Discovering Colors: Breaking Down One Toddler's Process for Learning Colors

Recently, I had a conversation with a friend about how our Little Man learned to identify colors, and that got me thinking...How did he do it? What did his daddy and I do to support that? Are there things we did that I can draw on to help him as he continues to learn new and more challenging concepts?  I've been focusing a lot of energy on that: how to support LM's desire to be independent and do things for himself.  To that end, I came across a Montessori based book entitled: Teach Me to do it Myself.  How perfect?!?  I can't wait to get started!

After flipping through the book, I'm already in love and have a bunch of new ideas for ways to turn more of LM's everyday moments into LEARNABLE MOMENTS.  One of the activities that caught my eye immediately was Discovering Colors.  LM, knows the ten basic colors pretty well.  He recognizes, and can correctly identify them.   My question is, how did it happen?  So, I started from the beginning.  I know we did these things to try to support his understanding...

We talked and sang and read about colors ALL the time, but that's just not enough.  We added in a few techniques to boost his understanding.  We always made sure to use the word "color" when we were talking about them.  And we found objects like rubber ducks, cars and blocks he was already familiar with that came in  a variety of colors.  That way, we could say things like "The COLOR of this DUCK is green." or "That CAR is the COLOR yellow."  This seemed to work well because he already knew the word duck, car and block and since all the objects were exactly the same, the ONLY difference was the color.  He seemed to process that we were giving each object a new label called color. 

I also made my Little Man a set of homemade color sticks based on Montessori colored tablets.

To make this set, I simply wrapped embroidery floss tightly around a pair of popsicle sticks and secured each end with hot glue.  LM uses these sticks to practice identifying his colors as well as matching like colors together.

We are currently working on shades of colors!  I've learned a few different ways to use paint color samples to play with a crazy amount of colors and different shades.  We have slide games, matching games, gradient games and memory games...definitely more to come on that!  We will also be adding sets of Red, Orange, Yellow, Blue, Green, and Purple in a gradient of shades from Dark to Light.  I can't wait to get started so LM will have a new game to play when he asks to "Play color sticks!"