"Egg"cellent Colors!

   Getting your child to learn COLORS can be a tricky thing! They are so important. It is something that some kids will pick up fast around 18 months, while others may only learn 1 color by the age of 3. The trick is exposure! When you are playing, reading a book, or simply eating you can point out colors! By saying things like, "Your broccoli is green" or "Look at this red flower." You can also give your child choices using colors such as; "do you want a blue sippy or a yellow cup?" I do not believe in drilling your kiddos.  I think that just creates frustration and can make your child turn away from learning! The more you say and point out colors the more familiar and comfortable your child will become with them.  They say "practice makes perfect!" In this case "repetition makes permanent!"

   Every holiday/season I love to decorate. It's been tricky with a toddler to decorate how I use to but I have found that he doesn't touch my decorations if I make something just for him. For instance for Christmas I put a bucket of ornaments under the tree that he could dump, play with, put on the tree,etc. This kept him from pulling on the other ornaments. For this spring season I put out a bowl full of old plastic Easter Eggs! If you do not have any you can buy them at the dollar store this time of year. Eli loves dumping them and putting them back in the bucket. He recently discovered you can play golf with them using a spatula. So just watch what you have around, kids do the darnest things!

  Today, I decided to use them to sort and talk about COLORS! We pulled all the eggs out of the bowl one color at a time. Every time we pulled one out I said the color over and over again.  Eli started repeating the colors as I said them. Not clearly but I could still make out what he was saying.  He loved saying the word purple, "puple!"   When all the eggs were out of the bowl we then put them into piles by colors.

   To clean up, I began by asking Eli to put them back in the bucket. Again I repeated the colors as he dropped them in.  I tried to get him to only put the colors in that I asked which he did couple of times but for the most part he is a little to young for that.  For an older child you could definitely ask them to do different things such as, "find one orange egg, find two green eggs, how many yellow ones do you have left?" These eggs would also make a great math activity.  You can have your child count how many there are of each color.  You could also have your child put together  a group of 7 using some blue ones and some red ones. Followed by asking, "how many blue ones did you pick and how many red ones?" This is similar to the tasks that teachers are asked to use for teaching the Common Core. It provides a higher order of thinking then just asking your child to grab 3 blue ones and 4 red ones.  Although that is still a great way to teach addition.

Remember to not drill and kill! When your child is done they are done.  

Don't push it on them. Just have fun with it! 

It is so easy to find just everyday things around the house to help teach simple concepts like colors, numbers, letters, etc.  Kids get really excited about new things in the house such as holiday decor.  Use it to your advantage! 

Remember "Repetition makes Permanent!"