My 4yo doesn't know colours

[Needclearhead]

Hi there - my DS started school in September. He doesn't know his colours and half the time guesses then right. I've mentioned to his teacher and right now am struggling to get him to retain anything about colours. We do matching , eye spy colours and talk about colours. I'd really appreciate any tips on steps how to help, thank you

Have you had his sight checked?

Can he definitely see them ok? Could he have a degree of colour blindness? Has he been checked by an optician?

Boots have a Zoe Zookeeper book/website/app which is a nice introduction to eye testing - to be followed by a professional check. www.zookeeperzoe.co.uk/#Z7sE68sMGcCxwXcz.97

Has he had an eye test which included colour vision screening? You often have to ask them to include this in an eye test these days...it's certainly not part of the school vision screening anymore

We found it incredibly hard to teach DS colours, he was guessing too. Turns out he's colour blind, which was no great surprise to us as my grandad was and my brother is too.

The most common type of colour blindness means being unable to properly see red, green and everything those colours are mixed with.

My DS can identify bright red and bright green but mixes up dark red, dark green and brown. He can identify some shades of orange (strong ones, with lots of red in) but others look like yellow to him. He can identify a bright pink but paler ones look grey. Purple often looks like blue to him. A bright, grassy green looks yellowed to him and darker ones are brown.

Definitely get him checked

There are a couple of the colour blindness tests on the link I posted above, but they involve numbers. There are others online which involve pictures if he's not yet secure with number recognition, but he definitely needs a professional check.

My son had this problem too. All other aspects of learning development and understanding were fine. Turned out he was colour blind. Any optician can give him a test.

Thanks so much for all your comments. My son went to nursery and another play group so it's interesting a formal check has never been suggested prior. Best initial way forward. And take it from there.

Have you seen whether he can group colours? Give him a set of bricks and see if he can put the same coloured ones together?

Dd1 didn't know her colours until she was 3.6yo-she knew her alphabet, could read fairly fluently, count beyond 100-and recognise the numbers written, but seemed to have no clue on colours.
I thought she was colour blind.
But she wasn't-just didn't find colours as interesting as numbers and letters. I spent a week playing games where she had to match colours. At the end she knew them all and was clearly not colour-blind.