In August, I started doing an hour to and hour and half of “homeschool” with Rosy every morning. I really wanted to help make her day more structured, and give her some one on one time with me. Doing a little bit of “school” every day has been just what we needed!
She turned 2 in May, and right now her brain is just a little sponge! Everything we do is just soaking in, and it’s really neat to see that happening intentionally now. She has learned SO much since we started this super flexible and relaxed approach to learning, and I have loved teaching her!
It took her about two weeks to master her colors completely. It was SO cool to see it happen. We used several books that talked about colors and plenty of activities and that is what I’m going to share with you today!
Books To Help Your Toddler Learn Colors
Reading is so incredibly important to little bity minds. It develops language, builds imagination, and expands their understanding just to name a few! I really think building a good relationship with books at a super young age is the cornerstone to having a love of books all throughout life.
Mouse Paint
This is a wonderful book. It focuses on primary colors and then goes on to explain how secondary colors are made. Rosy was SO into this book. It’s one of those books that are so wonderfully simple but teach fundamental concepts really well.
To go along with this book, we did a few different activities.
We did a colored water mixing station. She had three different containers of food coloring mixed with water in the primary colors and she got to mix them to her hearts content! Mostly, she ended up with a bunch of brown water, but hey, that is a color too!
Another activity that was great with this book was putting shaving cream in a ziploc bag and putting two different drops of food coloring in with it and letting her mix it up!
Dr. Seuss’s Book of Colors
We have used this book a ton even before we started doing school in the mornings, and I have always loved it. In addition to teaching colors it demonstrates rhyming in the good ole Dr. Seuss fashion!
To go along with this book, we did mainly two different activities.
The first activity was super simple. Coloring. This one seems almost too obvious but just sitting with Rosy and intentionally saying the color of the crayon she was using was HUGE! She started naming them herself after just a little while. She still names what color she’s using when she picks it up now.
Making Froot Loop necklaces is really what brought many of the colors home in her mind. We used yarn and fruit loop to put them on her necklace that she wore around for around 10 minutes before she ate it for several days. It was also amazing for fine motor development. After making them for about 4 days, she could put the cereal on the yarn herself!
Green Eggs and Ham
What a classic this book is! I had many memories come flooding back to me when my first grade teacher used this book in my class as a 6 year old! Rosy loved this book a lot, and it was also helpful in teaching her not only about green but also about trying new foods, which has definitely come in handy.
The main activity to go along with this book was an obvious one.
We made green eggs! She absolutely loved stirring up the eggs with the food coloring, and then eating the slightly peculiar looking new food.
The next day, we made blue eggs, and the next we made pink eggs! She was a fan, and it was a fun way to help solidify the color green in her little brain!
With a little bit of creativity, learning is so much fun!
There are tons of other books on colors that these same activities could be applied to. Check a few more options out below!
