What age to start teaching toddler colours/numbers etc

[BaffledMum22]

FTM here so openly admit I’m 100% winging this 🤣

What age is it developmentally appropriate to start teaching toddlers certain things such as colours, shapes, letters, numbers etc?

Is it something you consciously do with your toddler eg, setting up colour matching activities or naming shapes? Or do you just bring it into everyday chat eg, ‘the ball is red’?

DH and I don’t have any other children in our extended family and we’re the first of our friend group to have children so we’ve never really spent a huge amount of time around them. I have no idea what level of knowledge (if any!) would be expected by the time DS starts nursery at 3 for example.

There are lots of books on numbers and colours ! That’s what helped my son.

My three year old ( just turned 3) learned his colours between age 2-3 but numbers and letters he still struggles with ( he knows them but can’t say them in order). I felt like he’s a bit behind but his nursery/preschool say he’s right on track. It’s hard not to compare when you feel like everyone else’s kids are miles ahead .

“ My twins have just turned two.
They are with a nanny at home, so I was conscious they might be missing what other children are taught at Creche, and am making an effort to teach them letters, numbers etc.”

My 2yo is not being taught this at nursery! Nor do I want them to be formally learning this at this age, there is no advantage to it.

My advice (as a Speech Therapist working with under 5s) would be to follow their lead. We walked home from the school run yesterday with my 3 year old stopping to look at every door number. There are constant discussions of 'green cup or red cup?'. When younger I would say 'try the circle' as I handed a shape for the shape sorter. Generally though, adding this language in to daily conversation is sufficient for moat children.

Flash cars for a baby?! Good grief

Just to add, developmentally children should know colours by age 4. Of course many are taught earlier but it is a tricky skill as sky blue and navy blue are the same colour but look very different, whereas red and pink are different but can look very similar.

In Reception they really work on numbers 1-10 and introduce phonics sounds. They will do sounds rather than letters, so a soft p, not put or pee. At 3 and 4 they will also work on shapes etc.

Children generally learn words in this order: nouns e.g. cup, dog; verbs e.g. run, eat; position words e.g. in, under; describing words e.g. blue, big. So it's great to teach them within games, but an under 2 largely needs to learn lots of nouns and verbs to make sentences. The 'academic' bits can be learnt later if needed.

Auto-correct, should have said: soft p, not puh or pee.

Using flash cards is complete nuts.

If you, the adults around them and older children talked to your child from birth including reading to them, they pick things up.

So when you see a mother, father or adult talking to a baby in their pram/buggy rather than glued to their phone the adult isn't mad.

One of my SILs use to work in a Sure start centre and left some material out at her home. I had a look at it and was the stuff I had been taught to do through family and older friends with babies and small children.

@user1471604848 take the numbers and letters out then stick them on the fridge/freezer at their height.

When your children are interested in them they will start playing with them and asking you questions.

This will be of course when you are busy doing something else - but you have to be aware of that.

Don’t teach, just talk about everyday activities and sights.

Count stairs as you walk up them. Count out raisins as you eat them.
Describe colours and shapes as you see them
“Ooh look at that lovely yellow flower”

“ So when you see a mother, father or adult talking to a baby in their pram/buggy rather than glued to their phone the adult isn't mad.”

Equally can we avoid being judgemental with “glued to their phone” please. You may not have intended to be.
Sometimes when they are looking about in the buggy and absorbing the world it’s the only time I have to catch up on emails and admin and sorting out arrangements with friends, all things which benefit the child’s life. At other points on the buggy trip there will be chatting and pointing things out etc. It will be a snapshot rather than a representation of the whole time spent with a child

Equally can we avoid being judgemental with “glued to their phone” please. You may not have intended to be.

If you are feeling judge then you must be one of the parents I've just happen to follow from a shop to their home as it on the route to my own home, who has done this.

I don’t feel judged at all, I’m comfortable with my parenting in this respect. I’m noting your judgement, that’s all, and clearly you’re comfortable with that too :)

Just keep chatting op.
Follow where their attention is focussed, expand a bit on it.
Talk about what you are going to do together next, then later talk about what you did. Go to familiar places, throw in new experiences. Chat about it all.
It's all good!

I totally agree with using colours, numbers etc in normal conversation and activities. But for great ideas for learning based fun play, look at Little Happy Learners on Instagram. She has 3 kids and does lovely activities with them every day.

Using colours in conversation worked well here. "Do you want the red cup or the green cup?" "I like your silver car"

Counting out loud when playing or climbing up and down stairs also keeps things low key and fun.

My boy started nursery at 3 and could already read and count to 335. Reading he just picked up by sitting on my lap reading book after book together which he loved.

Number recognition was entirely accidental - we bought a Panini sticker album for a World Cup and he was obsessed.

There's no need for rigid, formal learning. Just normal day to day stuff and talking and playing they pick up so much.

Music is a great way to learn too. Listening to music, walking on tiptoes to high notes, crawling on the ground ti low notes, stamping to loud music, creeping to quiet. All these activities help hone listening skills which is the basis for formal learning at school.

@RichTeaRichTea

I don’t feel judged at all, I’m comfortable with my parenting in this respect. I’m noting your judgement, that’s all, and clearly you’re comfortable with that too :)

It wasn't a judgement it was an observation that seemed to hit a sore point with you.

If you are always on your phone when with your baby/small toddler, who incidentally is facing you, then don't be surprised they don't learn as quickly.

Totally agree about music and singing songs. (Now is not the time to be considering if you sing well enough!)

They don’t seem the learn colours in the way you would imagine, so formal activities that you came up with would probably miss the mark. They don’t seem to pick it up by comparing and contrasting - I found it bizarre that dd could know one colour, but not be interested in others.

@dannydyerismydad 335 exactly?!

Number of Panini stickers maybe ?

Thanks everyone 😊 that’s all really useful! It’s nice being able to ask for advice from others who have more experience in this parenting game than I do 😅🤣

@RichTeaRichTea - I have no idea what kids learn at nursery 😊 as I said in my OP, i have very little experience with children or with their education. I’m not about to sit my 16month old down at a desk and formally teach him things but if there are things that I should be doing to help his development then obviously I want to be doing the best for him that I can be 👍🏻

@Clymene I also have flash cards for my baby 🤣 he loves them!! He just likes recognising what’s in the picture and naming it. He also loves just taking then out the box and managing to post them back into it 😊 I don’t sit him down and force him to learn them 🤣 I like the ones we have as the pictures are of real objects which I think is better for their object recognition than cartoon pictures etc 😊

www.amazon.co.uk/My-First-Words-Picture-Cards/dp/0241287936/ref=mp_s_a_1_2_sspa?psc=1&keywords=baby+first+word+cards&spLa=ZW5jcnlwdGVkUXVhbGlmaWVyPUExVE9aNThKS1lFUkszJmVuY3J5cHRlZElkPUExMDI1MzMyR0U5ME43NU9VWEVHJmVuY3J5cHRlZEFkSWQ9QTA3ODk3NDZMREZOSENWSTM4Tkgmd2lkZ2V0TmFtZT1zcF9waG9uZV9zZWFyY2hfYXRmJmFjdGlvbj1jbGlja1JlZGlyZWN0JmRvTm90TG9nQ2xpY2s9dHJ1ZQ==&tag=mumsnetforu03-21&qid=1646743495&sr=8-2-spons

Bring it into everyday language e.g. instead of "oh look a fire engine" you say "oh look a red fire engine" or "oh the fire engine has 1,2,3,4 wheels". I expect you would do this from around age 1? Once they start to show more interest and try to use those words themselves (around age 2?) Then that would probably be a good time to start doing actual activities which involve colour matching and naming, shape sorting etc.

@RebeccaCloud9 yep. Because that was the number of stickers in his Panini book. We hadn't intended to teach numbers formally but the sticker obsession was strong!

You talk about these things in everyday life. You start from when they are babies ... eg look there's a red balloon over there, shall we count the ducklings, ... you get the drift

Learn through everyday.

Both of mine bee their numbers, colours and letters by 4, dd1 could read properly, dd2 is dyslexic (obviously found out later) so was slower. They didn't attend formal preschool