10+ Easy Color Activities Preschool Kids and Toddlers will Love!
Are you looking for fun and engaging ideas for teaching colors to toddlers or preschoolers? Learning should be fun at this age and play-based wherever possible. That’s why I created these easy, ‘prep in 5 minutes’, color activities preschool kids and toddlers can learn from.
Whether your kid loves water play, coloring, throwing, or matching, you’ll find an activity in here to suit their interests.
Following our kids interests when we teach them, helps them learn faster, as well as enjoy the process more! A happy learner is an enthusiastic learner!
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Remember, spending time with your little one and pointing out colors in your day to day life will also help them learn the names of colors. We did this a lot on walks in the park as we noticed the ‘green’ grass, the ‘blue’ sky, the ‘pink’ flowers, the ‘red’ car passing by, etc..
1. Easy Color Sorting Activity
An easy set up you can create in 5 minutes, this one uses colored kids bowls and any colored loose parts you have lying around. We used pom poms, feathers, and foam sticks of different colors to be sorted into the corresponding bowls.
If you haven’t got craft supplies like this in your home, you can get them cheaply from Amazon. We grabbed ours as part of arts and crafts value bundle.
My little girl enjoyed this one as she loves activities where she can order things.
We also created this smaller version of the activity with an old egg box!
I just colored each egg slot a different color and then added a handful of pom poms to the lid section to be popped into the matching section.
It was a fun activity and my daughter liked that she could shut the lid and take it with her to her grandparents house too.
2. Color Scavenger Hunt
This is a lovely, easy one for little one’s who can’t sit still! Get them learning on the go!
Lay out sheets of different colored paper and then encourage them to go off round the house (or garden) to find objects that match that color and pop them onto the matching colored sheet!
This is a great one to introduce the idea of different shades of the same color. One object might be a dark blue and another a light blue but they are both a type of blue.
3. Pom Pom Throw
Great for little one’s who love throwing! This one helps with fine motor skills as well as learning colors.
Get some sheets of colored paper and attach some sticky back plastic onto them so they are sticky. Stick them onto a door or window with the sticky side facing outwards and encourage your little one to throw the pom poms onto the matching colored sheet!
4. Color Racing!
Got a little person who loves cars, trucks, and all things vehicle related?
This color matching activity is perfect for them. Encourage them to line up the race cars in the lane that matches the color of the car and then take it in turns to push the cars to see which color car goes the furthest!
I used a big roll of paper, like this one from Amazon, and spread a different color of paint in each lane so the cars would get paint on their wheels ready for the race!
You may also like this I Spy Vehicles Activity Sheet! A great way to practice fine motor skills through coloring, observation skills, and counting practice.
5. Pom Pom Water Scoop
For little one’s who just love water play, I have this colored pom poms water scooping activity!
It’s a great one to practice those fine motor skills with too!
I just filled a tub with water and then popped in a big handful of pom poms and a few spoons and a soup ladle. Then I added some colored bowls and cups next to it for my daughter to scoop out the pom poms and drop them into the matching colored container.
A fun sensory play variation on this one is to freeze the pom poms in ice cube trays with a little water overnight before adding them to the water!
You could also do this one with things other than pom poms. You could use colored balls, ice cubes made with colored water, flowers, or plastic blocks.
6. Towers!
Present your little one with a pile of colored bricks and challenge them to make a tower with a specific color of brick.
Build a few towers of different colors and then incorporate math by asking them which is the tallest tower and which is the shortest. How many bricks does the red tower have? Is that more or less than the blue tower? There are so many ways this can become a math activity as well as a color activity!
7. Ball Throwing
A great activity if your little one likes to throw stuff!
Grab some old boxes and either write the color name on it, in the color, or add a colored circle of paper to the side of the box. Then give them a tub of plastic balls and encourage them to throw the balls into the matching box.
You can determine distance to throw based on age and ability!
Alternatively you could grab these fun colored beanbags, that have the names of the colors written on them! Great for helping your little one recognize the names of the colors whilst playing.
8. Seasonal Color Matching
Sometimes it’s fun to use the natural resources you find out and about during each season to color match.
I did this easy one with some fake fall leaves as we don’t have a lot of trees near where we live. In the Summer you would have different colored flowers to use as well.
9. Color Matching with Dyed Rice
A fun sensory color learning activity involves using dyed rice. I put the different colors of rice into bowls of the same color and then we chatted about the names of the colors before making a rainbow with the colors and then mixing them together for fun.
If you haven’t dyed rice before you can find out how to do it using my Easy 5 Minute Method here!
They can pick up a small handful and sort some of the individual grains of colored rice back into the bowls if they want to practice fine motor skills as well as color matching.
10. Colored Dots
A nice, quiet, color learning activity to do while a younger child is napping or to calm down before bed, is this colored dots activity.
Simply write the color names on a piece of paper and then pass them colored stickers, like these colored dot stickers from Amazon, to stick along the words.
This helps them learn to recongise both the spelling of the color as well as the color itself. It’s also a fab way to practice fine motor skills!
11. Color-Learning Game
To play this color game, you simply take it in turns to choose something in the picture you’d like to color and then roll the dice to see what color you’re going to use. When the dice stops everyone shouts out the name of the color you’ve got, and you color in with that color. Then it’s the next players turn!
To make the color dice, I simply stuck color stickers over the black dots on my regular dice, but you can buy color dice too.
A fun way to incorporate movement into color-learning and fine motor skills. You could also encourage your kid to join in with you to shout out the name of the color that they roll!
12. Musical Colors!
Similar to Musical Chairs, this one uses colored cushions, beanbags, or colored circles of paper instead of chairs.
The kids dance while the music plays and when it stops, the adult shouts out a color for everyone to sit on. Anyone on the wrong color, or without a cushion to sit on, is out.
A cushion of each color needs to be removed each time someone goes out until you have a winner!
13. Color Soring Fine Motor Skills
A fun, independent activity, this one combines color matching with fine motor skills practice. The idea is to pop a pipe cleaner into the hole with a matching colored dot next to it.
14. Tuff Tray Color Matching
Lastly, an easy tuff tray activity for some independent color sorting.
To create this one, I simply used a bowl to trace circle shapes onto card in the colors of the primary and secondary colors. Then I cut the circles out and placed them round the edge of the tuff tray. I put a basket with an assortment of colored items in the centre to be sorted onto their matching colored circle.
This is a fun way to teach about the different shades of a color.
The Best Toys & Resources to Teach Colors
1. Matching Animals Activity
This activity contains a tub of animals in the primary and secondary colors (red, blue, yellow, green, orange, & purple) and the corresponding bowls to separate them into.
I love this one because as well as teaching both the primary and secondary colors, your little one will be learning the names of the different animals, and practicing their fine motor skills. These little animals can also be used to practice counting too!
A great multi-purpose color sorting activity!
2. Farmer’s Market Color Sorting Set
This set has 5 barrels, with their color names written on the colored label on the front, and a big mixture of fruits and vegetables in those colors to be sorted into the matching barrel.
A fun way to learn colors, sorting & matching skills, and the names of different fruits and vegetables. There are multiple ways this set could be played with. In addition to using it as a color matching activity they could set up a little grocery shop, or wash the vegetables as a sensory activity. It’s also a great way to start a discussion on healthy eating.
3. Montessori Color and Shape Sorter
This activity set contains a lovely wooden box with slots to post the colored shapes into. You can sort the counters by color or by shape with 5 different colors and 5 different shapes.
A lovely, independent, color sorting activity for your little one to try.
I hope you found lots of fun ideas to help your little one learn their colors in a play-based way. If you are interested in more play-based learning ideas you may like these posts:
Alphabet Activities for Little Kids