[jayta]

I'm a little unsure of when to introduce harder colours to my DD. She knows the basics (blue, green, red, yellow, orange, brown, pink, purple, black). We are working on white and grey.

But for the in-between colours I've been saying it's a bluey-green, or a pinky-purple, as I didn't want to confuse her. Or should I just be saying its aqua, or turquoise, or teal (actually I'm a bit confused by all of these myself!), or magenta etc.

Any tips?

[Tesseract]

LOL sorry, but I think you're over-thinking it!

For what it's worth I use magenta with my DD. I also use teal, mustard, gray (I didn't think that one was 'hard'), whatever comes up really!

I don't think it's confusing. It's like using 'hard' words with kids - if you use them from when they're really little they're not hard words, they're just words.

We do talk about in between colours - "Oh look at this top, it's sort of in between blue and green, that's called teal."

[jayta]

Yes I know I'm over thinking

The reason is my DD is only 15months and that is why I'm hesitating. She can identify and name all of listed colours (she learnt them from using her crayons but she can name them in all other contexts as well). But given her age I was unsure about introducing more colours and whether it would be too much or whether she could handle the in-between colours too

Grey isn't hard - we just don't have a grey crayon so we haven't really talked about it before. Same for white.

[Jax12]

Oh wow - I am so bad at this in myself it hasn't even occurred to me to be teaching DS anything other than the basics...and he's 2...and 3 months... I might have to study some colour swatches and learn the proper names for colours so I can teach them to DS

[MissingInAction]

If she's asking what colour it is; she's probably ready to learn it so just use the real words.

[jayta]

Thank you for the advice, I will say it is in between ___ and ___ and its name is ____.

I was hesitant because as she is so young, I am not sure if she understands 'in between' etc. It was a genuine question so I don't get the sarcasm. I was just after advice from those more experienced

[Jax12]

I wasn't trying to be sarcastic! It's genuinely something I've not thought of and am bad at!

Good luck with your DD - hope she is better than me with her colours

[CherryAmes]

I honestly don't have a good vocabulary for colour and I wish i did! I know that scarlet and crimson are both red, but I don't know what sort of red they are. I think that it is great if you introduce a wider colour vocabulary; your toddler won't know which are more complex anyway.

[jayta]

I apologise Jax12. Sorry I didnt know how to take your comment

I had to research the difference between aqua, teal and turquoise myself just then.

I didnt even think of different shades of red

[Bluenomi]

I noticed that at 2 DD wouldn't pick up on the diffference between aqua and blue or green. But now she's almost 3 she's gets it and adds light and dark to colours herself.