Hi all, anyone have any ideas how to teach some two yr old their colours, done flash card, songs, colour bags,

You mentioned the key to the problem in your question:

"I'm fed up going over the same things" The more frustrated you are, the less it will work. Doesn't matter if you turn it off, the child will still sense it. Further more, the more you try to demonstrate something the child is not ready for, the more resistance you will encounter.

Many children at that age simply are not ready to learn the names of the colors. Some are...many are not. So here's what you do.

The first key to sensory education involves isolation of what you are teaching. Take a look at the color tablets about half way down this page:

http://www.adenamontessori.us/product.php?cid=2

There are 3 boxes. The first box has red, yellow, and blue. The 2nd box has 11 colors. The third box has 9 colors, but varying gradations of those colors.

What this material does is isolate the colors. The ONLY difference with them is the color itself. So that is what the child focuses on. The next point is very important -

It is only once the child has had a lot of experience with the sensory materials that you should introduce the language. When training the senses, the first thing must be that the child has a full understanding in his senses first. There must be no confusion there.

Cluttering up the child's mind with many songs, flash cards, etc. is probably leading to more confusion.

Once the child has a full understanding with the materials, then you can introduce the language. Do it in the following way. This is called the "3 period lesson" and it involves three steps.

1) Give the child the name of what you're teaching. Use a complete sentence. "This is red. This is blue." (As you point to red and blue)

2) Period 2 involves seeing whether the child can associate the name with the color. "Point to blue. Point to red. Give me red. Give me blue. Put blue under the rug. Put red under the rug." Spend a lot of time on this 2nd period.

3) Period 3 is to check to see if the child can identify the color's name. Point to one of the colors. Say, "What is this?" If she knows, great. If not, give her name and thank her for working with you. Never make the child feel like she didn't learn anything from this. She actually did...even if you don't readily see it. Making her think she didn't learn would lead to confusion on her part. Since she knows she learned something, she'll wonder what she missed and become disinterested in the material.

That's how we teach it. Realize, though, I've had students as old as 5 that just didn't know all the color names and it suddenly took off. So don't worry too much.

Matt

My son is two and we do a lot of different activities that teach/practice/review colors. I more or less use different daily experiences as teachable moments, I don't actually plan activities about teaching colors. For example, when we're putting the dishes away, we look at all the different sippy cups and I have my son match the lid with the same colored cup. I say the name of each color as he's matching. Also, when we're playing with play-doh, I take just a little out of each container and I make a seperate ball for each color. Then I tell him to "put the green (or whatever color) ball back in the green play-doh". When we're all done playing, I give him one lid at a time and I'll say something like "put the blue lid on the blue play-doh". Another activity you could do would be to give each child 3 crayons (the same 3 colors) and a sheet of paper. Then you could say "draw with the blue crayon". If one knows the color blue, then the others will most-likely copy them and draw with the blue crayon. If they don't pick the blue crayon, then you could pick up a blue crayon and model it. I also tell him the colors of different things we see during the day and now I ask him what color different things are, such as grass, sky, different cars, etc. We've done activities like this enough now and my son knows all his colors. I tried doing planned activities and flashcards, etc. and he lost interest very fast. When I tried just talking about colors all the time, he learned really fast. I hope this helps! Good luck!

My two year old signs and sings her colors. She knows a lot of colors and I'm not quite sure how she learned them all - they pick up the strangest things! She was about 18 months old when I realized she already knew her colors!

But...she has seen a few episodes of signingtime and she loves the song, "Do you know the colors of the Rainbow?" on the DVD. Maybe this has been a help? I never set out to teach her, it just kind of happened!

Try colour tables,each week choose a different colour.For example...The first week .Tell everyone to bring something green.Even leaves look at what they bring in it all tells a story.Go over green everyday for 10 Min's that week.And give them a sheet with something like a frog to colour.With in a few weeks they should know there colours.

I just think it is important to talk about the color of an object when you are playing or reading or just talking to a child. You could say what bright red hat you have on today. Oh look at that purple sting. Repetition and fun times help all children learn.

Get some food colouring make different coloured cakes or ice some biscuits in different coloures or have a yellow food day etc eggs custard bananas cheese another day think of how many red foods you can have use jellies or colour some pasta or rice

Toddlers learn through music and play! Have them RUN to the blue card, see who can run to the red card first! Have them JUMP on the red circle (sidewalk chalk on the concrete). Have them find all the green M&Ms...

Play, play, play!

Have a "color of the day"--if this is a day care setting, maybe even get their parents to help out by putting that color clothing on their kids...

Just some ideas:)

I have 6 children and taught them their colours easily by just mentioning colours all the time in general conversation. For example, What drink do you want, the orange one or the white one? Lets play with your blue teddy bear... Could you please pass me the yellow book and I'll read with you... just things like that.

I found if I made colours part of our every day vocabulary then they automatically used them themselves.

2 is really young - just make it fun and what sinks in fine, what doesn't, that's also fine. Bring me the red truck, can you find the blue star? Oh you are eating a purple fruit snack. They will pick up on their colors as they are able. Just having it in their environments will constantly encourage but not push them. good luck and enjoy those little ones.

when we tidy our toys away at the end of the day, we put things into colour piles.

dont forget that theres plenty of other things to do as well, such as numbers, and counting, and just good old fun things that dont require LO to learn and be right!