How To Teach Colors To Young Kids Using Songs - Easy ESL Games
This classroom game works great as a warm up activity or a vocabulary review. It's adaptable, it gets your students moving and it's as much fun as a bucket of coloured balls.
How to Use The Song Red Ball To Teach Kids Colors
Red Ball Music Video from Easy Kids Songs Vol.1
The Details About Red Ball:
- This song is used to teach colour.
- It works best with children under the age of 6.
Required Materials:
- Some Color themed vocabulary cards. Ideally you’d have the colours Red, Blue, Green, Yellow, Orange and Purple.
- A bucket of colored balls. Ideally you’d have the same colours.
- A copy of the song Red Ball. You can download it here or find it on our Easy Kids Songs You Tube Channel.
Download your copy of Red Ball from either Itunes or Google play now!
In this example we are going to use colours as our Subject and “I have a blue ball” as our Target Language.
Here's How To Play Red Ball:
- Start by pre-teaching colors.
- Reveal the bucket of coloured balls.
- Pick out different balls, hold them up and use the target language E.g. I have a red ball, I have a green ball.
- Hilariously drop the bucket of balls all over your classroom.
- Turn on the Song Red Ball.
- Ask the students to listen to the song. When the song asks “Can you find a red ball?” Have your students bring you all of the red balls.
- As your students place the balls in the bucket make sure they use the target language ex.. “I have a red ball” If they don’t us the language you can either cover the top of the bucket with the vocabulary cards so that the student can’t put the ball in the bucket or just throw the ball back.
- When the song changes colours, just follow along.
- Repeat until the song is done.
Red Ball:
- It teaches colours and colour related language targets.
- It’s easy to use in any age appropriate EFL or ESL classroom.
- And It’s probably the best song ever written.
Here are a few extra tips that will help you ensure Red Ball is a success each and every time you use it in your classroom.
- Only 1 ball at a time - or kids will try to pick up 4-5 balls at once which means some kids don't get any balls, and they speak hardly at all. They just spend 30 sec picking up balls then dump them all at once.
- As kids put the balls in the bucket, subtly throw them back out so you don’t run out of balls.
- Use different language targets for different groups. Babies can just get the right color ball, or even just have fun. Older kids have to use a sentence e.g. I have 3 blue balls.
- To make it more fun, you can hold the bucket up high or walk around the room so your students have to chase you.
- Accidentally tipping the balls out again as you put it away is funny.
- Use the humming version if you can't remember the color order or you don't have the right color balls or you want to substitute the balls for something else.
- Also you can stop the song early.