What colors did your child learn first?

[Sillygirl]

There are a set of rules that linguists have observed that hold true for all languages: if a language has two color terms, they will be black and white. If there are three, it's black, white and red. Four color terms in a language is always black, white, red and - I think - green. It goes on like that. (I know English has a kajillion, but other languages apparently don't.) Anyway, Jonathan is learning his colors, but he knows the weirder ones. When we ask him what color something is, he guesses in a particular sequence: "Orange! Black! Yellow!" This week he added blue. If he sees an orange truck or a yellow bus, he identifies them correctly. He's got no interest in red or green, and blue took a while. I've wondered a little if he's red-green colorblind; not as though there's much I could do there anyway. Anyway, do most kids start with the primary colors? Do they tend to follow the same rules as languages? What colors did your kids start with?

[lilycat88]

Susanna is clueless on the primary colors for the most part. Her first color was yellow and her second was purple. I think she knows blue as well. We've not worked with her on colors at all so she's picked it up on her own. I just started really talking about colors of things last night in fact.

ETA: Duh. Never post while multitasking at work. Yellow IS a primary color. I swear...I didn't flunk 2nd grade science.


Jamelin
Mom to Susanna born 6/29/2004

[o_mom]

I'm not sure what color DS1 learned first. However, when DS2 was in therapy, DS1 was around 21 mos. He knew several colors then. The therapist for DS2 remarked as an aside that that was somewhat advanced. She said the 'norm' for that age is that they know the name of one color and think that everything is that color.

I think that naming colors may come later than say sorting or recognizing colors. DS1 could sort red, white and blue poker chips before he could really name them. He also could pick out a particular color before he could name it. For example if there were six blocks and you asked him to get the yellow one he could, but if you asked him first what color it was he couldn't say yellow, KWIM?

At almost three now, DS1 is pretty good with most colors. Navy blue still gives him trouble (thinks it's black, but then again I have to hold my socks next to the dog to see if they are black or blue) and any odd color (magneta - is it pink or red?).

[MarisaSF]

Jazzy's first color that she knew was orange. She liked the fruit and then she liked an orange bead on her bead rollercoaster thing. Then we talked about the orange in the sunset. The sunset colors of orange, pink, and blue were her first three. I remember her first noun-adjective combo was "pink ball." Tan was another of the first. I used "tan" to describe all the non-color colors. (Perils of suburbia. :P) She used "tan" to describe her hair color which is neither yellow nor brown.

Anyway... Jonathan is not alone. He's in good company actually! :)
I would guess that "red" and "green" are harder (and less fun) to say. "Yellow" is a particulary magical word to say, I think! Yelllooooow!

[kelly ann]

DS learned purple first. His daycare provider at the time said she noticed this was common and thought it was becuase it was a fun and easy word to say.

[kaylinsmommy2]

Kaylin learned yellow, orange, and blue first. I can't remember the order that she learned it, though. I think she learned colors from the rainbow (from the Signing Times song and also from rainbow week at daycare) first. She only very recently learned pink, black, and white. I don't think she knows brown yet.

As for the red-green colorblindness, does it run in your family?

To answer your other question about how children learn their colors, I think studies show that there are individual differences. My guess is that it depends on what colors parents/caregivers talk to their children about - for example, I rarely talk about the color black with Kaylin.

I think this links directly to a PubMed reference:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=15584806&dopt=Citation

If not, here's the info:
Roberson D, Davidoff J, Davies IR, Shapiro LR. The development of color categories in two languages: a longitudinal study. J Exp Psychol Gen. 2004 Dec;133(4):554-71.

Caroline
mommy to Kaylin 6/5/04

http://tickers.baby-gaga.com/t/bunbunadb20040605_-9_Kaylin+is+now.png[/img][/url]

and one on the way, due 2/26/07

[squimp]

It's funny, DD learned black and white last. For the longest time, she confused black and white. Interesting because in some ways they are similar: black is the absence of color and white is all colors. And we talk about black, because a black cat. Sometimes she would call her a white cat though. We also have a grey cat, and she learned grey later than other colors, but before she could keep black and white straight.

I've also heard that kids have a hard time distinguishing red/green at first. DD did, but now she has them figured out too.

[sarahsthreads]

I think Carrie learned blue first, but thanks to the Signing Time rainbow song she could correctly identify all the rainbow colors by 18 months. If I'm remembering right, she got blue, red, yellow and green pretty quickly, and it took a little longer to recognize purple and orange (those were blue and red, respectively). Pink happened a month or so after those, and very recently we've been talking about "aqua", because one of my favorite shirts is aqua and she asks "mommy blue shirt? mommy green shirt?" when I wear it. (I would normally call it "teal", but the Blue's Clues colors episode calls it "aquamarine", so I thought it might be less confusing to stick with the shortened version of that.)

However, she still tends to mix up black and white. She has a pair of white sandals that she insists on calling her "black shoes". Although she does know that her black crayon is black. DH was wondering (jokingly of course) whether she was black-white colorblind, but I figure she'll get those when they're interesting to her.

Sarah :)

[saschalicks]

His first one was red, then blue, yellow, green.

He now knows red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, black, brown, white and sometimes pink.

ETA: the above is thanks to Signing Time and daycare.

[rlu]

>At almost three now, DS1 is pretty good with most colors.
>Navy blue still gives him trouble (thinks it's black, but then
>again I have to hold my socks next to the dog to see if they
>are black or blue)

LOL! I am always asking DH if something is blue or black. Never thought to call the dog (he often comes quicker than DH).

DS doesn't talk much, but I think "purple" popped out a couple of days ago. His big success yesterday was adding the "t" sound at the end of "hot". And he pointed to me and said "momma" and then to DH and said "da" which he rarely does, I cried.

[o_mom]

>>At almost three now, DS1 is pretty good with most colors.
>>Navy blue still gives him trouble (thinks it's black, but
>then
>>again I have to hold my socks next to the dog to see if they
>>are black or blue)
>
>LOL! I am always asking DH if something is blue or black.
>Never thought to call the dog (he often comes quicker than
>DH).
>

It really helps if the dog is black, although a navy blue dog would work too. ;-)

[hez]

Payton learned Blue like Thomas, Green like Percy, Red like James, in that order.

We picked up Orange, then Yellow, then Purple after that. Black and White got mixed in there somewhere with the Orange, Yellow & Purple.

I guess we followed the rules of Thomas, vs. anything scientific ;)

[rlu]

Funny!

But blue dogs aren't really blue except Blue from Blue's clues (and some really old cartoon dog I vaguely remember from childhood).

Dear dog is black 'n' white, except where the muzzle is greying just slightly.

[crl]

I think red came first (but in Chinese, not English). Then he learned black and brown in English. He LOVED wearing DH shoes, which were black and brown. So there were a lot of conversations about which shoes he was wearing and would he bring the black shoes to DH, etc.

[Sillygirl]

Very interesting abstract - I'll pull the full reference at work one of these days. Thanks!

And red-green colorblindness doesn't run in either of our families, but I forget the penetrance and occurence of spontaneous mutations. Thanks to all the responses, though, I doubt I'll think much about it for now. This has been one of the most interesting things so far to observe in Jonathan's development. Toss in some genetics and linguistics and I'm in hog heaven.

[aa2mama]

DS learned green first then blue and orange. Next he learned yellow, then black, gold, etc. He's having a hard time with red.

[KrisM]

Orange here first, too. But, now he knows them all.

[Aunt to sweet baby boy]

Avi knows the color blue and can usually identify it correctly. He also sometimes knows the color yellow.

Ilana, aka Nana to my sweet nephew Avi

http://lilypie.com/pic/060403/hfNw.jpg[/img]http://b2.lilypie.com/h2bbm7/.png[/img][/url]

[RwnMayfair]

At the moment, everything is orange. ;) He knows the names of the other colors, but if you ask him what color something is, he'll tell you it's orange. ;)

-Melissa

Taran, November 20
Elowen, August 20

http://lilypie.com/pic/060524/WClp.jpg http://b3.lilypie.com/ddVzm4/.png
http://lilypie.com/pic/060524/flZ8.jpg http://b1.lilypie.com/KqMam4/.png

[HannaAddict]

My little guy started out with blue, then red, then white. I would have to look and see what if I wrote it down in Outlook or something since the other colors just came fast and furious after those. We were pretty surprised when he started out with his colors since we hadn't focused on it. I think he started with blue since he had a blue hat that he liked to wear and that is the reference point that he used for pointing and yelling "blue." He likes green these days at the wise old age of 29 months.

Kimberly