DIY Toddler Color Board
Teaching colors to a toddler is an interesting venture! You could take a very passive approach and simply say the colors of everything your toddler is playing with, or you could try and actively teach. It all depends on your child what approach would be effective and only you know your child’s learning style! Mine loves to learn through play activities. That’s why I made this fun color board.
The Color Board
My toddler color board is two-sided, having one game/activity on each side. I didn’t want to overwhelm my son so I only picked a few basic colors: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, white, black, and since I had room on one side, brown. These are the colors I was hoping to help him master before moving on to more variations.
High Five Colors
My son LOVES giving high fives, so for the first side, I made a “High Five Colors” game. First, I got construction paper with all the colors I wanted. Then, I traced my hand on each color (for me having an outline makes it easier to cut out a shape).
Once I had traced and then cut out my hand from each color I laid them out on a poster board. Since I couldn’t see the white hand on the white poster board, I made a thin border of black around that one. This side of the board is where I used brown to make it even.
Once the hands looked the way I wanted I used a glue stick to glue them all down.
Last, I used some glitter glue to write out “High Five Colors” on the board (just for fun). In order to play, I hold the board up and just have to say “high five the red hand” and my son will run up to the board to high five the paper hands (although he still usually gets it wrong, we’re working on it)! This could also be done out of felt if desired.
Color Sorting
For the second side, I wanted to create a platform for color sorting. I started by making glitter labels for each color.
Who doesn’t love glitter?
Then I cut out a large rectangle from each color of construction paper (minus brown because I didn’t have room). I place the rectangles on the poster board so I could figure out the spacing and, using the glue stick again, glued them all in place.
The glue stick didn’t work with the glitter color labels since they kind of curled while drying. Instead, I used regular clear-drying liquid glue and that worked well.
With these labels in place, we had a cute little color board game!
To play the game you simply hand your toddler different items that are either red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, white, black. It is their job to match the color of the object to the board and place it in the correct spot. That’s it! How fun and easy is that? I even have flashcards that we will stack according to color. My son loves it!
For more about flashcard learning read my post Fun with Flashcards.
Another variation is to play color scavenger hunt and have your toddler go around the house to find objects to match each color.
Now we have these fun games that we play to learn colors! I’m still always looking for new and fun ways to teach colors. How do/did you teach your little ones their colors?
Read about my Fun with Flashcards toddler learning activity! It’s great for learning first words, numbers, shapes, and the alphabet.
Related Posts
20 Comments
Alaina Monster
I’m going to try this with my toddler. We are working in her colours too & I think she will love the high-five thing!
Kat
Let me know how it goes! My son learned his colors in about a week with this!
Rachel
This is such a cute idea. Life becomes so much easier once they learn to identify their colors. It is interesting how often we identify things in our house based on color.
Kat
I agree! It makes life a lot easier if kids know their colors.
chava
how colorful and fun! this looks great!
Kat
Thanks! It’s such a fun way to learn colors
Jeuelle
This is so neat! I’m pinning this to my kids creativity board. You can never run out of fun and simple craft activities for kids!
Kat
Thanks! My son learned his colors in a week using this!
Britney
How adorable is this! Love the idea
admin
Thank you!
EllahAtHome
Excellent idea and post! Can’t wait to do things like this with my little guy once he is old enough! http://Www.ellahathome.com
admin
Thanks! Defiantly start young! I stared with learning activities at a year old! Under that just talk and label everything! You’ll he amazed at what they pick up
Carli
This is a great idea and activity I can do with my daughter! Thanks!
admin
You’re welcome! I have so many more I haven’t written up yet so stay tuned !
Lissette
I love doing new activities with my baby girl! Thank you
admin
You’re welcome! As a mom and a nanny I have tons of activities. Stay tuned, up have lots of new ones lined up to post!
Kayla
Love this! Developmental growth and activities are my favorite! I will have to utilize this (:
admin
My son just thinks it’s a game so it has been really effective in teaching the colors! Although woth speech everything is still blue! Haha
Lisa Wingerter
Absolutely love this!
admin
Thank you!