Lesson Plans for Teaching Your Toddler Color Recognition

As a stay at home working mom, and former preschool teacher/administrator, you would think it would be easy to find ways to teach my children at home. If anything I should have a wealth of information available to me, and I do, but sometimes for busy moms it is hard to sort through all the information and find a lesson plan that works for your young ones. The most interesting thing about teaching the toddlers at home after working in a preschool/daycare environment is that now I can be more creative and tailor my lesson plans towards those things that I would like to instead of what the "state" or the director says I have to. Not to mention, sometimes when teaching at a school or even at home, children are not interested in what you have planned and it is good to have a "back up" plan to keep them entertained.

This week my daughters and I concentrated on color recognition. Here are some of the things we did this week that you can try at home or your classroom when you have your color themed week.

When teaching a color themed lesson plan take every opportunity that you can throughout the day to point out items and talk about what color they are. Discuss the color of shirts or pants your child is wearing. What colors they see throughout the day - look Dora's backpack is purple for example. The fall season is a prime time to do this activity outside as you can take a walk in the park and collect leaves and discuss the reds, yellows, browns and greens. This fits well and leads into a fall or Halloween lesson plan very nicely providing you with several weeks of concentration on and reinforcement of certain concepts.

For Circle Time (as referred to in many preschools) but we call it quiet learning you can introduce colors by just holding up different colored construction papers. There is also as discussion about the colors in the room, the colors of different toys and the colors that my daughters and I are wearing.