I love collaborating with other elementary language teachers. One of the things I find most helpful is hearing about how others teach a certain concept or topic. I always seem to come away with new inspiration and a great idea to try. So, I’d like to share some ideas on teaching colors in Spanish.
I reflect on my general process for planning lessons in a separate post–check that out if it sounds helpful. Today my focus will be to go through my favorite ways to teach colors in Spanish at the elementary level.
Teaching Colors in Spanish to a Kindergarten Class
When teaching colors in Kindergarten, my teammates and I like to start with just a few colors and then we add more as we go.
If the timing works out, some years I start with just the fall colors (rojo, amarillo, anaranjado, verde, y marrón). We’ve enjoyed using this booklet and activities from Mundo de Pepita. It’s fun being able to connect words in their new language to the world around them. We’re in the Midwest so we get lots of beautiful colors during fall.
Other years it ends up that we’re not starting colors until after the excitement of fall has passed. In that case, we usually start with these 5 colors: rojo, verde, azul, amarillo, y rosado. A colleague (thanks, Sra. Burkel!) came up with a cute song that we use and she was nice enough to let me turn it into a video–check it out here.
Unit Pacing in Kindergarten
- Introduce & practice 5 colors: 2 or 3 lessons
- Add additional colors & practice: 2 lessons
- All colors: 4 or 5 lessons
- Review: 1 or 2 lessons
- *Assess: 1 or 2 lessons
Here are my google slides for the first 4 lessons to get you started!
*My PLC team and I have had many good conversations about the necessity of assessment (especially in kindergarten). Do we want to spend time on it here? How many colors are we expecting students to master at this time? Ultimately, since I’m responsible for teaching this power standard and putting grades on the report card, I do assess here. We expect them to be able to identify 5 colors by the end of this unit. Students who are partway to meeting the learning goal have more chances later in the school year to show me what they know.
Activities for Teaching Colors in Spanish
When I think about all the different kinds of activities I use within a unit, the list gets fairly long. Even though our lessons are only 30 minutes, each one is filled with several different activities.
I’d like to share many different activities for teaching colors with you–pick and choose what might work best for you and your students!
Mundo de Pepita Booklet–Arturo y la Bota
This is one of my all time favorite Mundo de Pepita booklets. Arturo goes fishing and catches different colored fish. I’ll let you guess what he catches in the end. 😃 Its simplicity is perfect for kindergarten students and the ending is silly and fun.
After we read the story as a whole group, I send students to their seats. We work on coloring the fish one at a time. I generally call out a color and have students find that color crayon and hold it up. That way students who need a little help can get on the same page before everyone starts coloring.
When using booklets with students, we always use them over a few different lessons. My favorite way to wrap it up is to bring a small stuffed animal for each student to read their story to. It is so sweet to see students sitting all over the classroom and hear them reading in Spanish to a stuffie.
Digital Matching Game–Whole group
As I said before, I often plan several activities for one lesson. I like to do quick whole group games at the start or end (or both!) of class.
Playing a matching or memory game is something we do often in my class. You can choose to just play one round or more than that if you have more time.
A volunteer student picks which number to look under and then everyone repeats the color after I move the cover. We make it into a cooperative game and see how long it takes to find all the matches.
Seesaw Activities
After working on a whole group activity, I find it important to transition students to some independent work time. The Seesaw app is a great tool for this. I linked two activities that are so fun to do with kindergarten or first grade students when working on Spanish colors.
Seesaw Activity: Color Scavenger Hunt *Seriously, this one is so fun. I walk around smiling to myself as I watch and listen to students gleefully taking photos of different colors around their classroom.
Seesaw Activity: Color Sort *Simple but effective. Students are asked to sort images based on their color. Each time they move an image, they should listen to the color word in Spanish. Great additional input!
Kahoot
Kahoot is a fun and techy review game to play towards the end of a unit. I wrote about teaching this game to my kindergarten students in a previous post–read more here.
For younger grades (kinder and 1st) I usually only create two answer options. Although I’m always reading the question and answer options for the class, this game also has students reading a fair amount so I prefer to keep it simple.
I find Kahoot to be energizing and engaging for students. It’s a fun way to connect spoken language with the visuals of the game. I also like that it’s a way for kids to answer on their own and for me to see how they’re doing with the content.
I use this Spanish colors Kahoot towards the end of our unit.
Colors of a Country
We set up our K-5 program to focus on one country during each year. Students learn about the culture and traditions of the country throughout the school year. One way we do that is by incorporating the country wherever we can!
Our kindergarten students learn about México so when we learn colors, we talk about the colors of México. In addition to talking about the colors of the flag, we talk about the colors we see in different pictures of México. Here’s an example of what I mean.
Books for Teaching Colors in Spanish
Oso Pardo, Oso Pardo ¿Qué ves ahí? by Bill Martin Jr & Eric Carle
I’ve always loved reading stories to students that they are familiar with in English. Their eyes always light up when I get out this book. Reading it in Spanish is such a fun way to work on colors and I appreciate that it adds the animal vocabulary as well. This is a fun one to have kids repeat after you as you read.
Isabel and her Colores go to School by Alexandra Alessandri
A new favorite for sure! We read this book last year and I fell in love with the story and illustrations. The author beautifully describes the languages of English and Spanish as being different colors. Several of my students connected with Isabel because they already speak Spanish and are learning English at school too. I highly recommend this book!
Videos for Teaching Colors in Spanish
I have a whole list of my favorite videos for teaching different topics in Spanish here. BUT! Here are two of my favorite videos for teaching colors.
Movement Ideas for Teaching Colors in Spanish
We know kids need to move (I wrote a whole post on that here) and I have a great movement activity to use with colors!
Color Freeze Dance
Choose a fun and bouncy dance type song and have students dance until you pause the music. Shout out a color and they have to find that color in the classroom before they freeze. I have students point to the color they found. Everyone repeats the color and then we all dance again.
Stand Up / Sit Down
So simple but a great way to review colors in Spanish. If you’re wearing…stand up! You can play until everyone is standing. OR Switch it up sometimes and say if you’re wearing…sit down. If they’re already sitting, they should stay seated.
This activity is perfect for when an activity wraps up and there are still two or three minutes left in class.
Recycle colors in future grade levels
One of my favorite things about teaching multiple grade levels is seeing students grow and be able to do more with each year. It’s important to recycle or reuse content they’ve learned previously so that they continue to work towards mastery. Plus, it helps students build confidence in their new language.
1st grade
After being introduced to colors in kindergarten, 1st grade students are ready to do more with them! It is super fun to have students share their opinions about the different colors. I love that their knowledge of the color words enables them to focus on using opinion phrases like “me gusta” and “no me gusta.”
We also use this I Spy game with the phrase “yo veo.” This is a perfect game to use whole group and then send kids off to work in pairs. I also use this game with sub plans (after kids are familiar with how to play).
A big part of our first grade curriculum is learning about the rainforest of Costa Rica. Students love learning to talk about and describe rainforest animals and we use colors as part of that description.
Lastly, we use a color story called ¿Dónde Vives, Dinosaurio? in 1st grade. It’s wonderfully simple and students enjoy answering the questions throughout the story.
2nd grade
A big part of our 2nd grade curriculum is learning to talk about school. An easy way to recycle colors is when we’re learning school supplies. Students do very well with describing their different school supplies, both the color and size.
Final Thoughts on Teaching Colors in Spanish
As teachers, we end up teaching the same or similar content for many years. One thing I’ve done to keep it interesting and more exciting for me each year is I switch up which activities I use.
After using the song, El Gusano Tutu, for several years, I wanted a change. We still listened to the song El Gusano Tutu but we spent more time reading and working with Oso Pardo. If you find yourself growing weary of a certain topic or activity, I encourage you to try something else that grabs your attention more.
Whew! This post is full of resources I hope you’ll find useful. Don’t forget to bookmark it so you can easily find it again.
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