This week we are going to talk about colours.Baby N is 15 months now and I thought it is the right time to make him learn colours.He has been good at sensorial, practical, fine motor skills but language is his weak area.It will take us a while and I guess patience is all I need along with all the beautiful colours in life.
To make him learn the colours I have started with the primary colours
Red
Blue
Yellow
Initially from this week onwards it will be colour of the week and slowly once he starts recognising the primary colours we will move on to the secondary colours, with two colours a week.I will be discussing the secondary colours in another blog post once I start working on it.As of now we are concentrating on the primary colours.
Colours can be very confusing for toddlers, first they should be able to differentiate different colours and later on recognising the colour can be taught.For example keep two different things of same colour and tell your baby that
‘This car is red’
‘The apple is red’
Try to use car is read instead of red car, it will make them differentiate and not confuse the colour with a specific object.
Lets discuss the three phases of learning
Introduction
Introducing colours one at a time is the best way to make a toddler learn colours without much of confusion.You can start introduction, the way I am doing it by introducing a tray or else just tell the colour one at a time.For example when the baby is playing point towards all the red toys he has.
Sorting
It will take a while for young toddlers to actually sort objects on the basis of colours.But eventually with daily exposure they would be able to differentiate one colour from another when they see an object with different colours.Sorting is the second stage of learning colours.There are tons of activities that can be done with toddlers once they have started differentiating one colour from another.
Take the available toys like blocks, balls,cars and take out the primary coloured ones.Keep three basket and label them by marking or covering them with the three different colours with one colour each basket.Keep the objects like cars, blocks,balls in front of the baby and start sorting by yourself and prompt the baby to follow.Once the baby learns or understand the game let them do it on their own.Initially there will be a lot of mixing but try correcting them by using positive comments like “I Think it will go in this basket” “this matches with this basket” instead of using “No” or ‘that’s wrong’.
Identifying the colours
Once the baby is able to do the sorting on their own the third stage of colour learning can be introduced.Identifying the colour on prompt.
Lay the primary colours and ask the baby to point out the colour you have asked.For example keep red, blue and yellow cars and ask him to give you or point the yellow car.
Secondary colours apart from the primary colours can be introduced depending on the speed of learning of the toddler.
How are we doing it?
We have a colour tray introduced in our daily montessori tray activity, and every week depending on the colour of the week, I will be keeping different objects of same colours in the tray.Once the baby will pick up the stuff I will tell that “The Rattler/car/blocks is red”.
Once the colour of the week is selected we will look around for the objects in our surrounding of the same colour for a whole week.For example “the sofa/curtain/t-shirt is red.
So what’s your colour of the week? ours is red have a look at our tray of the week
Rattle Babble Battle 