Best Books for Teaching Colors and Numbers

I received these Priddy books for teaching basic concepts and skills for free from Moms Meet (momsmeet.com) to use and post my honest opinions. Compensation for this post was provided and this page may contain affiliate links.

The best books are books that teach a primary concept and also address secondary concepts without you or your toddler even realizing you’re learning about it.

Priddy Books are a favorite in our house; much of Camden’s early vocabulary can be attributed to the First 100 Words series!

I received this set of early learning Priddy books to try out and share with you, and I’ve got activities planned to go with each book. So add them to your Christmas list – or just put them in your Amazon cart now – and plan some fun, educational activities to help your toddler master her basic concepts and skills! These are the 5 best books for teaching colors, numbers and basic skills.

Books to Teach Colors

I was super excited to see the Alphaprints: Colors book, because we have the ABC Alphaprints book and love it! You guys, this book of colors is the best color-concept book I’ve ever seen, because:

1. The pictures are bright, colorful and engaging.
2. The pictures are made from other objects; for example, the yellow snake is made from a slinky, which leads to conversation, extra vocabulary and creativity development.
3. There are fingerprint textures on the pages. Stimulating more than one sense helps to learn concepts more deeply.
4. The words are simple, but they encourage new vocabulary and creativity. Instead of ‘orange monkey in an orange tree,’ the book takes it a step further and reads ‘Orange orangutan in an orange jungle.’

So, obviously, read the book first with your child. The more familiar your child is with a book, the more he can apply it to an activity or learning game.

Simple Color Activities to go with Alphaprints: Colors

• Let your toddler choose a page. Read the page, talk about the color, and the go on a color hunt. Say ‘the snake is yellow. Can you find something yellow in this room?’
• Practice matching colors: grab some magnetic tiles, blocks, counters, or pieces of construction paper. As you read each page, have your toddler match the tile or paper that is the same color as the book.

Books to Teach Animals:

Animals are fun and motivating to toddlers. They love to learn what animals sound like, look like and feel like. The Bright Baby Touch and Feel Baby Animals book is great for teaching all three aspects, and even better if you pair it with the box set that also includes zoo animals, pets and farm animals! The box set are definitely the best books for teaching animals – your child will learn names, sounds, and the animals feel to touch.

Simple Activities to Help Teach Animal Concepts:

Read the books more than once. Practice animal names and sounds each time.

• Choose one concept (sound, name or feel). On each page, before you read, ask ‘What is this animal?’ or ‘What does a cat say?’ Each time you read, you can choose a different concept.
• Print a large picture of a farm, zoo and home. Then print photos of animals from the book. Show an animal and ask it’s name; ‘This animal says ‘moo.’ What is it? and after your toddler tells you, ask: ‘Where does a cow live?’ and have him put the picture of the cow on the farm photo.

Books to Teach Numbers

Like I said as the beginning, the First 100 Words series was a HUGE hit when Cam was really little. Now we are working on counting; he is pretty solid with ‘1,2,3,4’ and we’re working our way toward 10. The First 100 Numbers book just became an important learning resource for our little homeschool pre-preschool journey.

The book has photos for numbers 1-10, and then it has lots of counting opportunities and practice. The important thing to remember about this book: it’s not meant to always be read cover-to-cover. Skip around, count what interests them, choose groups of objects that have the number of items they’re working on. So for us, I’m purposely pointing out the groups of 5 so we can practice those.

The pictures are also common objects, like colored pencils, strawberries, etc that help grow vocabulary secondarily.

Ways to Use The First 100 Numbers:

• Use the page with 20 candies as a counting mat. Grab candies or cheerios or counters and place them on top of the candy photos as you practice counting to 20 (or however high you’re teaching).
• Choose a number, like 5. Find groups of 5 objects in the book. Then go on a ‘group of 5’ hunt around the room.

The Perfect Preschool Book

My absolute favorite book in the set of best books for teaching with is My First Farm! We are doing preschool activities at home, and this book is so perfect.

It features reusable play pieces, and each page asks the preschooler to do a different activity – matching mamas to baby animals, matching colors, finding the food each animal makes, completing patterns, etc.

There are 10 different activities, and I’m planning to use this book as a morning introduction. We’ll do our weather frog, and then we’ll do a page out of this book before our guided learning activity for the day.

Also, I just saw on Amazon that Priddy Books also has a My First Grocery Store! I’m grabbing that one now!

If you want to follow along on our preschool homeschool journey and see how we use all of the books, make sure you subscribe to the blog or follow me over on Instagram!