How to Teach Spanish Colors

Students who can already discriminate between colors in their native language will be able to learn Spanish colors easily. After all, it is simply learning new vocabulary words for familiar adjectives. Teachers can teach Spanish colors as part of a unit on a Spanish-speaking country or as part of a Spanish language curriculum. The key is to repeat the Spanish color words as often as possible to ensure mastery and to allow students to think of colors bilingually.

Things You'll Need

• Poster that shows colors and color words
• Tape
• Construction paper
• White board
• Paper
• Crayons

Instructions

1. Introduce Spanish color words. If you already have a poster describing colors in your classroom, cover the English color words with Spanish ones or make a Spanish color words poster (you can simply write each color word with the correct color, such as using red to write "rojo"). Review the poster with the students.

2. Increase familiarity with Spanish color words. Write the basic Spanish color words on the top of each corresponding color on construction paper; "rojo" on red, "azul" on blue, "amarillo" on yellow, "verde" on green, "anaranjado" on orange, "blanco" on white, "negro" on black and "marron" on brown. Then have students cut objects of each color from magazines and glue them onto the corresponding sheets. You can make this a full class activity or make a booklet for each student as an individual activity.

3. Practice the Spanish color words. Create drawing and coloring assignments using the Spanish color words. For example, you can tell students to draw a rojo square, an azul triangle, an amarillo oval and so on. Or you can pass out coloring pages and tell students to color certain parts different colors by writing the directions on the board using Spanish color words. See Resources for links to printable activity sheets.

4. Review Spanish color words. Have students play color tag (you call out a Spanish color word and they must touch it before getting tagged) or play online Spanish color word games (see second link in Resources).

Tips & Warnings

• Encourage students to use the Spanish color words throughout the day, not just during the Spanish lesson.

• These lessons are for children who have already learned to identify and discriminate between colors. If you are teaching students ages four and under, make sure they know the differences between colors before trying to teach them Spanish words for colors.

References

• Spanish Playground: Colors
• Toad Haven: Foreign Language Lessons

Resources

• Enchanted Learning: Spanish Language Activities
• Online Free Spanish: Click-n-Match