The Significance of Colors in Teaching.

All of us were born in this world with a different attraction to particular colors. This choices that we made when we were child is the result of influences form our genes, our past memories,religion, culture and surroundings. Colors are important to create significant mental pictures to learners especially children.

Children, are mostly attracted to bright colors and oftenly, children who does not have the ability to utter speeches may draw with various bright colors on a paper...Eager to know why they do that??

This is because.....Colors influence children's ambiance and how they feel. Bright colors indicate that children are oftentimes happy and free form problems...

Below are the meanings of Colors and how they affects children.

Shades of blue can actually slow down one's heart rate.

 Shades of red can actually increase one's heart rate

too much red can be downright distracting.

The use of black and white as a color scheme may lower IQ or make children more "dull"

The careful use of bold colors such as red or orange may increase IQ

 cool hues such as blue, are relaxing. 

Green is often associated with fertility.

Children likes yellow but tend to lose interest in the process of maturity.

As infants, we are drawn to or repulsed by certain colors.  We learn to communicate through color before our language skills are developed.  In fact, color connects both the right and left hemispheres of the brain allowing both gestalt and analytic learners to interact and master specific tasks.  There is a great deal of research that has captured how we interact with color, its impact on our decision making process and color's importance on our existence.  There are even websites dedicated to art, the interior decorating industry, and cultural issues with chat rooms dedicated to discussing "mood" colors.  The one questions most often asked and the least answered is, "What is the color of learning?"  Is there such a thing as a "learning color?"

Color, more than any of the other senses, draws on both symbolic and cognitive powers to affect learning. Writing in a provocative piece entitled "Hue and Eye," art historian, Louisa Buck probes the intimate relationship between the artist's signature color (such as Van Gogh's yellow) and his or her message and meaning. For Van Gogh, yellow became an obsession, and he often wrote about seeking the "high yellow note," a quest to paint life in scenes of both health and disease.  For Van Gogh, and for the youngsters in your classroom, color conveys more than just…color.

Color is everywhere, and imagining life without color is difficult and depressing.  Color is part of our vision, our language, our art and our folklore. It is part of what we learn and how we learn it.  Yet, as teachers, we know pitifully little about the use of color.  Should we know more?  Yes.

One might expect artists and poets to concern themselves with color, but what about teachers, administrator and facilities planners?  We have even more evidence to suggest an investigation of the use of color in all learning environments, especially when young, impressionable children are involved.  There's an important reason why.

The collective research over the past decade suggests that children today are developing awesome capabilities in their right cerebral hemispheres "at the expense" of the left-hemisphere skills.  Apparently, children have been immersed in visual imagery, such as television and video and are therefore quite adept at using the neural systems that carry this kind of information.  On the other hand, they have become weak in skills that demand left-hemisphere strengths, such as the ability to "translate a narrative from a book in to a visual image in the mind."  The home environment has changed substantially.  Video (right brain) is king, while books and stories (left brain language) have been neglected.  The result, for classroom teachers, may be children who have difficulty in taking the time or harnessing the skills involved in many language-heavy, left-brain draining activities. We seize the power of the visual and need to use color to stimulate learning.  By using color carefully, we may be able to use visual imagery to coax more left-brain language activity.  Admittedly, it is an inexact science; more of an art, but definitely worth a try!

For starters, try to use color to create a learning environment that is both aesthetically pleasing and useful for achieving the kinds of teaching and learning that you would want as well as the educators, administration and last, but not least, the students themselves.