Hello,


how did you teach your children colors?

Today we took red, blue, green and yellow carton and cut it into pieces. Then we took a yellow, a red, a blue and a green cup and made her put the carton pieces into the matching cup. I actually thought, that her difficulty would be keeping the name of the color in mind. But obviously she has a problem seeing he difference in the colors. She put the carton pieces in no mater which cup. I am pretty sure she understood what she was supposed to do. So I really do not know what to do.

Any ideas?

Try starting with one color...

Get a yellow cup or other type of container.

Now get a stack of cards or papers whatever size you feel is best to fit in the container. Some black, and some yellow. You go start flipping through them (cuz she's going to watch you intently, right? LOL) and say, black...black...black..black...OH! Here's YELLOW! Put it in!....black...black..OH! Yellow! Put it in!"

Once she is consistantly finding the yellow on her own, THEN take out all the yellows and add another color.

Try that for a week and see how it goes. Let us know!

I would also suggest that whenever you are reading to her that you point to the pictures and casually say "I like that blue shirt" or "Look at the red balloon." When you are getting her dressed in the morning ask her "Do you want to wear the yellow shirt (and show her) or the blue shirt( and show her)?" When she picks something up say "Oh, you have the red bucket", etc. In other words constantly comment on colors as you go about your daily tasks in addition to playing color games. One of Anna's therapists also suggested playing "twister"--it's a game with circles of different colors on a mat and you have to put your hands and feet on different colors--we never actually played it because Anna learned her colors before that.

Another idea is to have two boxes or baskets filled with things of a certain colour - for example a red basket and a yellow basket. The items shoudl fit into the basket/box (eg a small car, a spoon, a ribbon,a pencil...all of that colour). All the things can be tipped out of the baskets into a big pile and the game is to put them into the right basket. A red car...it goes in the....red basket...then of course lots of claps and praise for encouragement! When she has got the idea, more baskets can be made. During the day if you find extra items, you can ask her to add them to the right basket. As with everything, she'll get the idea in her own time. I find with Ben that he takes a while to get the idea but when he's got it, there's no stopping him!!

Austin has learned red, yellow and black. Here's what we did. We would hold two big wooden beads ..one in each hand. I'd say, pick the yellow bead. He would go for whichever bead was closest. But I would close up that hand into a fist and not let it him have it if it was the wrong color. Then I would put my hand with the yellow bead close to him so he would take it. Then we would all clap like crazy and tell him how smart he was for picking the right bead. Praise is a big motivator for him...he's male. Anyway. Alot of patience and repitition later and he's VERY consistant with those three colors. He now picks the right colors. One thing that is important is once he learned yellow...we'd keep yellow in one hand and rotate the other colors in the other hand. Like yellow and black...then once he knew black...yellow and red until he learned red. ect.
Now we are working on purple, blue and green.
amy

One more idea...this worked for my other children...haven't tried with Austin yet. We would have a color of the day. Everyone would were RED. The snack would be red...Like the snack would be strawberries and apples...ect....we'd try to have red foods. Then we'd use red crayons, markers, paint...you get the idea. That worked really well. We would just emphasize the color all day. That worked REALLY fast with Austin's sibs.
amy

What I did is simple. I had pieces of long card cos the words had to be bigger and in red for my son to see. I printed the words on one side of the card and on the back, I pasted coloured paper. When I taught him the words, I will flip my cards and show him the colours. In this way, he learned both the words and the actual colours and he's able to associate them together. (I'm using the glenn doman method of teaching on my son.)