Teaching colours

[mummy2aisha]

My daughter has just turned four last week and I thought I better really work on colours with her now. I always comment on things like oh look at that cute brown dog. Do you want the pink top. Well today on the way back nursery I asked her five times what colour are the trees. First time Look at the green leaf . She took a look she knows it a leaf no probs there. I asked her what colour is it she said pink so I said no its a green leaf. 2 mins down the road saw a bush look at the leaves what colour is this leaf its blue no its a green leaf I said . We carry walking on come to a bush what colour is this leaf she looks at me dumb its green I said . Whats wrong with her five times I told her the colour is green help please any suggestions.

I wouldn't worry! If your child is steadily making progress in other areas of development then I would not be concerned. Your daughter may not be interested in reciting colours right now but remember that children are like sponges and are constantly learning! Perhaps encouraging her to play with paints and coloured pens/pencils, the creative aspect will hopefully help her to get excited about colours.

I hope so she its really is not sinking in with colours like you said better work on areas she likes and add colour to them .

I agree with Natalie. Don't stress. When she's smart otherwise, I don't suppose there's any cause for worry. Kids also have a very short attention span. When there's something there're not interested in, they just stray away. Like Natalie said give her some activity that she'd be excited about. We've seen kids at our preschool do this all the time. Eventually they learn.

Try some fun books - rainbow rob and white rabbits colour book are great. My son has liked them from 2yrs and still likes them now.

Kids development are all over the place - she might just be focusing on something else.

Learning by playing is the best idea to teach a child. They can be given different attractive colored toys to play. While playing ask them the color of the toys from them- when they are in a playful mood. A child learns better and quickly when they are taught in fun and interesting ways.

To be fair, leaves are all different shades of green, so maybe that confused her.

How about starting with coloured pencils - "pass me the pink one" etc?

My sister used to get confused between yellow and blue for years (weird), but she grew out of it in the end.

Hmm - try it with smarties/jellytots - much more exciting.

you can have 2 red smarties and 3 green ones etc!

Jelly tots is a good idea. My DS now three used to get the colours wrong and I realised it was a game. Toddlers like to contradict so I used to say "look at the blue leaf" and then he would correct me

Might she just not want to play that way? I found (to my total astonishment) that DD does know her colours, when I was colouring in with her and said I needed an orange pencil crayon, and she passed me one. Can you try that? It is likely she already knows them!

my niece was very late with colours, she just got it in the end.

I think there are 2 steps to learning colours, first recognising that colours are the same and then learning their name.

The first step is, for example matching 2 things the same colour, so putting the red lego in the red cup, and the yellow lego in the yellow cup.

If they don't see the two red things as the same, then the aren't really ready yet to learn the names. So I would play some matching games, and see where she is with them.

Why wait until 4yo to work on colours? My DS3 has just turned 3yo, has multiple SN's, but we have been working on colours since he was 18mo. He now gets every colour, except he mixes up brown and grey, though that may be a genetic quirk as his dad and his older brother are both the same, and seem unable to distinguish between those two colours.

I just constantly expand my speech by asking him to point out the grey car, the red car, the green leaves, does the want a blue top or a red top, what colour is his hair, what colour is his banana. Just add the colours into everyday speech.

Maybe she is wondering why you keep asking her what colour it is when you clearly know already as you keep telling her!

More seriously, I wouldn't worry about it though, after all, how many children end up not knowing what colour is what? Just use it day to day with choices between pencils, clothes etc. rather than quizzing her and putting her on the spot.

My DS struggled with his colours. Insisted orange was green or whatever.

I thought he must be colourblind (like my other DS)

But no, it Turned out he had word finding difficulties.

Not something I had heard of at the time.