Start with a few primary colours or even only two colours, and then build up from there. Lots of commercially made board games are available to use for development of colour vocabulary. For example Pop-up Pirate, where you can give instructions to select different coloured swords.

Fishing - Cut out fish of different colours and attach a paper clip to each. Ask the child to catch a fish and then tell you what colour the fish is e.g. “The fish is yellow”.

Colouring – Give each other instructions for colouring in pictures using different colour pens/pencils e.g. “Colour the flower in yellow”.

Collect - Go around the house and collect objects of a particular colour. Make a display of the different objects, group together in their colours and talk about what these colours are.

Building - Have a selection of different coloured bricks and build a green tower, red tower etc. Give each other instructions for building a multi coloured tower e.g. “First a red brick and then a yellow brick”.

Activities for developing use of colour concepts