Colors Unit for Preschoolers
Colors are all around us and offer so many delicious ideas for exploration, adventure and learning.
Today’s unit is perfect for preschoolers and children a little younger and older with a few simplifications or additions.
Let’s dive in!
Color Unit Ideas for Preschool
Our units often start with a book and a field trip – here are two ideas for field trips to get the wheels spinning about possibilities.
2 Color Field Trip Ideas
A field trip is always a great way to bring a topic to life – to draw connections between what you’re learning at home or in the classroom.
These two field trip ideas are ways to draw attention to the colors all around us.
1. Color car hunt
This is a fun idea to do any time of the year with kids who are excited about or learning about transportation.
Before the Field Trip
Prepare color swatches (paint chips work great!) or color cards for each kid to reference on the walk.
Read a book about colors or talk about different color names and then introduce the idea of hunting for colored cars. Show them the color swatches or color cards they will be using during the field trip.
During the Field Trip
Head outside with our color cards in hand and a plan to look for cars. My toddlers each picked a color to look for first.
From there we alternated between looking for that color and labeling the color of cars we saw. For the most part, we searched for the color Red.
We also talked about shades. Our color cards have different shades for many of the colors which gave us the opportunity to discuss shades of colors.
after the field trip
- Tie your colors into play back at home in the classroom. Add your color swatches to your block area in a basket next to a collection of toy cars. Don’t force the idea of matching, but have them available and support your kids if they are interested in using them with the toy cars.
2. Flower colors walk
Spring is the perfect time for a Flower themed color hunt around the neighborhood to further deepen the early interest in flowers.
Before the Field Trip
Introduce the idea before you go.
We read Planting a Rainbow by Lois Ehlert and then went back through the book reviewing the different colors we saw. As we identified each color, I drew a corresponding circle of the color on a piece of paper for each of them.
During the Field Trip
*Papers in hand, we headed out into the neighborhood to see what we could spot.
*Consider taking a photo of each flower you find or inviting your child to take a photo.
after the field trip
- Print photos of the flowers and arrange an invitation to draw at the table.
- Talk about planting your own plants or flowers.
- Sort your flowers by color
Color Activity Ideas
Learning colors is a learning goal for preschoolers. Field trips like the ones described below and activities like the ones below are some fun ways to explore color.
One of our favorites was color week. It was a week of color and fun that got my preschoolers excited about color and led to other explorations afterwards.
Color Week Resources
More Color Themed Activities
Literacy Activities
- Rainbow Journal Start a Rainbow journal and use for the entire Color Week or throughout the year.To make ours I simply stapled together several pieces of paper that were folded in half. On the front, each of my kids wrote “Rainbow Book” following the example I wrote out for them on a piece of paper.Next, they turned to the first page and wrote RED. Then they used a collection of Red art materials to draw on the other page whatever they wanted.The following day we provided Orange materials and so on.
(Literacy) - Read Books about Colors Here are my favorite picture books for each color of the rainbow.
Art Activities
- Collaborative Rainbow This art project will last you the entire Preschool Color Week or over the course of a few days. Start by drawing a rainbow outline on a large piece of paper. Hang this on a wall in your art area or classroom.Each day present art materials for that day’s color of the day. Monday, we added Red Gummed Art Tape to the first stripe.
(Creativity + Social Skills)
STEM Activities
- Play PRESS HERE: The Game. This is such a fun game for exploring the way colors and patterns work together. It is great for building color awareness and reasoning skills, as well as imagination.