Teaching colours and numbers

[lac13ma1]

Hi was just wondering if anyone could reccomend any fun methods to teach dd to recognise numbers and colours.
She can count to 20 and knows the names of colours but dosent know them if you showed them to her on a piece of paper.
Thanks

How old is she?

I would just discuss colours and numbers with her as part of normal life, do drawing and things talking about which colour they use next and things.

The first toy our son chose for himself was an abacus at about 9months. It was brilliant for talking about numbers and colours and he still loves playing with it at 3.4 counting all the beads and stating the colours. I also incorporated numbers into drawing and painting sessions. I would talk constantly when painting and drawing with him about colours. Using the colours while talking about them really seemed to help him learn.

Depends on age. Orchard toys has god colour lotto game and there's another that involves colours on a diice and counting but depends on maturity really.if about 3 ish then they would be fine but younger than that they would perhaps be a little hard.

Just integrate colours and numbers in your every day games and chatting. Look at page numbers when you read books. There are lots of books such as 'Ten Little Tadpoles' that are fun and touchy-feely, there are wooden puzzles with the numbers. Colours, don't rush, lots of kids don't get it until much later. Spot the blue car was a favorite of my boys, and walk from room to room trying to spot a favorite colour. Really, I think it's a bit much to talk about a 'method'....

We started colours with DS at about 18mo by talking particularly about his megabloks - building blue towers, red towers, green towers, yellow and green towers etc etc etc. Pass me a blue. Here's a red. That sort of thing. Once we had those four down he started to ask about other colours so we added in others.

Numbers, we had a hopscotch thing set up with those floor tile things. 'Oh look you're standing on the number 1, where's number 2?' 'Run and jump on number 3' etc. Also lots and lots and LOTs of books with counting in them. We'd count the frogs or whatever on the page, oh look there's a number 4. 1, 2, 3, 4- oooh and there are 4 frogs.... etc. He knew numbers up to 10 by about 20 months and up to 20 by about 28 months.

Create short teaching opportunities in natural every day situations rather than having a specific time to "learn numbers/colours/letters etc..."

Would you like the green cup or blue cup? How many cups do we need to put on the table for dinner? How many oranges shall we put in our basket today? Then count them together.

Make the interactions short, natural and a part of normal every day life. This way children also understand that maths/literacy/science etc... is a necessary and important part of life that helps us get by, rather than something boring that we have to stop our play and do boring worksheets for.

We made 'colour pictures' with DD e.g. I'd give her some blue paper and we'd go and find blue things to stick on it (feathers, pompoms, pics from magazines). Also lots of talking about colours in real life, as PP have said.

Count the stairs up and down in your house

Look at numbers on doors, cars etc

Numtums!

For colours we do as everyone else and just incorporate into every day life, I also often ask DD is she wants (for example) a blue or a red bib, a green or an orange bowl etc, whilst showing her the items. Seems to have helped.

How old is she? Modelling is generally the best way, using fun games and songs. Numtums too :)

Oh also my DD loves playing 'parties' so I got some paper plates and wrote numbers on them. We then made cakes out of playdough and gave her toys plates. Then I'd ask what number Woody (or whoever) had on his plate and we'd give him that number of cakes.

Thanks for all the suggestions.