How can a teacher teach about colours to children with visual impairment in an inclusive setting?

Children with visual impairment (blind) have no sense of sight and therefore they rely on other senses to learn and understand the environment they are in. A teacher can therefore help learners with no sense of sight to use the other senses such as touch, taste, hearing and smell to learn different concepts in an inclusive setting.
When teaching the concept of colours in an inclusive setting, the teacher can do the following:
Use sense of touch to describe colours; a teacher can use certain objects that are commonly used to describe certain colours. For instance, the teacher can have an object such as soil, and let the children touch it and tell them that soil is always brown, let children touch some green leaves or blades of grass and explain to them that leaves and grass are always green. Let them know that green feels like live part of plants because when plants are green it means they are alive. However, the learners can also touch dead dry lives and feel the difference and let them know that is how dry or dead leaves feel live and that when the leaves are dry, they are always brown. To describe blue colour a teacher can let the learners put their hands in cool water and tell them that water is blue. Let them know that small amount of water is like light blue and when large amount of water like pool, ocean and lakes are deep blue. A teacher can also use heat to describe colour red. A teacher can related red colour with heat. Let the learners know that fire or any other type of flame is hot and it represented by red colour. Also a teacher can tell learners that objects such as iron and concrete wall are hard and strong and they are always grey but they are not live things.
Use sense of smell to describe colours; the teacher can give learners mint leaves to smell and tell them that it smells fresh and clean and it represents green. Let them know that green things smell fresh and fresh represents cleanliness. The teacher can also use things such as pepper or spicy food to describe colour red. Let the learners know that when they smell spicy food and pepper and feel hot is as well as feeling red when they feel heat around them. Let them know that smell of pepper is hot and hot things are always red. A teacher can give the learners oranges to smell and tell them that oranges are described as tropical and tropical fruits are always orange colour just like the sun. Let them also smell ripe bananas and tell them ripe bananas represent colour yellow. Tell them that yellow foods are always bright and bright colours represent happiness. It is also important to let children know though flowers may have same smell but they are never of the same colours. Flowers represent different colours. For instance, rose flowers smell the same but we have different colours of rose flowers such as white rose, red rose, yellow roses, pink roses etc.
Use sense of hearing to describe colours, the teacher can relate certain sounds with some colours. For instance sirens are always used on fire brigades vehicles, police cars and on ambulances to draw people’s attention. A teacher can let the learners know that the sirens are red in colour and its sound represents red colour. Let them know that sirens should make them think or red because red is a colour which is mostly used to draw people’s attention. Also when they hear the sound of rustling leaves they should think of green because leaves are always green. They can also relate the sound of storm and thunder with falling rain as colour grey because when it rains, the sky is always grey and it makes things in the environment look grey too. The sound of moving water such as river and streams can represent blue color. Let them know that blue is always calm and cool.
Using sense of taste to describe colours, the teacher can let children taste spicy food and associate it with red colour. When they taste the food and feel hot in the mouth, let them it represents colour red. Also tell them that pepper is always hot when tested and it therefore represents red. They can also taste milk and let them know that milk is lime and lime things such as milk represent white colour.

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Smwenje answered the question on November 18, 2018 at 09:35