Teaching Toddlers – Learning Colors

Michaela and Madison are taking a break from learning their letters this week. With a lot of rain in the forecast, I thought it would be a good week to do some experiments and color activities.

Paint Swatches

Free and Easy! All you need are paint swatches (from Walmart) and that’s it.

The activities are endless. Below are some activities that we did:

• Learn the colors
• Learn the color words in English and Vietnamese
• They played “What color is this?” – Michaela and Madison took turns picking up a color swatch and asked each other, “what color is this”
• Find the color – I place a color swatch in an empty tub. The girls went around the house gathering items of the same color and placed it into the tub.

Rain Cloud Experiment

I saw this rain cloud experiment on Pinterest a few months ago, but never had the chance to try it. Recently, some mommies from one of my mommy groups did the rain cloud experiment with their children and posted pictures on Facebook. It was sooooo cool!

We had some heavy rain the night before and again in the morning, so this was the perfect time to teach Michaela and Madison about rain and do this experiment.

Rain Cloud Experiment

What you’ll need:

• tall vase or mason jar
• shaving cream
• droppers
• food colors
• plastic cups
• something to cover the table
• a small tray or plate to hold the cups
• water

Food colors + children + water = disaster waiting to happen.

Trust me, you will need something to cover the table and protect it from staining.

Fill the mason jars or vases 2/3 full of tap water.

Fill the rest of the container with shaving cream.

Add a lot of food color to the water. The darker and concentrated, the better the result of the “rain”.

I only used 4 colors since there were 4 tubes of food color in the box I purchased.

Red, Orange, and Green = 13 drops

Purple = 6 drops

Use 1 dropper per color.

Before starting, I explained to them what each object symbolizes.

Water = Air

Shaving Cream = Cloud

Color Water = Rain

The water is like the air and the shaving cream are the clouds. As the cloud gets saturated with water, it produces rain.

Of course, the girls were more excited about the hands on experiment than the learning.

Now let the fun and experiment begin!

Have the kiddos use the eye dropper and squirt different colors of water into the cloud (shaving cream). The closer the drops are to the edges, the faster the rain (color water) will fall.

After a few drops, we sat back and watched the rain fall. If you look really close, you can see some condensation under the clouds. It’s really neat.

I told Michaela that her jar looks more like a rain storm.

After doing this experiment, I found that the wider the mouth of the container, the better for the experiment. Also, purchase cheap shaving cream. I bought mine from the Dollar Tree and it works fine.

This is a very easy experiment to do with your little ones and a great way to learn about rain. Try it out and let me know how it went.

Pin the Color Wheel

The color wheel activity is another great way the littles could learn colors and fine motor activity. I purchased the color wheel and small clothes pin at the Dollar Tree. I used markers to color one side of each clothes pin. Then have the little ones, pin and match the clothes pin to the correct color.

You can also use a paper plate and make your own color wheel.

Pom Pom Rainbow

Well, this activity is exactly that. Use pom poms and place it on the rainbow. Initially, I had Michaela and Madison use tongs to pick up the pom poms. Then they graduated to using chopsticks.

Hidden Colors Experiment

This is a great way to teach your little ones colors and cause & effect. It’s a little twist on the baking soda and vinegar experiment. Click on the video to see the experiment.

What you’ll need:

• muffin/cupcake pan
• food color or color gel
• a lot of baking soda
• big plastic tub or container, big enough to hold the pan
• white distilled vinegar – A LOT
• squeeze bottle – The bottle I purchased had a leak on the bottom, so I had to improvise and use plastic cups.
• dropper/syringe

Directions:

1. add a few drops of food color to the bottom of the muffice/cupcake pan
2. add 1/4 C baking soda in the baking pan, covering the food color
3. place the baking pan in a tub/container
4. fill a squeeze bottle with vinegar.
5. give the squeeze bottle to your kiddos and let them squirt a little vinegar into each compartment
6. observe and have fun!

Michaela and Madison likes using the little droppers, so I had them try the experiment with the droppers first.

We’re definitely going to do this experiment again. Next time, the girls will have their own tub and squirt bottles.