Teaching kids about Colors – Best Activities for Kindergarten
What’s a world without color? The beauty of learning colors for kindergartners goes well beyond visually discriminating colors. It also serves as a stepping stone towards honing other skills like Math, Literacy, and Art. Namely, through the processes of sorting and graphing (for Math), reading color words in sentences (Literacy) and identifying different colors (Art).
Basics to ease preschoolers into color-learning
Here are some wonderful ways to ensure those color identification skills in your children are as robust as can possibly be.
· Start simple. You want to get your kids familiar with the commonest colors: red, blue, yellow and black. Simply point to items in the kitchen, like fruits or veggies, to help get those colors firmly ensconced in their minds.
· Use the power of association. When teaching colors to children, you want to get them to recall things they have seen of late. For instance, when teaching them about the color black, bring to their minds that noisy black crow they had seen on the windowsill only yesterday.
· Draw and identify. Have children sketch anything they like, and then hand them, say, an orange crayon to fill it with color. Now, you have to ask them what color they have used to fill their sketch.
Best Color Activities for Kindergarten
Here are some really cool color activities that will help children garner a better appreciation and understanding of color.
I-Spy
Teaching colors to children was never more fun. You can do this one any time of the day.
How: One person (perhaps you) is designated ‘The Spy’. Looking around the room, they say ‘I spy with my little eye, something with the color (choose color of object in mind, like red or yellow). Your child has to guess the object in the room correlating to the one in your mind. If guessed right, they get to be the next ‘spy’.
Multicolored Car Park
A multicolored car park is so much more fun than a black-and-white one! One of the more fun activities for teaching color to kids.
How: Get those model cars out of the cupboard. On a large piece of cardboard, sketch parking spots in different colors that your child has to then park the corresponding colors of cars into.
Color Scavenger Hunt
Getting kids to hunt for colors? Teaching colors was never simpler.
How: Take differently colored slips of paper and hand the children a different color each. They must go around the room and stop beside an object of their slip color, and bring it to you. At the end of the game, the slips are mixed and the kids each get a new color to hunt for.
Drawing The Color Game
Color activities for kindergarten that help kids show off their drawing skills? Bring them on, they will say!
How: Give your child a large sheet of paper and some crayons. Then, tell them to draw a ‘yellow’ sun, a ‘blue’ river and other things that generally catch their fancy.
Color Sorting
Kids love to sort things, and sorting by color can be especially stimulating to them. One of the most effective ways of teaching colors to children.
How: Toss objects of various colors, like buttons, erasers, pencils, etc., in a plastic container. Ask your children to sort them color wise.
Tip: You can make this game even more interesting by asking them how many colors of each object there are. That will surely give a boost to those emerging Math skills.
Color Call Out
Color recognition activities are fun when you rely on your memory. This one’s a fun challenge for kids.
Note: You need a few children for this game, to make it even more fun.
How: Have the children stand in a circle. One child will call out the name of a color, and the child to the left of him has to identify an object in the real world corresponding to that color. Then, all the children have to spell the color called out. After that, the child who has identified an object with the color called out, calls out the next color.
How many Cars?
Teaching colors to kids is really simple and loads of fun, while on the move!
How: In your moving car, have children identify how many cars go by of a particular color. This one’s great for boosting counting skills, too.
Tip: Make this game super fun by throwing in a challenge like needing to spot 15 white cars before you reach your destination.
Playdough Color Shapes
Playdough is something your kids will never tire of. It also forms the perfect platform for a cool ‘fun with colors’ activity.
How: Get playdough in as many different colors as you possibly can. Let your child’s imagination go wild through creating different shapes with each color.
Image Hunt in Illustrated Books
Teaching colors through the use of wonderfully illustrated books for children, makes for a visual feast for your kids.
How: Take a book that is packed with loads of lovely illustrations and have your child identify, say, all the red images in it. You can ask them to keep a count of these, too, to polish those counting skills.
Note: You can use a magazine, too, if you don’t have a book lying at home. As long as it has some really colorful pictures!
The Color Stand Up and Jump Game
Kids love jumping. Here’s a really cool activity that will help them learn, while having a gala time jumping.
How: Give children papers of different colors and have them sit in a line. Then, when you call out the name of the color they are holding, they must stand up and jump before sitting down again.
Tip: You can start out slow, and gradually up the tempo.
The learning of colors is an important milestone in the development of young children, and a good reflection of their cognitive understanding. Use the activities essayed here, to help them develop their visual perception through a fine understanding of colors.
Enroll your child now with EuroKids to give them the right start, flying start they deserve in their development.