How do you teach your kids colors? Shapes? Materials (wood vs plastic, metal vs glass)?

Thanks to Heidi for sharing her creative system for teaching colors or any other sets of things:

How about showing your kid sets of things that are exactly the same in except for the color?

When I was teaching my daughter to read words for the colors, I flipped the words over to show the color, I also used sets of things that were identical in every aspect except color. I.e. square blocks in 9 different colors, then at a different time plastic rings in 9 colors, then later on a set of colored pencils in 9 different colors, and so on. This worked well for my daughter, at 10 mths the only colors she had difficulty distinguishing between were bright pink and red!

I think if you initially use sets of things that are identical except for color, it is easy for your child to ascertain exactly what the variable is and , hence, which color is which!

With the sets of things (which I really HIGHLY recommend), there are many fun games you can (and should!) play as you show your child the colors. I used to get out the set of blocks and my daughter and we would hide them together, as we hid them, I’d tell her we were hiding the red block and then the blue block etc. We’d then find them together! With the colored pencils you can do things like, here is a red pencil, let’s draw something red and maybe your daughter will suggest something (or take over and draw herself! . ) … Anyway, once you get to the point you feel you child is ready for “problem solving” you can play “find the red block” or you can stack the blocks and give your daughter the opportunity to put the red block on the tower next… There are endless possibilities!

I really like the organization, versatility of this system, and how you can apply it to anything: colors, shapes, fruits-veggies, or anything else that can be classified into different sets.

I personaly never taught my son colors as a “lesson”. I just kept using colors in the regular speech on everyday basis: a red car is speeding by, a black dog is walking, an orange blanket feels cozy, a green apple tastes good, you like your white yogurt, the bow is so bright and pink! I also never tested him either. My son hates testing and either ignores all the questions directed at him or purposefully gives wrong answers. I used to play with him: “could you please pass me a red car? Oh, thank you for brining me a green car! Could you bring me the red one now, please?” His preschool teacher (a true magician when it comes to kids), found a similar technique for finding out what he knows. She noticed how much my son enjoyed cleaning, so when she wanted to see if he knows his colors, she just asked him to clean up ONLY BLUE blocks. Then he happily cleaned up only yellow ones… and so on.

I also wanted to mention, that I find it important to avoid testing our kids too often – they’ll become either dependent on our praise or reluctant to learn – they might not be comfortable to feel pushed into the spotlight, mistrusted, living under a microscope. If we can continue introducing and introducing new material, use it repetitively in our everyday life, once our kids are ready (not us – I am always ready to get some feedback!), they’ll happily share what they’ve learned! Patience and trust are hard, but very well worth the effort.