At what age do children learn colours?

Many children start naming some colours between two and three, and it often takes a while before they use them reliably. Mixing them up is normal. Naming colours in everyday talk ("the red cup") helps more than testing.

Which shapes are included?

Sixteen: circle, square, triangle, rectangle, star, heart, diamond, crescent, oval, pentagon, hexagon, octagon, cube, cylinder, cross and arrow.

Does it work for a two-year-old?

Yes. When you set your child's age in the Parent Corner, younger children get fewer choices, slower games and more time before a hint.

Everything is free for 24 hours on a device with no sign-in. Then a grown-up can sign in with Google for a 7-day free trial, with no card needed.

Shape and colour games for toddlers

Colours and shapes are some of the first words toddlers use to describe the world: "red car", "round ball". Learning them is mostly about noticing, and naming what you notice. Two worlds in Toddler's Galaxy are built for exactly that: Rainbow Kingdom for colours and Shape Mountain for shapes.

Rainbow Kingdom: eleven colours

Rainbow Kingdom has a card for each of eleven colours: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, pink, brown, black, white and grey. Every colour comes with something familiar. Tap red and the device's voice says "Red! The colour of a juicy strawberry!". Linking a colour to an object a child already knows makes the word easier to hold on to.

Shape Mountain: sixteen shapes

Shape Mountain starts with the everyday shapes (circle, square, triangle, rectangle, star, heart) and climbs to diamond, crescent, oval, pentagon, hexagon, octagon, cross and arrow. It also has two solid shapes, the cube and the cylinder, so children can see that a box and a tin are shapes too.

Shape Mountain adds Tracing, so children can draw round a shape's outline with a finger, and Counting.

Games that ask the question differently

Knowing "blue" when you see it is different from finding blue among other colours. The same set of games appears in both worlds so the question keeps changing shape:

Quiz and Balloon Pop: hear a colour or shape and find it.
Memory: find matching pairs.
Match & Drop: "Drag the Yellow Heart!" Drag the shape the question asks for into the box, or tap it. Older children get questions about colour and shape together.
Catch: catch the right one as it falls.

In Games World, Whose Shadow? asks children to match a picture to its black outline, which is all about shape, and Mirror Painting paints both halves of a picture at once, a first look at symmetry.

Colour and shape play at home

Colour hunt. Pick a colour and find five things that are that colour, in the house or on a walk.
Snack sorting. Sort a bowl of fruit by colour before eating it.
Shape walk. Look for circles (wheels, clocks), rectangles (doors, books) and triangles (roofs, sandwiches cut corner to corner).
Mix paints. Mix yellow and blue, red and yellow, and name the new colour together.

There's also a colouring studio and printable activity sheets, for colouring with real crayons. See colouring pages for kids.

Shape and colour games for toddlers and preschoolers