Color as a Noun: A New Technique to Teach Children

Parents realize that their child’s ability to recognize color is just as important as mastering ABC’s and simple words. Educators also use color recall to detect possible developmental problems, or color vision deficiencies (color blindness) when teaching preschoolers. (In the United States, about 7 percent of the male population – or about 10.5 million men – and 0.4 percent of the population female has a color vision deficiencies. The most common being red–green color blindness—difficulties in discriminating red and green hues).

Color ID can still be a hurdle for children in some instances, regardless of any learning/health issues. Recent findings suggest that a majority of parents and educators have been approaching the learning process incorrectly for sometime.

An article published in the July issue of Scientific American

proposes a simple language based solution—that color names should be used as nouns rather than adjectives when describing an object. The transposing of words at the inception of color teaching delivered improved comprehension significantly.

As adults we see color (usually) as a straightforward observation rooted in years of visual understanding. From a child’s point-of-view it can be hard to understand that an object that is burgundy vs. an object that is crimson, are still categorized as “red”.

To encourage better color matching recall, the solution is an elementary one. Color names should always precede the named object being referenced. For example, “That is a red ball,” not “That ball is red.” This simple technique will promote positive results to reassure any preschooler taking their first steps toward color naming.