Teach Your Child Colors: Red Day

This series of articles is designed to help parents of toddlers who are looking for innovative ideas to help their children learn their colors. This article's topic is the color Red. Your toddler will enjoy the food, activities, and field trip associated with the color red. It is more fun to invite a play partner to share in your toddler's journey of discovery. The day is broken into four parts, setting the stage, the activity, the food, and the field trip. It is designed to create a learning "event" that will be as much fun for parents as it is for the kids.

Set the Stage

Build excitement for the day by telling your child they are going to have a friend visit for Red Day. Consider buying or laying out special red clothes for the exciting day. Make it a special event for your toddler.

The Activity

Start by having your toddler color the red portion of a black and white rainbow outline. The colors of the rainbow run, top to bottom, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple.

Next, go through old magazines with them, cutting out anything red and gluing the pieces to a piece of red construction paper creating a Red Day Collage. Save all your color day pages and take plenty of photographs so you can create a "Color Day Book" with your child.

The Food

Have your child gradually add drops of red food coloring to white frosting to help them discover the different hues of the color. Next use the frosting on sugar cookies to create a delicious, child-created dessert for your picnic.

The Field Trip

Find a local berry farm or fruit stand and take a shopping trip. Your child will enjoy picking out all of the red fruits and vegetables. Have a picnic to include watermelon and strawberries from the fruit stand/berry patch, summer sausage, cheese and crackers, red juice, and frosted sugar cookies for dessert to round out a wonderful day of play and learning.