Color activities for kindergarten! Engaging activities and ideas for early learners to practice color recognition.
Color Activities for Kindergarten
Recognizing basic colors is a skill all kindergarten students need to master. The best way to practice color recognition is with fun color theme activities. My lesson plans during the first few weeks of kindergarten always include color activities. We sing songs to practice color words, read children’s books about colors, practice color sorting and color matching, and sometimes even do science experiments!
Color Centers
Adding color activities to your daily centers is a perfect way for young children to practice color recognition. Here are a few colors themed activities for you!
Color Sorts
I use these color cards for a few different activities. For this color activity, students practice sorting objects by color. If your sweeties are able, you can add a response sheet where they practice writing color names or they can label the object.
You can also sort objects! Have your students sort buttons, pom poms, counting bears, blocks, popsicle sticks, the list goes on and on.
Roll and Color
Pocket dice are so much fun! I add cards with different colors and make a few copies for a quick center. Roll the dice… color a box on your paper. Easy!
Color Sentences
This is a center activity that I model during whole group and eventually add to our pocket chart literacy station. These simple sentences are a hit! Plus, I re-use the color cards from the color sorting activity.
You can also have students write color sentences with these no prep pages! These make a fun little color activity for morning work!
Dough Activity
Playdoh is an important part of a child’s first few days in an early education classroom… well at least in my kindergarten classroom! They were always so excited to see playdoh sitting on their desk when they walked in first thing in the morning. So of course, adding color mats to their center time with playdoh was a no brainer! I also kind of love Playdoh for working on those fine motor skills.
The dough color mats are included in this unit:
Board Games
These simple color games are tons of fun and perfect for your kindergarten or preschool classroom!
I use Bump games ALL YEAR LONG! I have Bump games to practice various math and literacy skills. I introduce Bump for the first time using the color themed board games!
This fun game is so simple! It is perfect for teaching colors. Students spin the color wheel and place their game piece on the correct color. There are 12 different color games so I just switch them out so it stays exciting!
Here is another simple color game. This board game is a great way to focus on primary colors.
Puzzles
Puzzles stay in my center rotation for several months! These matching color puzzles are great kindergarten and preschool activities.
A Few More Fun Ideas!
Riddle of the Day
Students guess a new color every day with these fun riddles! I post the daily riddle on the board and we work together to make guesses.
You can read more about how I use classroom riddles to teach text details and inferring in this blog post:
You could also have a color scavenger hunt or play an I Spy game, based on which color was revealed. Just another fun way to talk about colors!
Directed Drawing
Star of the Day directed drawing is one of my favorite things to do in kindergarten. We start this activity early in the school year to help students construct illustrations that carry meaning. This is the perfect opportunity to help students begin choosing colors that make sense and using them in the right place. So, we aren’t going to use the color green to color the sky (unless there is about to be a tornado I suppose) but rather color the grass green. You can snag the Star of the Day directed drawing for FREE at the end of the post.
Color Experiment
If you are looking to do an experiment with colors, this video about from SciShow Kids is great! It is all about color mixing.
Favorite Books about Color
There are several great books about color! Here are few of my favorites.
Have so much fun with these color activities for kindergarten! Don’t forget to snag the free file below! Simply, add your name and email address. The free file will be sent to your inbox.