So, I am a (mostly) blind special educator and have two question:

1. What is the age of the student?
2. Why are you teaching the student colors?

I would teach associative words and emotions with the colors relevant to the student's context. Like "Red is a color of passion, sometimes it means love and sometimes it means anger" or "Blue is a calm color that represents sadness."

I don't think that it is worth your or the student's time to focus on color for anything more than associative vocabulary.

Explaining colors as frequencies and bringing in sound might be a good way. Lightwaves at different frequencies produce different colors. Soundwaves at different frequencies produce different notes.

Well the question is actually coming from the special education teacher, but thought it’d be less confusing for me to phrase this way. She said she is teaching colors to the classroom, but it has to be accessible to the whole class and isnt entirely sure how to go about it. So this is more of consultation, but I would prefer to give a thorough answer. I think its definitely important that my student recognizes that color is a thing and it will come up in conversation throughout her whole life. She is about to be 11. She’s very bright, but has had a lot of learned helplessness up to this stage in her life. I like how you related it to feelings and emotion. Thank you for the help.

Totally blind guy here who lost his vision very early in life, and I have no memory of vision, so I can relate. First off, don't link color to emotions, this is just confusing. Also, using a color wheel might not work. I learned one in school, and then I forgot it soon after. Make it practical and teach the student to use colors in a practical way.

For example, her Mom's car might be Green, and that is a useful thing to know when telling someone what her Mom's car looks like when waiting for a ride. As a blind person, color has no real use for me. I only really worry about it when trying to match clothes or describing something to a sighted person.

I'm in the special education field. I disagree with the concept of teaching colors by relating them to tactile things, emotions, and stuff like that. Colors can be explained using a color wheel. Then through experiences the child can learn the color of things.
A red apple is not in love. A red apple is not hot. And apples are not always red, even when it's called a red apple there are different tones of red and additional colors on the apple.
Examples of possible lesson plans:
1. Using a raised line coloring book with images to color things with specific colors.
2. Using a color identifyer, going on a scavenger hunt looking for specific colors inside the house.
3. Labeling clothes with color tags for the child to identify their clothes.

wow excellent for you, saying that as a 28 year old blind man who a lot of the time still has no idea what colour means.

When I had tried to talk to people about colour this is a sample conversation that happened like probably over 20 times.

You: So you want to learn about colours?

Me: That's right.

You: So let's start with black, black is completely dark it's probably what you see.

Me: Ok got it.

You: Now let's try red. Peaches are red and some apples are red, and beef is red.

Me: You know, I went to the very same kindergarten with you.

First are they completely blind?

If so, colour can be based on your other senses and feelings.

Associate certain things with the colour so they have an idea of what the colour entails.

Red: let them touch something warm or rough, say when they feel anger or pain if it was a colour it would be red, let them eat red velvet cake, etc

Blue: give them a glass of cool water, sadness, give them something soft, put on ocean sounds or birds chirping

There are many other things for every colour, make them create an idea of what colour is based on other experiences.