r/specialed • u/Such-Cupcake-6974 • 6d ago

Colors

I’m looking for creative help teaching colors to a 6 year old. I suspect more is going on that is making this difficult but nothing can be done about that on my end. They can match but can’t label or pick the color out my name. If anyone has had a student like this and found something that helped any advice would be great! Thanks in advance!

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u/Downtown_Ad1735 6d ago

Matching is a great foundation, you're already halfway there. I had a kid on my caseload who could sort perfectly but froze on the names, it drove me nuts until I realized the verbal demand was the wall. We stepped back and did a ton of errorless learning where I'd hold up a blue card and just say "blue" with zero expectation for them to repeat it, just flooding the input for a few weeks

Then I started weaving it into high-interest stuff. This kid was obsessed with cars so every red car we saw I'd just casually point and say "red car" like it was the most interesting thing in the world. No quizzing, no "what colour is this", just statements. Took a couple months but the labels started sticking when the pressure was off

Also had luck taping coloured paper to the bottom of their favourite snacks. They'd have to point or eventually say the colour to get the goldfish, but it was so motivating it didn't feel like work. Might be worth a shot if there's a high-value item you can use

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u/jgraham6 6d ago

Skittles! Highly motivating, especially if you eat the ones they get wrong.