Colors Lesson Plan

Notes:

This is a nice, easy fun lesson - parts of it can be reused in later lessons as your students continue to learn the color words.

Lesson Procedure:

Warm Up and Maintenance:

See our "Warm Up & Wrap Up" page.

New Learning and Practice:

1. Teach the colors vocab
Depending on the age / level of your students you may want to teach a just few words per class, building up to the full 7 color words over a series of lessons. For older students you may also want to teach the objects in the song (apples, sun, flowers, grass, grapes, carrots, rainbow, sky). Prepare colored paper (origami paper is great for this) – enough colors for each student in your class (so, 1 red per student, 1 yellow per student, etc.).

Hold up the first colored paper and elicit the color (e.g. red). Chorus and practice saying the color. Then pass the colored paper around the class so each student can hold and say the color. Do this for the rest of the colors.

2. Play "Color Stand Up and Jump"
Give out all of the colored papers, 1 color per student. Tell your students to sit down. Say a color (e.g. "red") and the students holding that color have to quickly stand up, jump and then sit down. Start off slowly and get faster and faster.

3. Play "Touch the Colors on Posters"
If your classroom has lots of colorful posters on the walls, this is a great activity to do. Demonstrate by shouting out a color (e.g. "Red"). Run to a poster and touch anywhere that has a red color. Do the same for another color (e.g. "Blue"). Each time run to a new poster. Now have the students do the activity – shout out a color and have them all run around the classroom touching the colors on posters.

Play "Touch the Colors on Posters"

4. Do "Color the Circles" activity
Before class, prepare 7 large sheets of white paper (or if you are teaching less colors that day, enough sheets of paper for the colors you are teaching). On each sheet draw a large circle which fills up the sheet (or download and print our wall circle sheet). Then stick the sheets on the walls of the classroom, at a height your students can reach. At this point of your lesson, take out your colored pencils/crayons and demonstrate the activity. Walk around the class and color a small part of each circle with one color (always say the color as you are coloring). So there will be one circle with some red color in it, one with yellow, and so on. Next, tell your students to take out their colored pencils/crayons. Have them walk around the classroom, coloring in a bit of each circle with the same colors you used. Make sure they say the color as they do each coloring.

5. Play "Point at the Colored Circles"
Have all of your students sit down. Call out a color and demonstrate by pointing at the colored circle on the wall. Do all of the colors in the order of the song, with the students pointing at the different colored circles.

6. Sing "The Rainbow Song"
The first time you play the song, put up the Rainbow Song song poster on the board. Quickly elicit the colors. Play the song and sing along, touching the colors as you sing. You can even invite a student to come up to the board and touch the colors with you. Next, give out all 7 colors (e.g. colored paper, pencils, etc.) to each student. Get each student to lay out the colors in front of him/her, in the order of the song. As you pay the song again, have all students touch each color and sing along.

Lyrics for "The Rainbow Song"

Verse 1:
Red and yellow and pink and green,
Purple and orange and blue.
I can sing a rainbow,
Sing a rainbow,
Sing a rainbow too.

Verse 2:
Red apples and yellow sun,
Pink flowers in the green grass.
Purple grapes and orange carrots,
A rainbow high in the blue sky.

Verse3:
Red and yellow and pink and green,
Purple and orange and blue.
I can sing a rainbow,
Sing a rainbow,
Sing a rainbow too.

(download MP3 here)

Gestures for "The Rainbow Song"

There are a number of activities you can do as you sing along to the song:

Simply pat your knees or clap in time with the music as you sing the song.
Give each student a print out of the Rainbow Song song poster. As they sing along they touch each color or picture.
Give out the 7 colors to students (colored paper, origami paper, colored blocks, colored pencils – anything will do) and have students touch the colors in time with the song.
Put colored paper up around the walls of the classroom. Have all of your students point to each color as it is sung.

We also have a video that you can stream in class to sing along with (Internet connection required):

7. Read classroom reader "What Color Am I?"
This classroom readers ties in perfectly with the Rainbow Song. Before class, download and print off the reader "What Color Am I?". As you go through each page, point to the pictures and let your students shout out what color it should be:

Teacher: What is this? (pointing at the black and white apple on page 1)
Students: It's an apple!
Teacher: Yes, that's right! (reading from the story) "I am an apple. What color am I?"
Students: Red!
Teacher: Let's check ... (turning the page) ... Right! Good job! (reading from the story) ... "I am red". Can you point to something red in the classroom?
Students: (pointing to red things in the classroom)
Teacher: Yes, that's right! Red (books) and a red (T-shirt) ... (goes through all the red things students are point at).

Read classroom reader "What Color Am I?"

Get the students really involved in the story by asking lots of questions (e.g. eliciting the objects and their colors) and getting everyone to point to colors in the classroom.

After reading the story, give out a reader worksheet to each student and read through the story one more time (without stopping for questions, etc.) as students color in the objects from the story. Check to make sure that everyone is using the correct colors.

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Alternatively, watch our video version of the reader (Internet connection required):

8. Do "Colors of the Rainbow" worksheet
To finish off this section of the lesson, give out the worksheets. As your students are doing the worksheets, ask questions (e.g. "What color is that?", etc.).