Lesson plan: Colors (for non-readers)

Time: about 45-60 mins 

(notice that the time can be very different according to class size and abilities of the students)

Routine: (5mins)

Make a circle, have a small soft ball. Pass the ball and ask the child on your right side
“What’s your name?" or any other question you want to teach them.
The child answers and then passes the ball to the next child and asks the same question and so on.

After one round spice it up and take the time the children need to finish one circle (I usually take my cell phone as a stopwatch) and encourage them to be quicker. I usually tell them that another group did one circle in 10 seconds (not true, but they don’t know that, so you change the time according to which results the children had in the first round and take away 1,2,3 seconds), and ask them if they can do better.

Intro (5 mins)

Have a set of flashcards (or simple construction paper in every color). Hold up the first card and elicit the color. Practice saying the word and pin the card to the board.

Do the same with a second color. Then show the first color again and ask them what color that was. Repeat both colors. 

Hold up the next color, pin to the board and repeat the 3 colors. Repeat until you taught all the colors you want to teach in that sequence (depending on the age, you don’t want to teach a lot of colors, focus on the major ones and add others in the next lessons).

What is missing? (5 mins)

All cards are pinned to the board. Have the children close their eyes and take one card. They have to say which one is missing. Later take, 2 or 3 cards, until you take all cards and they have to tell you all of the colors they remember.

Touch the color (10 mins)

Take the cards and pin them all over the place in the classroom. Fix a starting point where all students stand. Shout out a color. All children run to the correct card. The one who can grab it first and bring it to you, wins the point. (with some classes it might happen that they will argue over cards, so you might want to change the game rule and just have them tap the card and not take it).

Song time (10 mins)

Make a half circle and watch the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lH2C2R57_Yo

Learn the song together. Give the children small color cards that they hold up every time a color is mentioned in the song (you may want to have them in the correct order at the beginning to make things easier).
Tip: take small color cards, punch a hole in one corner and bind them together with a key chain ring or something similar, so the cards don’t get lost and are always in the same order.

Coloring game (10 mins)

Prepare crayons (several of each color) and place them on a table. Hang coloring pictures on the wall (height of the students) everywhere in the room. Say the name of a student and a color. The student has to run to the table, take the color and choose apicture to color. He or she colors a part and sits down again. To not have the other students waiting and make the things more fun, call many names at once with different colors or with the same color). Once finished look at what the coloring pictures look like after the game.