Another great book for teaching your toddler to identify and label colors is a board book called Black Bird, Yellow Sun by Steve Light. This book is an interesting one for toddlers because of the artwork. It’s done in a collage style and Steve Light uses cardboard shapes dipped in color and stamped onto the page, almost like you would do with your child when they are first experimenting with paint. You know when you do that thing where you, like, say, cut an apple in half, dip it in paint, and then press it on the page? It’s like that. And this style gives each image the illusion of texture, so I’ve found that little kids love to reach out and touch the images as you read, which helps keep them engaged for longer—which is always a win.
So, anyway, each page has a particular color and a particular stamped image, like, for example, the second page reads “Black Bird, Orange Leaves” so Steve Light uses leaf-shaped cardboard stamps to make orange leaves on the otherwise blank white page. And the black bird is shown flying through the leaves. And, in addition to the black bird, there is a tiny cut-out image of a little orange worm crawling over the leaves. This little orange worm appears along with the black bird on each page that highlights a new color environment or colorful thing. And I love this little detail because it’s another really great way to keep your wriggly toddler engaged if you ask her to spot the worm on each page as you read. Throughout the book, the black bird and the little orange worm move from one color environment or color object to another, from day to night. So, in total there are 8 colors and 8 objects or environments and each one is made with a different stamp. There’s the yellow sun, the orange leaves, purple grapes, green grass, a red snake, gray rocks, pink flowers, and finally a blue moon. And, again, the repetition of “Black Bird, Yellow Sun” and then “Black Bird, Orange Leaves” and then “Black Bird, Purple Grapes” helps your child remember the color words. It’s a very interesting, engaging little book that’s nn=ot only great for toddlers who are learning their colors, but also for younger infants and babies who are just starting to hone their vision. And a little bit later on in this episode, I’m going to talk about an activity that we did with this book that works for your preschool-aged children, too.
Blue Hat, Green Hat (The Oops Book)
Okay, the next book that I love for color identity is Sandra Boynton’s Blue Hat, Green Hat (The Oops Book). If you aren’t familiar with it, this book follows a turkey who just can’t seem to figure out how to dress himself properly. While the elephant, bear, and moose know where each article of clothing belongs on their bodies, the turkey makes a mistake every time. So, for example, on the very first page there are four animals wearing hats. The text reads “Blue Hat, Green Hat, Red Hat, Oops.” And there is an elephant wearing a blue hat on her head, a moose wearing a green hat on his head, a bear wearing a red hat on his head, and a turkey wearing a yellow hat on his feet. On each subsequent page, the other animal or animals are wearing their clothing items in their proper places, but every time the turkey gets it wrong. In the end, the turkey finally puts all the articles of clothing on in the right places only to dive, fully clothed, into a swimming pool as the other animals, appropriately dressed in bathing suits, look on bemusedly.
Okay, so first a couple of reasons why this book is great outside of just being an excellent tool to teach your child colors. First, this is one of those books that really grows with your child. My son Luke, who is 20 months old now, absolutely adores this book—he thinks it’s hilarious, and he has loved it since he was around 12 months old. The way Boynton makes it so clear that the turkey just can’t get it right by showing the contrast with the other animals and using the word “oops” is really funny, even to very small children. He just delighted in the “oops” and would say it along with me as I read the book. And then, outside of just being entertaining for very young children (which, by the way, in my opinion, would be enough for it to be a worthwhile read-aloud book because it’s actually really hard to create a funny book for infants and toddlers since their senses of humor are only just starting to develop), anyway, it is also great for teaching your child animal names (and I love that two of the animals are a turkey and a moose, which, you know, aren’t your everyday dog and cat and duck). And also with this book, you can work on identifying and labeling clothing items as well as the parts of the body. You can, for example, point to the turkey and say, “Where is the turkey’s head?… Where are his feet?” and so on.
Now, as far as why I think this is a great book for learning about colors, first, there is a LOT of repetition. All of the colors are repeated multiple times. But I like that within this repetition there is variation. Boynton switches up which color comes first and which color is omitted and replaced with the word “Oops,” which helps to keep your child on her toes. I think this was so clever of Boynton because that way your child isn’t just memorizing the color words and listing them without attaching meaning to them. I also like that even though there are up to four colors on a page sometimes, until the very last scene, they are so clearly separated out and attached to only one item of clothing that it doesn’t get too confusing or too overwhelming for your toddler. This book also makes it really easy for parents to encourage toddlers to read along with them. Because the book follows the predictable pattern of color, color, color, oops and then color oops, color oops, it can build up a small child’s confidence when you as the adult pause and they can fill in a word. So you can of course start doing this by saying, “Blue hat, green hat, red hat…” and then pausing for your child to say “oops!” But then as your child starts to learn more words, you can say “Blue hat, green …” and let your child fill in the word “hat” each time and then “shirt” each time. And then finally, when you move on to learning colors, you can pause and let her identify the colors. In this way, your child can “read” the book to you even before she can actually read the words, which is a massive confidence boost for any child. When James was three years old, he could read this book aloud to his little brother and it made him so proud and eager to learn how to read more books, which, really, is the ultimate goal if we want to raise readers.
Okay, the last book I want to talk at length about that is helpful in teaching your child to identify and label colors is called Green is a Chile Pepper, by Roseanne Greenfield Thong and illustrated by John Parra. This book is targeted toward preschoolers and kindergarteners, but you can definitely read it to your toddlers as well. What I like about it is that it is a twist on an ordinary concept book because while it helps your child discover, identify, and label colors, many of the featured objects, events, and locations are Hispanic in origin and the color words are written in both English and Spanish. So, orange is the color of the marigolds on the Day of the Dead, brown is a churro, and green is cilantro and, of course, a chile pepper, as the book’s title indicates.
I also love John Parra’s vibrant and vivid illustrations. They show such a diversity of people and families and they really bring the culture, traditions, and also just the everyday activities of these families to life. I particularly love the accompanying illustration to the color white that shows the tradition of making sugar skulls and decorating with handmade lace and flowers.
And finally, I also really like this book because it’s great for a wide age range. Not only could you read it to your older toddlers, but your preschoolers, kindergarteners, and even older elementary school students would find this book engaging and informative. It’s so important to expose our children to a wide variety of cultures and traditions and reading books like this one is such a fun way to do it. My preschooler is learning Spanish and since Spanish is, unfortunately, not one of the languages that I speak fluently, this is a great book for me as his parent to learn along with him. There is a glossary in the back that explains the meaning and also the history behind the Spanish words that appear in the text, which is so helpful and interesting. I really love this one and I think there are also a bunch of companion books to it—we have the one about shapes that is also great.
Goodnight, Goodnight, Construction Site: Dump Truck’s Colors
Okay, before we move on to some activities that you can do to help teach your child to identify and label colors, I just want to briefly mention a few of the other books that I’ve found helpful in teaching my own young toddlers. At around the year and a half mark, a lot of children really zero in on one series or character or book that they really, really like and want to encounter over and over again, so, it goes without saying, but if you find that your child has an obsession with, say, trucks for example, by all means try to find books that use trucks to teach colors. I did this with Goodnight, Goodnight, Construction Site: Dump Truck’s Colors by Sherri Duskey Rinker and illustrated by Ethan Long. Both of my boys are huge fans of Rinker’s books, so they loved seeing their favorite characters in this format and learning about colors through the language of the construction site, like gray concrete, black tires, green pipes, and so on.
And another good one if your child is really into animals is Bear Sees Colors by Karma Wilson and illustrated by Jane Chapman. Karma Wilson has written a bunch of books around the bear character like Bear Snores On, Bear Wants More, and Bear Stays Up for Christmas, so my kids loved seeing Bear and all of his friends while learning about colors in this book.
And I just want to say, this not only goes for book characters, but also characters from your child’s favorite shows or movies. If your child is really into, say, Peppa Pig for example, getting a Peppa book that focuses on teaching colors is a great idea. Some people are really against getting books with television characters for their children, and I have to admit that I definitely find myself in this camp when it comes to choosing read-aloud books for my kids. HOWEVER, when it comes to teaching your kids a particular concept like colors, shapes, or numbers, I’m definitely not against using these books as a means to an end. My son James was really into Peppa Pig when he was around a year and a half old and we didn’t allow him a lot of screen time, so for him seeing Peppa in any form was really exciting. So, when I started teaching him his colors, in addition to the other books I just mentioned, I used a board book James’s yiayia got him called Peppa’s First Colors and, honestly, he was obsessed with it. Did it kind of make my literary heart cringe every time we read it? Maybe a little, yes. But, did it help him practice identifying and labeling colors? Yes. So, for me, this book was a win: James got his Peppa Pig fix without screen time, AND he practiced his colors, AND it bolstered his love of reading.
Okay, so moving on, here are a few activities that you can do and toys that you can play with to help your toddler learn colors. First off, I just want to say, you don’t have to actively plan an activity or buy a particular toy when you are at this stage where you’re trying to teach your child to identify and say the names of colors. Toys and supplemental activities are nice, but the real key is to talk about colors all. the. time. As you go about your everyday life with your child, you want to pay attention to where he’s looking and label whatever he sees—it’s that simple. So let’s say you’re playing together at your child’s toy train table and she picks up a train to show you. She might say “train” or “choo choo” or, if your child loves the Thomas the train books and show as much as my kids, she might say “Percy!” That’s when you enthusiastically reply, “Yes! A GREEN train!” or “Yes! That’s Percy! Percy’s color is GREEN! He’s a GREEN train!” And then when she picks up Thomas to show you, you do the same thing. “There’s Thomas! What color is Thomas? He’s BLUE! Thomas is a BLUE train!” And then, as you play, you can start asking her color-related questions like, “Here’s Percy coming down the track! What color is Percy?” or “Oh no! James and Thomas are going to crash into Cranky! What color is Cranky? … Yes, he’s GREEN! … What color is James? … Yes, he’s RED! … And what color is Thomas? … Yes, Thomas is BLUE! … Yay! You named so many colors!” This is kind of exhausting to do as a parent, but it is definitely helpful for your child.
And you can also do this when you go to the grocery store or for a walk. Starting when they were babies, I would always verbally point out things on our walks to help my boys learn the names of everyday objects like mailboxes, fire hydrants, trees, different kinds of flowers, and, you know, so on. So, anyway, both of my children, who, again, are very chatty people, still like to point out things that they observe whenever we go anywhere. My son Luke, for example, just went through a phase where he loved to point out doors to me as we walked, which meant that every few feet he’d be like, “Door, Mommy! Door!” and in my head I’d be like, “Yup! There’s yet another door!” but out loud, I’d slap on a smile and say “Yup! There’s a door! What color is that door? It’s purple! That’s right!” and then “Yup! There’s another door! What color is that door?” And so every few feet we’d talk about a different color, which reinforced all the learning that he was doing at home. This, again, doesn’t make for the most relaxing walk for you as the parent, but it’s really beneficial for your child. Our neighborhood is also surrounded by fields and farmland, so when we venture farther afield than our neighborhood my kids like to collect things like dandelions and rocks and acorns and clover and put them in the back of the Veer (we have this all-terrain stroller/wagon called a Veer cruiser that the boys sit in and it has this sort of trunk attachment thing that is super handy—I’ll link it in the shownotes so you can see it). But, anyway, whenever they pick something up, we talk about its color and shape before we toss it in the trunk. And then when we get back home and they put the stuff in their little collections, I ask about each object’s color and shape again as we examine and sort everything. This is just a really simple way to keep the concepts front of mind throughout the day.
And on the days that you’re not going anywhere, like on rainy days or something, you can also actively talk about colors by playing a seek-and-find game with your child and go around your house looking for things of a particular color. You can just do this casually by asking her to go find you something that’s blue, or you can turn it into an actual game by making a little color key using different colored construction paper pieces cut into squares. You can give your child one of the squares and then have her go and find you an object that matches the color in a set amount of time. We set a timer for 2 minutes, then 1 minute, then 30 seconds, and so on and the kids dash around trying to find something before it goes off. It’s a surprisingly fun game for the kids and it takes up a lot of time, so I definitely recommend it. And, if you’d like to do this with your child but you don’t have construction paper lying around, I made a PDF of a color key with different colored squares that you can print and cut out. I’ll link it in the shownotes. (And, it probably goes without saying, but make sure you do this in an area of your house where all the objects are safe for kids. We do this in our playroom so that the kids don’t come back with, you know, say, a silver knife or a blue china cup and the game doesn’t turn into a tense negotiation.)
Another thing you can do to reinforce color identity and the names of colors is to use Play-Doh. For older children, you can of course take the Play-Doh out of the containers, make things with it, and talk about colors as you and your child do so. And this is a great supplementary activity to do when you’re teaching your child about mixing colors, which we’ll talk about next week. But, for younger toddlers who still can’t resist eating the Play-Doh, the actual Play-Doh containers and their lids can be really useful to you when teaching colors. For example, when my son Luke was still a little too small to play with the Play-Doh on his own, what he did like to do was sort and stack the Play-Doh containers. So, while my son James was actually building things with the Play-Doh, I’d sit on the floor next to Luke and when he pulled out a container I’d point to the lid and say, “Oh look, this Play-Doh is BLUE! … BLUE! … This is blue Play-Doh, Lukey.” And then I’d open it and point to the Play-Doh inside and say, “This Play-Doh is blue, too! What color is this Play-Doh, Luke? … That’s right, it’s BLUE!” And then he’d pull out a pink one and we’d go through the whole thing all over again.
So, when you do these activities, there are a few things to remember to help your toddler succeed:
1) Make sure you physically point to the color that you’re identifying. For example, with the Play-Doh—Play-Doh usually comes in yellow containers and the lids match the color within, so you want to point clearly to the lid. This also goes for using, say, pretend food from your child’s play kitchen. If you point to a tomato and say “red,” you want to make sure you’re clearly pointing to the red fruit and not the green stem.
2) When you pronounce the color word, like “blue,” it can help if you make sure your child is looking at your mouth when you repeat the word. Sometimes we as adults forget that when we learn how to pronounce a word in another language, or just an unfamiliar word, it helps when we can see a mouth forming the word. This is the same for our babies and toddlers. It helps them if they can see your mouth forming the word sounds because they can imitate this. In the “blue” example, seeing your mouth move from the “b” to the “l” will lead your child to have better success at making the word “blue” sound like “blue” rather than “boo.”
3) Make sure you pause enough to give your toddler a chance to respond. It sometimes can take a few seconds, like even 7 or 8 seconds, for a toddler to get the word from his brain out of his mouth. So try not to rush him. Even if he gets it wrong, he’ll gain more confidence in his speech this way because you let him try. And if he does get it wrong, don’t worry about it. Just say, brightly, “Nope, this one’s not red, this one is BLUE. Blue Play-Doh.” And then you can show him the red one and say, “THIS one is RED and this one is BLUE. This is the blue Play-Doh… What color is this one, Luke? … Yes!! This one is blue! … Great work! You kept trying and figured it out!”
Okay, next I wanted to give you a couple of options for more targeted activities and toys to help your child learn to identify and label colors. I know a lot of your children are having school at home this fall, or some of you have chosen to wait to send your 3-and-4-year-olds to preschool until next year, and some families are doing a hybrid of virtual and classroom learning—it’s just a crazy, bizarre, unsettling time. So, anyway, I thought in case it might be helpful to some of you right now, I would give you a few more involved activities and targeted toys centered around this color theme if you’re looking for some resources to help you supplement your school-at-home curriculum, or just wanting to introduce your young children to ideas and skills and concepts that they’re going to encounter when they return to school or start school for the first time. And, just in general in non-pandemic times, I think there is a real lack of support and education for parents during the Early Years (that time in between the birth of a child and when that child begins their formal education at age 5 or 6). Once a child is in school, we as parents get more of a sense of what they should be learning and where they are in terms of their intellectual and social-emotional development, but in the early years sector, this period from birth to about 5 years old, many parents are really on their own. It can be a very confusing, overwhelming time, so one of the goals of this podcast is to try to fill in this gap for parents and caregivers and to not only encourage reading aloud and recommend books to read to your kids, but to also give you some support and information that might help make your lives easier. So here are a few activities and toys that I used with my kids that helped me reinforce all of the teaching that I was doing by reading aloud these color books to them.
BLACK BIRD YELLOW SUN ACTIVITY
Alright. Since Black Bird, Yellow Sun was a hit with my kids, we also did an activity relating to this book. And, a bonus with this activity is that you can do it with toddlers, but also with your preschoolers and kindergarteners, which is a win if you, like me, have two kids who can’t usually do the same activity because of their age difference. And this activity is super simple and all you need is paint, paper, and then any other random materials that you may have around the house that are, of course, child-safe and that would make a fun pattern if you used them as a stamp. So, for example, we made stamps out of cardboard, apples and grapes that I cut in half, leaves, bubble wrap, and dried pasta.
Basically, you just gather all of these materials, pour your paint into separate containers or onto separate paper plates, and then let your children create a painting using one stamp for each particular color. After your children’s paintings dry, you put them together to make your own color book. I used a three-hole punch and some spare ribbon to do this, but you can also just staple the pages together. Then, I cut out an image of a black bird on some black card stock paper and of a little worm on some orange cardstock paper. If you don’t have colored cardstock, you can use construction paper or just regular paper and color the bird black and the worm orange.
So then, once the bird and worm were finished, we sat down and we read each child’s own version of this book, moving the black bird and the orange worm from page to page. My son James, who’s 4, was so tickled by the fact that he had made his own book and my son Luke, who’s 20 months old, loved the whole tactile aspect of being able to move the bird and the worm and touch the bumpy pages.
If you wanted to, you could also cut out multiple black birds and worms and glue them to each page to make it more permanent and your older child could, like, hide the worm somewhere on the page for your younger child to find it. There are a lot of possibilities. And, by the way, if you do want to do this craft with your child, but you’re like me and even drawing a bird and a worm is challenging, to make it easier for you I made a PDF with the image of the black bird and the little worm that I used to trace on my pieces of cardstock and then cut out. So I have a link to this PDF in the shownotes if you’re interested in it or you can just go to exquisitelyeverafter.com/episode12 and it will be there.
COLORFUL PASTA SORTING ACTIVITY
Okay, the next activity that I recommend doing with your young toddlers is a color sorting activity using dyed pasta. This is also a sensory activity, which is great for little kids who love engaging with different textures and colors and sounds at this age. This activity will help your child with color recognition by having him pick out a particular color from a jumble of colors and then group the like colors together. AND it will also help your child’s fine motor skill development by having him use his pincer grip or tongs to pick up the different pieces of pasta, so that’s a win, too. We used liquid watercolors to color the pasta by separating it into large plastic sealable bags and then adding several drops of one color of liquid watercolor to each bag of pasta. I used little droppers to make it less messy, but if you don’t have them, just slowly pour from the container. Then we sealed the bag and shook it until the pasta was evenly coated. Then we poured the colored pasta onto paper towel-lined cookie sheets and let it dry. Once it was dry, I poured it into one large bin and then set out some small containers and tongs so that my kids could sort the pasta by color. I’ll write all of the instructions down and put them in the shownotes, so that even if I’m not explaining this well, you’ll still be able to do it.
And the nice part about this activity is that you can reuse the pasta to do other activities and crafts. For example, we have these little wooden construction vehicles that my kids love to play with and so we put all the pasta into a bin and they played construction site with the little trucks, using the dump trucks to move the pasta around and the excavator to dig and so on. It worked really well as a supplemental activity for the Goodnight, Goodnight Construction Site: Dump Truck’s Colors book by Sherri Duskey Rinker.
And, depending on the shape of the pasta that you used, you can have your child make a rainbow necklace using yarn and pasta. Stringing the pasta on the yarn is great for their fine motor skills, as well. Or you can get some construction paper or cardstock or cardboard and glue and have your child make a rainbow or a pattern out of the colored pasta and glue it onto the paper to make a 3D piece of art to display. Again, I’ll link the instructions on how to make the dyed pasta and also everything we used for the different activities in the shownotes in case you’d like to try any of these things with your kids.
And just FYI, if you don’t want to go to the trouble and mess of dyeing the pasta yourself, they do definitely make color sorting toys that you can buy. There’s one I like by a brand called Legato that is really cute. It has little bears in the colors of the rainbow that your child can count and sort and it comes with tongs, matching cups, and also with a little bin for easy storage.
And if you want something that works on the same color recognition and fine motor skills, but isn’t as involved and doesn’t have as many pieces, we also love this little wooden sorting toy by Plan Toys that consists of 6 different colored beehives and matching little bees. Children can use the wooden pincers to grasp a little bee by the body or the felt wings and place it in the hive of the corresponding color. It’s super cute and it does the job.
And speaking of toys, finally, there are a few other things that I really like that helped my sons learn their colors. Again, I’ll link everything in the shownotes for you to see because some might be difficult to visualize by my descriptions of them.
The first toy is by a company that I’ve mentioned before called HABA and it’s this little tactile rattle/clutching toy consisting of a grouping of brightly colored wooden balls that my kids both loved to play with from infancy through their toddler years and, to be honest, even now. I mean, I even love to play with it. It promotes gross motor skills in babies because it twists and turns easily in little hands, but even though it can function as a rattle or a teether for very young children, it also is just fun to manipulate no matter what age you are. I would put my toddler in my lap and let him twist it around and first, when he was just starting to learn, point to each color and label it for him and then, as he got older, ask him to name the colors of each ball.
Okay, moving onto two more toys that are appropriate for infants, but are also attractive for children of all ages: the brand Fat Brain Toys has two versions of its popular Dimpl sensory toy that can help your child learn colors. The first has six different-colored, round silicone buttons that your child can push and pop and the other is in the shape of a color wheel and at the end of each wedge of color is a silicone button that your child can push and pop. These toys encourage tactile learning, sensory exploration, and, of course, color identification. Plus, there is something about these toys that they (and you) will find so satisfying. We take these along with us in the car for Luke to play with as we drive and it entertains him for quite a while; and a lot of the time James likes to play with one, too.
Puzzles are also great brain building toys that can help your child with color identification. We have a great one by HABA that requires that you match the colors to make a shape. I’d say this one is more for preschool-aged children because in addition to finding the color match, it also has you line the shapes up by size. And speaking of puzzles, the brand Mudpuppy has a cute Brown Bear, Brown Bear What Do You See? puzzle that my kids love and that comes in a pouch so that you can take it with you in your diaper bag. Again, this is for slightly older toddlers, I’d say 2 and up.
And another excellent option that is part puzzle, part stacking toy is a pegboard that has different colored wooden dowels or pegs and corresponding wooden rings that your child can match up. We actually have two of these. The first is one that came in Luke’s panda crate from his kiwi.co subscription so I can’t link that particular one for you, but HABA makes one that is also really great that I’ll link in the shownotes. The HABA one has dowels that can be removed, so your child can practice another fine motor skill when she tries to put the peg in the hole in addition to trying to fit the ring over the peg. Both of these toys, the kiwi.co one and the HABA one, are really great for encouraging independent play. And by the way, I know a lot of podcasts are sponsored by kiwi.co, so I feel like I need to tell you that this podcast is NOT sponsored by kiwi.co. My sister kindly got my kids each a subscription back in March when we first went into quarantine to help keep them occupied, but I have to say, we really do love it, so much so that we renewed both kids’ subscriptions. I think the panda crates for babies and toddlers are especially great because the toys they include are really excellent for open-ended and independent play. I also used this really cool stuffed toy that has different colored tabs that your child can pull and this helps your child learn colors while also improving his fine motor skills and building his awareness of cause and effect. So, anyway, if you’re interested in toy subscription boxes, I do recommend the kiwi.co boxes even though they have no idea who I am and are definitely not paying me to say so.
Okay, anyway, moving on, that was a very long digression but I felt that I had to tell you that I was not sponsored by kiwi.co. One more thing that’s not actually a toy, but that I forgot to mention it when we were talking about activities: it’s the game Twister, which is actually excellent for color recognition! We have the classic retro version that’s smaller than the newer version, which actually works well for little kids and doesn’t take up too much floor space. I think this game is best for preschool and up because my son James really loved it, but he was probably just big enough at 4 to be able to reach the entire way across the mat so that he could put his hands and feet on the farthest dots. Luke was definitely too small, but he was very excited to be included and actually just loved running around in circles on the mat while I called out directions to James. Occasionally he’d follow one direction like, “put your hand on the blue dot,” but mostly he just kept doing laps. However, we all had a great time and it was a fun way to incorporate some color recognition with practicing right and left and also burning up some energy, which is always a win, even in non-pandemic quarantine times, but especially now.
And that’s it for Part 1 of our miniseries on color books and that’s it for this episode of the Exquisitely Ever After Podcast! Thanks so much for tuning in this week! Next week we’re going to talk about books that will help you teach your kids about the color spectrum and basic color theory, like the concept of primary colors, secondary colors, and mixing colors. As always, please visit the shownotes at exquisitelyeverafter.com/episode12 for a full list of the books, toys, and activities that were mentioned today as well as all of the free printables. And I know it’s such a crazy, bizarre, unsettling year and that you are all incredibly busy trying to manage parenting during a pandemic, so I just want you to know that I really appreciate that you spent this time with me today. If you happen to have a free minute, I’d love it if you would leave me a rating or a review. And, if you found this episode helpful, please share it with a friend or, you could take a photo of yourself listening to it or a screenshot of your phone and post it on Instagram and tag me @exquisitelyeverafter. Or if you read any of these books and do any of the color activities, please tag me in those, too, because I’d love to see you! It makes me so happy to see you and your kids enjoying the books we talk about in real life. And just one more thing. The election is less than a month away, so if you haven’t already, please, please, please make a voting plan and follow through on it! My husband and I actually voted early yesterday in Pennsylvania by going down to our county election office and it was so quick and easy and it felt great. Not to sound overdramatic, but there is so much at stake for our children in this election—the future of their education, their environment, their democracy, their right to marry whomever they love regardless of gender, their right to control what happens to their own bodies, whether they are judged based on their skin color or on their character. And honestly, human decency and compassion are on the line. So please, please vote! I appreciate you all so much. Take care, keep safe, and of course, keep reading!
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