Foreign Language Color Games

Activities for Teaching Kids Colors in French, Spanish, ESL and More

Jun 2, 2008

Teach children how to identify colors in a foreign language with fun vocabulary games, stories, and activities.

Use the power of play to explore colors in French, Spanish, German, ESL or any other language. Motivate beginning language learners with a rainbow of active, multisensory games and activities.

Introduce Colors in the Target Language

Use immersion techniques to model the new colors vocabulary. Visual aids can be as simple as pieces of colored construction paper, or as complex as works of art from the target culture. Color songs and rhymes are effective and culturally appropriate as well.

Listening Comprehension Games

Speaking is not required at the early stage of language acquisition, so focus on listening instead. In the Fly Swatter Game, provide two players with a clean fly swatter and an array of color visuals spread out on the floor. Call out a color and see who can swat it first. Keep score to determine the champion swatter. Color-Shape Bingo and the game of Twister (Hasbro) are other motivating color-themed games.

Total Physical Response (TPR) Activities

The fun and effective TPR approach developed by Dr. James J. Asher encourages students to physically respond to teacher commands. Make a simple request such as, “Touch something red.” Kids will love the opportunity to be up on their feet in search of something no one else has found. Make the activity more complex by telling children to do various actions such as jump, spin, clap, or roar like a lion if they are wearing a particular color.

Hullabaloo by Cranium

Hullabaloo is an outstanding TPR game. Mats with various colors, shapes, and basic vocabulary are spread out on the floor. An electronic device instructs players to spin to an orange mat, hop to a triangle, or zoom to a food. Cranium’s Hullabaloo can be purchased in either English or Spanish. Teachers of other languages can develop their own homemade versions of this fun, active game.

Graphing Colors

Enrich language learning with a little content. Kids can create human bar graphs depicting their favorite color, or the color of their clothes, hair or eyes. Surprise your students by allowing them to graph -- and then eat -- the colored candies in packs of Skittles, M&M’s, Smarties, or Sprees. (Just be aware of allergies.)

Speaking Games

Once kids are comfortable hearing and identifying colors in the target language, it’s time for them to speak. Spread out a path of colored paper stepping stones and send kids on a "Rainbow Walk," reciting the colors as they walk the path. Play games of Candy Land (Milton Bradley) in small groups, encouraging players to identify colors out loud. Go Fish and Tic Tac Toe are other effective partner and small group color activities.

Reading about Colors

After aural-oral color activities, use children’s books to introduce the written word. Use the appropriate target language versions of classics such as:

These books can act as springboards for creative writing pattern practice modeled off the original text.

Coloring

Color-by-number activities are a fun way to help kids independently read colors in the target language. Choose from the multitude of free coloring pages online and create target language color-by-number activities. Translate the code for geometric, mosaic surprise pictures for even more motivation.

Use games, movement, songs, books, and crayons to learn colors in a foreign language.

The copyright of the article Foreign Language Color Games in Language Study is owned by Diane Farrug. Permission to republish Foreign Language Color Games in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.