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Teaching Colors to Toddlers – Make Cotton Rounds Vibrant

teaching colors to toddlers color match worksheet toddlers preschoolers learn colors printable free

Teaching colors to toddlers has never been more fun with this color matching worksheet that makes ordinary cotton rounds turn vibrant! Your little one will love this match-the-color activity. It’s a simple way to help them figure out how to sort colors based on real world objects they are already familiar with.

Where Teaching Toddlers Colors and Fine Motor Skills Collide

Whether you decide to use a paint brush or droppers, both of these tools are great for fine motor strengthening! Babies are not born with fine motor skills, but doing fun activities like this will help them tremendously in gaining this valuable and necessary skill! For more information about what fine motor skills are and why they are important, read all about it here.

All activities should be supervised by an adult. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. This post may contain affiliate links.

Skills: Fine Motor Skills
Ages: 18 Months +
Prep Time: 10 Minutes

Teaching Colors to Toddlers Made Easy!

There’s nothing hard about setting up this activity! Watch to see just how easy it is in this video. All you need is our free printable (read on to get it!), plus some ordinary cotton rounds to be colored! 

Be sure to integrate lots of language development during this activity as well. In other words, talk about the colors and the items. For example, ask your little one what color the turtle is, and repeat the correct response to reinforce that vocabulary!

Teaching Colors to Toddlers Made Easy!

There’s nothing hard about setting up this activity! Watch to see just how easy it is in this video. All you need is our free printable (read on to get it!), plus some ordinary cotton rounds to be colored! 

Be sure to integrate lots of language development during this activity as well. In other words, talk about the colors and the items. For example, ask your little one what color the turtle is, and repeat the correct response to reinforce that vocabulary!

teaching colors to toddlers color match worksheet toddlers preschoolers learn colors printable free

Tips for Making This Discover the Colors Activity 

Budget Friendly Printer. We love the Canon PIXMA MegaTank Printers because they are budget-friendly and produce super vibrant colors! Its refillable MegaTank ink system prints up to 6,000 black / 7,700 color pages from one set of ink bottles— that’s 30 times what you can print with a conventional ink cartridge set!

Choice of Color. We love liquid watercolor because you can dilute it significantly and still have incredibly vibrant colors – lots more bang for your buck than food coloring! You could also simply use a paintbrush and watercolors too!

Laminate. I would highly recommend using a laminator because this is an activity your little one is going to want to do over and over again! Just swap out the colored cotton swabs for a fresh one and toddlers and preschoolers can keep on learning colors over and over again!

Materials

Step-by-Step Instructions 

Step 1

Print out our free printable worksheet and laminate for multiple uses. 

Step 2

Use double-sided tape to stick cotton rounds inside the circles on the worksheet.

Step 3

Dilute liquid watercolor with water in individual containers and provide large droppers. Alternatively, provide a liquid watercolor set and paint brush.

Step 4

Task your kiddo with using a dropper to soak up the liquid watercolor and drop it onto the correct cotton pads.

Step 1

Print out our free printable worksheet and laminate for multiple uses. 

Step 2

Use double-sided tape to stick cotton rounds inside the circles on the worksheet.

Step 3

Dilute liquid watercolor with water in individual containers and provide large droppers. Alternatively, provide a liquid watercolor set and paint brush.

Step 4

Task your kiddo with using a dropper to soak up the liquid watercolor and drop it onto the correct cotton pads.

discover the colors worksheet printable color matching

Get the Free Printable and Other Fun Ways to Explore Colors!

This printable worksheet is such a fun way to learn and match colors! For an alternative, mess-free, way to play with this worksheet you could split a cotton pad in half and color the top of one layer with washable markers. Then, cover the colored half with the plain half so that the color is hidden! Give your kiddo water and a dropper to pour on top of the cotton pads to discover the colors!

To dive even deeper into learning colors, you have to download our All About Colors printable bundle. We shine a light on every color of the rainbow and beyond! Each color gets a dedicated page where kiddos can dive deep into learning all the vibrant details. These pages are hands on and fun, integrating paint, scissor skills, and games too! If your kiddo loves colors, don’t miss our full printable bundle all about colors!

We also have the following free worksheets: Dot the Rainbow, Rainbow Color Match using Cotton Swabs, and our bundle that is all about Color Mixing!

 

Beyond Teaching Toddlers Colors

This activity is not only a perfect way for toddlers and preschoolers to learn colors, but it’s great for fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination as well. Using droppers may look easy, but it is quite tricky for young kids! Squeezing the dropper and picking up the water takes a lot of coordination while strengthening pincer grasp.

Whether using a dropper or paint brush, both tools provide excellent practice for aim and precision. Utilizing hand-eye coordination, kids will learn how to get the color to fall directly on the cotton rounds. 

And as mentioned above, this activity is a great opportunity for language development. Talk about the colors. Talk about the objects. Repeat your child when they say the color to emphasize the vocabulary!

teaching colors to toddlers color match worksheet toddlers preschoolers learn colors printable free

Also talk to them about how the water disperses through the pad and “bleeds” into other areas. This will be a great way to show them that science and learning can be so much fun! 

teaching colors to toddlers color match worksheet toddlers preschoolers learn colors printable free

Beyond Teaching Toddlers Colors

This activity is not only a perfect way for toddlers and preschoolers to learn colors, but it’s great for fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination as well. Using droppers may look easy, but it is quite tricky for young kids! Squeezing the dropper and picking up the water takes a lot of coordination while strengthening pincer grasp.

Whether using a dropper or paint brush, both tools provide excellent practice for aim and precision. Utilizing hand-eye coordination, kids will learn how to get the color to fall directly on the cotton rounds. 

And as mentioned above, this activity is a great opportunity for language development. Talk about the colors. Talk about the objects. Repeat your child when they say the color to emphasize the vocabulary!

More Ways to Match Colors

Here are my top picks for toys you can buy that strengthen color recognition skills!

Color Sorting Rainbow

Transfer pom poms or balls to color sort this rainbow! If you use tongs it is great for fine motor skills too! (Caution: small parts!)

Wooden Rainbow Stacker

This wooden rainbow stacker is  not only great for color sorting, it is also a fantastic open-ended play toy!

Color Sorting Maze

This wooden board has a magnetic wand and beads that can be sorted based on color! Great for fine motor skills too!

Color Sort the Objects

This game is a great way to learn color recognition while strengthening language development.

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