Tuesday, May 6, 2014

Teaching Colors to Toddlers

Megha is now 2 years and 4 months. As you probably guessed by now, she is a very fast learner. She usually remembers things soon with out me having to repeat the same thing several times.
It applied to rhymes, number, alphabets, shapes, animals..etc

I had some challenge with colors though. Challenge in the sense that she seemed to struggle a little and was feeling confused which color is what. Of course there is no rush per se, I think I only learned my colors in 2nd class (grade 2!) lol.
It could also be just my imagination that she seemed confused. Kids learn things differntly from one another. What works for one child may not really work for the other. I am going to mention a few tips below given by some of my good friends. Excellnet tips! One of them should sure work :)

After some research on internet on how not to confuse them, I reached out to a few friends of mine to get ideas about how to make the process easier for her. Of all the things that I was advised about, the below game helped immensely! I ordered this game called "The Post Box Game". It came all the way from England! It was recommended by a friend of mine who lives in Europe. We tried this game this evening.

Game is fairly simple for beginners (from an adult perspective), though, you can get creative about it. You basically have 4 post offices (the blue one was kept aside to make it easier for Megha) and 4 sets of postcards containing 4 of each colors (so in total you have 16 postcards made out of 4 colors). Child needs to look at the color of the post box and post the respective postcard in the slot provided. While it sounds easy enough for adults, it may not be just as easy for the tiny brains. But Megha did an excellent job! I showed her 4 cards explaining the concept to her and she caught it! She progressed from slotting 2 colors in respective post boxes to 3 colors in 3 post boxes!! She can differentiate colors!!! Any doubts about that were laid to rest today :)
Here is the Post Box Game box. There are several ways to play this game but we started with basics, as is the case with everything else.

Some of the advises I received to help toddlers differentiate colors are:

1. Don't stress, she will get there, she doenst have any vision problems (damn internet!).
2. Showing her to sort building blocks by colors, which didnt work.
3. Dipping hands in water colors, which didnt really work either.
4. Choosing the right words like "please bring me the chair which is red in color" and not "red chair" which may confuse her into thinking the name of the chair is red-chair.
5. The color Kittens book...which we just started reading 3 days ago. Nice book.

Yes, this is what I do in my train ride to work. I worry. More often than not, needlessly.

P.S: I must rush to add, I am in no hurry to get her to learn colors. I just wanted to make sure she is seeing different colors, thats all. I understand that every child is different and understands the concepts at different  time/age.
Megha did excellent in this game!

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