Teaching your students to identify and name colors helps with building category groups for things that are similar colors. You can teach color words to build MLU and adjectives. Using picture books about colors to work on teaching colors is a great way to increase engagement and opportunities to work on receptive and expressive language for colors. I gathered up my fave picture books about colors to use with your preschool and kindergarten speech therapy students.
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Picture Books About Colors for Identifying and Naming Colors
Here are some books about colors for preschool that focus on identifying and naming colors:
- My First Colors book is great for playing I spy, pointing to items by features and labeling items by their color on the page.
- My First Padded Book of Colours and Shapes because it has vibrant photos and also includes shapes.
Using books that have lots of similar color items makes it easy to play fun games like “I spy.”
Color Sensory Bin Activities for Speech Therapy
One way to streamline your planning for mixed groups or targeting a lot of speech and language goals is using sensory bins! Sensory bins pair well with books and increase engagements with your students. Use the color sensory bin activities for eight different colors with any of these color books in this blog post. You won’t about therapy because you will have the following tools included:
- Color sorting mats
- Sentence Strips
- Speech Sound Word Lists
- Parent handout
- Color printables
- AAC CORE boards
- Category Mats
- Noun-function Can You Find It? Mats
Children’s Books About Colors For Wh-Questions
For your students with listening comprehension and story element goals, here are some books about colors for preschool and kindergarten that incorporate narrative elements:
Bear Sees Colors by Karma Wilson is a great book that incorporates colors, rhyming, and easy wh-question opportunities. You can also target AAC CORE words for look, see, can, like, and with. After you read the story, you can pull out the color sensory bin to target one of the colors from the book or all of the colors! Go back through the book and have students find a picture that matches the color.
Curious Toddler A Colorful Book of Colors: A Picture Word Book About Colors for Kids is great for answering who, what, and where questions with animals and items on the pages. For example, there is a green color page with frogs on a log and a chameleon on a stick. You can ask “Who is on the log?” or “Who is on the stick?” and have students answer by adding the color.
Green is a Chile Pepper by Roseanne Greenfield Thong talks about colors while sharing about Latin culture and food. You can work on naming items with the colors and asking wh-questions such as “Who is wearing the orange marigolds?” or “Who is holding the orange plates?” This is a great book for your students who are bilingual as it incorporates Spanish words.
Color Books That Would Go With a Garden Theme
During the spring and summer months, working on colors is super easy with these flower-themed color books:
Planting a rainbow by Lois Ehlert is a great color book for preschool and kindergarten because it has vibrant photos, easy-to-read text, and incorporates colors through flowers.
Rainbows in bloom by Taylor and Michel Putnam is a great book to introduce different shades of colors like light or dark green. In the beautiful flower arrangements, there are hidden items that students have to hunt for on the page. For example, on the yellow and green flower page, there is a hidden light green spider, a kiwi, a green shell, and a yellow butterfly.
If you need more spring ideas for planning therapy, check out this blog post. You can also find a flower sensory bin in this blog post.
Books About Colors for Preschool and Kindergarten
A great book about colors that can be adapted for different speech and language goals is Dump Truck’s Colors: Goodnight, Goodnight Construction Site by Sherri Duskey Rinker. Not only can you target colors, but you can also work on wh-questions, verbs, adjectives, basic concepts, and vocabulary.
A Color of His Own by Leo Lionni is a great book to discuss the vocabulary word “change” while incorporating colors. You can talk about the chameleon’s problems, color changes with seasons, and naming animals. To work on pairing an adjective + noun, you have a lot of opportunities to add the color descriptive words to the animal on the page.
Color Books That Incorporates Emotions
For your mixed groups, you can use color books that incorporate emotions with these suggestions:
The Color Monster: A Story About Emotions by Anna Llenas helps children identify emotions through colors. One day the monster is confused because he is feeling many emotions at once. A little girl shows the color monster different emotions through colors.
A Little Spot of Emotion by Diane Alber has a set of colored books that talk about emotions. Have your students be emotion detectives and work on identifying emotions in the book. There is even a fun song that goes with the book!
What are Your Favorite Books About Colors for Speech Therapy?
Do you have a favorite book you use to teach colors in speech therapy? Share below the color books you use to teach colors to your students in the comments. Let me know how you use the color book to target goals. I Check out how to use shared book reading strategies in your speech therapy sessions!