Learn Colors with Ramps and Car Rainbows

My kids love to play with cars and trains and things that move. I set up this car activity to help my toddler learn colors. Launch the cars down the ramp to create a car rainbow. So much fun!

Learn Colors with Ramps and Car Rainbows

Learning color names requires repetition. My son learned his colors after we made a toy rainbow one day. He sorted nearly all of the toys in his room into a giant toy rainbow. 4 years later, I took the same idea and applied it to the cars my 2 year old daughter was playing with.

You’ll Need:

• A collection of cars in a variety of colors
• A ramp
• Parking area (we used a large whiteboard)

Create a parking area for the cars. This will be where your child creates the car rainbow. I used a large whiteboard (really tileboard from the hardware store). I wrote the names of the colors on the whiteboard. (Lily “helped” write the colors names, too.)  You could use pieces of colored paper to label your rainbow rows instead of writing on a whiteboard.

Set up a ramp near the parking area. For today’s ramp, I cut up a cardboard box and placed it on a kid’s chair. Make a ramp out of whatever materials you have – train tracks, a cardboard tube, a box, a board, a piece of cardboard, or any flat surface that you can incline.

Race the cars down the ramp. Talk about their colors.

When the cars reach the bottom of the ramp, park them in the correct row. This car is red. Where do the red cars go? What color is this car? Park the blue car next to the other blue cars. The orange car goes next to the other orange cars.

Continue racing and parking cars until you have a lovely car rainbow.

While you are exploring ramps, why not conduct a kinetic energy experiment? It’s perfect for toddlers and preschoolers.

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This post was originally posted on August 29, 2016.