This is a great way to introduce young children to the concept of colour and start to help them begin recognising colours.
Time: 15 minutes
Age: Under 5's
Level: Easy
Materials
An assortment of orange items
1 orange pencil or crayon
From early speech, children can be taught the concept of colour. Wait for a moment when your child is engaged in play with something which is all one colour. My son was playing with a box of mandarins we had just bought home from the market. He already knows the word mandarin, so we went from there.
Let your child know that it is an "orange mandarin" or whatever colour the object is they are playing with. They might not understand yet, but slowly introduce a number of familiar items of the same colour, one at a time, to the child, saying each time the colour's name and what it is, for example "orange ball", "orange cup", "orange fork" and so on, going back to the original object and saying it again.
Next, you can take up a piece of paper and a crayon or soft pencil in the colour of choice, and get your child do create a drawing (read scribble) with that colour, saying "that is an orange pencil", then go back to the objects of the same colour for reinforcement of the idea.
Go easy on it, and only introduce one colour at a time, until your child has the name of that colour down. This may take several days of doing it every now and then (in 10-15 minute intervals) before they have fully mastered it. Also, only do this if your child is having a good day and enjoying it, because if they're in a bad mood then this probably isn't going to distract them.
Once one colour is done, you can go on and introduce other colours on different days.
Let us know of your successes with this in the comments section below!
