We love doing colorful activities at home. Toddlers need so much exposure and practice naming colors. An easy way to help them level up is by playing with colorful things, like rainbow cereal!
This provides you with tons of natural opportunities to say color names and point out different colors even if your toddler is resistant to learning.
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Looking for an organized guide of fun, easy activities to do with your toddler that also encourages their growth and development?
I’ve created a 3-month activity planner just for busy parents like you! The plan includes 65 detailed, simple, and stress-free activities including: arts and crafts, sensory play, motor skills, and STEM–all using easy-to-find supplies.
Let me help make planning activities for your toddler easy, so you can skip the stress and get straight to the fun!
One of the first activities I did with my oldest daughter (who was 20 months at the time) was a color sorting sensory bin. She was just starting to get the hang of identifying colors and loved matching different colored items to these colored bowls.
To this day (Elena is now three), she still loves sorting objects by color and pointing out things that match the colors she’s wearing.
Since we’ve been playing with cereal a lot recently (gotta use up that big bag before it gets too stale!), color sorting with cereal was a natural activity to segue into once the initial excitement over playing with a new sensory bin started to die down.
Taste-Safe Color Sorting for Young Toddlers
My youngest is 14 months and still loves licking everything.
The rug. The grass. The bathtub. The sliding door.
Nothing is safe.
So the great thing about color sorting with cereal versus pom poms is that I don’t have to worry about her swallowing something humans aren’t supposed to be eating.
Can you imagine having to check your baby’s diapers for a swallowed pom pom? *shudders*
I love these shots of Lia sneaking up to the sensory bin while Elena sorts cereal. It’s like the calm before the storm. All those nicely sorted, neatly lined up bowls are moments away from being overturned.
It really wasn’t that bad 😉 The girls learned to share.
As long as Lia had free access to the main tub of cereal, she was happy. And as long as Lia didn’t mess up Elena’s color sorting, Elena was happy.
Elena tried to teach Lia the color purple. It seemed like she was understanding it at first, but then she ended up throwing a yellow one in there, so yeah, she’s not quite ready for color sorting yet!
But she was pretty happy to eat all the colors!
Your Turn to Try Color Sorting with Cereal
Color sorting with cereal is a cheap and easy way to get kids to level up their color sorting skills and practice naming colors.
(For tips on teaching colors to your kids, read the beginning of my post here.)
Any multi-colored cereal will work for this activity, but of course, o-shaped ones like Fruit Loops are our favorite as they’re easy for little fingers to grab.
We use these colored bowls for sorting, but you can also use sheets of colored paper if you that’s all you have on hand.
I don’t want you to fall into the trap of reading and pinning and never doing. Go try this activity out with your toddler right now. (or as soon as they wake up from their nap!)
Even if all you have is brown cereal. Brown is most definitely a color, OK?
Looking for an organized guide of fun, easy activities to do with your toddler that also encourages their growth and development?
I’ve created a 3-month activity planner just for busy parents like you! The plan includes 65 detailed, simple, and stress-free activities including: arts and crafts, sensory play, motor skills, and STEM–all using easy-to-find supplies.
Let me help make planning activities for your toddler easy, so you can skip the stress and get straight to the fun!
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