Your one-year-old will start to absorb key information like a sponge absorbs water, and they will be at the stage where they begin to walk and talk – and they will be significantly more independent than they have been up to now.
This comes down to their increased curiosity about the world around them – but with increased curiosity in the world around them comes significantly less fear.
You will notice that your one-year-old will not be fearful of anything and they will not see the real danger in anything. The baby stage has vanished and you will find that your infant is growing up too fast!
However, when your child is at this stage, you can start helping them expand their memory retention and their vocabulary. A popular topic that parents will start introducing their infants to at this point is colors.
It is especially important at this stage for children to learn about colors, and by hearing the words often, they will start to hold onto the words and associate them with the specific colors.
It might take your child a while to get fully confident with the color concepts and to remember them, but you can start teaching them from eighteen months onwards.
The Importance Of Easing Your Infant Into Color Vocabulary
Ultimately, the worst thing that you can do is overwhelm your infant – not only is this frustrating for them, but this will also lose their interest.
If you attempt to teach your infant way too many colors at once then they will get confused and they won’t really understand what you are trying to communicate to them.
The best thing that you can do is focus on two colors at a time and then you can build up on the different colors when they get confident with the initial two.
For example, you could start off with red and blue. The best way to familiarize your child with these colors is to point them out to your infant whenever you see them – and it is important to just focus on things that are red and blue.
You don’t want to start pointing out different things that are yellow and green when your child is trying to get used to the concepts of things being red and blue.
Doing this will just build confusion, and this can end up losing the infant’s interest in colors because they won’t understand how to differentiate between them.
You can keep your infant interested in color differentiating between red and blue by moving on from passive learning to active learning.
Constantly pointing out the colors to your child will be a great way of reminding them of the different colors – but there are ways that they can learn actively.
You can ask your infant to find red or blue toys, or to sort out things into piles of red and blue. This will encourage them to put what they are learning into practice, and this can help your infant get more confident with the knowledge that they have.
Finding Fun Colorful Objects
A great way to keep your infant engaged in learning about colors is to find fun objects for them to play with – and this can help with sorting out objects into color piles.
Not only that, but you can incorporate number learning along with color learning, so you help build your infant’s confidence with colors and also numbers in one hit.
The toys that will most excite and engage your child will be soft toys. This is what will draw the infant in and this is what will encourage them to play.
A great activity that you can try with your infant is that you can have different colored soft toys mixed up and then you can get your child to sort them into correct piles.
If your infant is only at the point where they are just trying to get familiar with all the different colors out there, then you can get them to name the colors of different toys instead of sorting them.
There are a lot of different toys out there that can help your infant learn different colors, but you are going to want to cater the kind of toy you buy to what your infant is interested in.
For example, if your one-year-old loves dinosaurs, then you can purchase a color learning toy to match this interest.
Picking The Right Colors To Learn At The Start Of The Process
So, when it comes to teaching your infant different colors, it is important that you pick contrasting colors. This is so that you can avoid confusion further down the line.
For example, you are not going to want to get your infant to differentiate between red and pink because they are super similar. This is why we initially suggested red and blue, because these colors are totally different.
Once your infant gets more confident with colors, then you can start bringing in colors that are more similar. This will seem a lot less confusing to your infant.
Here’s the thing, we all know that there are a lot of different colors out there to choose from, but you don’t want to confuse your infant before you even really start, so keep it simple and stark to begin with.
Ultimately, when you are trying to teach your infant different colors you should first of all start with the primary colors of red, yellow and blue, then you can branch out to all of the other colors.
The Importance Of Using Color Puzzles To Help Teach Your Infant
You might be at a point where you want to give your infant some independence, and you can give them time to practice getting familiar with different colors on their own.
The best way to do this is by using color puzzles. This is an especially great way to help your infant develop their language and their fine motor skills.
This is something that your infant can do on their own, but if you want to give your infant a helping hand then of course you can join in on the color puzzle fun.
When your child is trying to work out where to put the different color pieces you can give them clues by saying the names of the different colors.
It is important for your infant to be able to concentrate on the colors, and for them not to be distracted by different objects as well as different colors.
Using a color puzzle that is of the same objects will ensure that your child can differentiate between colors – and not objects.
For instance, you don’t want a puzzle that has a red dog and a blue cat because your infant might think of the dog and the cat as a way of differentiating, and not the colors themselves.
You can instead use a red teddy and a blue teddy to differentiate between the colors rather than using a whole host of different objects.
This is especially important when your infant is getting familiar with a whole host of different colors – they will need to be able to see the different colors on the same objects to fully consolidate their learning.
The Magic Of Labeling Everything With Colors
It is one thing to understand the different colors, but it is another thing to understand them as being words on a page.
Using labels on everything to show the color that they are can help build your infant’s intelligence and competence with learning new vocabulary.
Saying the name of a color and then seeing the words of the colors on different labels is another way to help your infant’s cognitive development.
Verbally labeling objects is of course the easiest way to remind your infant of colors, but some objects deserve a written label (that are semi-permanent of course), as this can help your infant see colors as more than just abstract concepts.
So, when you are first starting to introduce your infant to the fun world of colors, you should not get too carried away with labeling a lot of different colors.
Again, this is all about gradually gauging your infant’s interest and then pushing their focus and concentration as much as you can.
Your infant will have a limited window of concentration, and it is for this very reason that you need to be decisive and impactful in the way that you try to gain their interest and attention in learning different colors.
Getting your infant to practice coloring in with crayons or paint or colored pencils will not only assist their hand-eye coordination, but it will also help your infant see the role that different colors play in the real world and in their imagination.
You could ask your infant to try and draw a picture of something and see what scribbles they come up with – it might not be the most accurate image ever, but this is an effort that you will of course treasure forever.
Before you know it, your fridge door will be chockablock with awesome color coded drawings by your little Monet in the making.
In Conclusion
Overall, the best way that you can familiarize your infant with colors is by over exposing them to colors.
You are going to want to make sure that your child has a lot of opportunities to repeat the names of different colors, to be tested on the different colors, and to be able to match up the word to the actual color.
It is true that one of the most effective methods of teaching your child colors is by color matching. For instance, you can put a blue toy on a blue spot, or as we talked about earlier, separate toys into color categories.
Another method that you can progress onto is getting your child to point at certain colored things, or to give you something that is of a certain color.
This works the other way too. Encourage your child to ask you what color something is, then watch their mind boggle as you give them the big scoop on their shade of choice, but remember, don’t overwhelm them.
It’s all about taking things nice a slow, two colors at a time.
Hi, my name is Helena Waters and I was a teacher for 40 years before retiring last year.
During my time as a teacher I dedicated the majority of it to making classrooms as fun as possible, with educational parties, fun activities, and low cost entertainment that made the children excited about learning.
I taught children of all ages, from preschoolers to high school students. Now, with the pandemic having uprooted everything that children once knew about school and learning, I think that the need for my ideas is bigger than ever.
That is why I created School Sparks, a place in which I can write down and share all of my ideas on how to get students excited about going to school again. I hope that you’ll find some useful within a school setting, even at home too!
