Color Coded Children

When Emelie was a toddler, she naturally had her choice of sippy cups. She could chose whatever color suited her mood for the day. Once Teddy was old enough to use a cup, I always found him going after his sister’s. I decided to assign one color to each so that he could learn which was his.

Emelie picked (her reasoning is a funny story). Even at 13 or 14 months old, Teddy quickly learned that he was red, and Em was yellow.

As more babies came along, each child was assigned their own color. At each meal, the table setter places the cups around the table and that’s where the children sit for that meal (You sit where you sit, and you don’t throw a fit!).

Now color coding has expanded to our homeschool. The color that each child is shaded on the master schedule is the same color on their job charts which is the same color for their spiral notebooks and folders. This allows me to know at a glance who has left their work in the middle of the floor.

The younger children have towels with their names on them, but since the olders have worn theirs out, they now have color coded towels. If there is a blue towel on the floor, Emelie is the guilty one.

They have changed colors as their tastes have changed, and there is a learning curve with this. The children adapt quicker than I seem to. There are usually a couple months of, “Mom, that’s not my color any more.”