More Activity Ideas
- Help your child understand that colors can carry important messages. Take a walk around your neighborhood and point out street lights and signs and talk about what the different colors communicate (red means stop; green means go; yellow means caution).
- Make finger paintings with your child and talk about how the paint looks and feels.
- Ask your child to be your special color assistant for the day. At dinnertime, make a one-color salad together. While unpacking groceries, name a color and have your child put away fruits and vegetables that are that color. While cleaning, have your child sweep the brown floors, the white floors, etc.
- Create color patterns. Use blocks, stickers, paper clips, cubes, or other small objects to create a pattern (e.g., blue cube, red cube, blue cube, etc.) Challenge your child to name the pattern and continue it. Switch roles.
- Create a space where you and your child can get messy and mix paint colors. Ask your child, What colors are you mixing? What colors did you mix to make that orange color? Finish the paint mixing activity by reading a color story such as Mouse Paint by Ellen Stoll Walsh [Together watch the video Peep and the Big Wide World “A Peep of a Different Color” and see Peep and his friends explore changing their skin colors. Type in the Search window: Watch Together: A Peep of a Different Color.]
- Give your child paint challenges. Ask, How do you think you can make a lighter shade? What happens if you add more of that color to the mix? Let him explore. [Watch a group of children explore mixing colors on the live-action video Peep and the Big Wide World “Mixing Colors.” Type in the Search window: Watch Together: Mixing Colors.]
- Point out and compare colors in the natural world. Talk about what is the same and what is different about the colors and shades of colors of different plants, soil, etc. Count how many shades of a color you see in one bush, one flower, etc.
- As you read together encourage your child to notice colors in the pictures. You might ask what color she sees most, what different skin colors she sees, what is the color of most of the leaves in the garden picture, etc.
- Go on a color hunt walk indoors or outdoors. Give clues and challenge your child to find things of a certain color, for example, something brown; something a lighter shade of brown, etc.
- Colors are everywhere, so your child can learn about colors any time you are together during daily routines—at home, at the playground, in the car, or anywhere at all!