Teaching preschoolers with T21 about colors can be challenging. Many of these kids have difficulty generalizing. It’s one thing for them to understand that a banana is a banana. But abstract concepts such as colors are harder to grasp. A banana is yellow and a lemon is yellow? It takes time for kids to understand that a color is an attribute and not an object of itself.

However, the Montessori method of matching, selecting, and naming is really effective at helping children to generalize. Developing the skills of matching, selecting, naming, and reading has really opened the door of learning for Junior. So nerdy mom here has made these worksheets to help Junior learn his colors, generalize them to real objects, and read the written words :

Here are some sample pages:

In this 40 page set of worksheets, we cover the colors red, blue, yellow, orange, purple, green, pink, brown, and grey.

Here’s how to use them:

• Print the pages on card stock and then laminate. Have your child color and match using Crayola washable markers so he/she can use and reuse the pages until mastery is achieved.
• When first matching, help your child use just his/her fingers to point to the matching colors/objects. Once you are sure your child can match successfully, move on to using markers.
• To use the color cards, help your child match word to word, then have your child select a word you call out, then help him/her the match word card to the color card.
• On the “I can find” pages, first ask you child to find pictures by color. For example, say, “Can you point to something that is red? Let’s find all the things that are red.” Next, ask your child to name the color of a picture. For example, say, “What color is the umbrella?”
• Use the color cards to find things in the house that match the colors.

These are available at Teachers Pay Teachers.

For more ideas on teaching kiddos with T21 about colors, see this post: More Homeschool Activities for Preschoolers with Down Syndrome.

Next post, I’ll share our worksheets on shapes.