20 Jul Different shades of a language
Holiday is a colourful and careless time, so we suggest colourful and careless language learning.
Take a look at some of our foolproof ways of introducing colour-related vocabulary.
1. When spending free time with a child, it’s worth playing creatively and making a drawing, a collage a piece of 3-D art called “Summer colours”. You can suggest drawing specific objects associated with summer or encourage him to create an abstract picture consisting of colours only.
When the artwork is finished, together with the children you can name all the colours on the paper both in Polish and a foreign language.
2. Next, let’suse the materials used to make that artwork. The child draws lots and picks a felt-tip pen or a piece of paper, and tries to name it in all the languages he or she knows. Repeating the vocabulary, the child names the parts of his artwork that have got a given colour.
These are also good exercises to use during the first foreign language lessons at school, when we want to start teaching but we also want to introduce it gradually, allowing students to leisurely say goodbye to holidays.
Returning to summer topics, we suggest a game called “Icecream trencherman”. We start with naming favourite ice-cream flavours. Next, depending on the kind of materials we have, the amount of time that we can devote to this activity and the desired degree of engagement, we can produce actual ice cream or make it out of play dough. In both cases, we need the appropriate ingredients. The children can name their colours and make ice cream from them.
4. We can alsoplay with fruit. Summer provides us with a whole range of them. Gorging ourselves on watermelon, strawberries, peaches or sweet cherries, we can describe not only their taste but also their colours. It’s also worth making fruit salad, for example from the ingredients which the child presents using colours.
If we don’t have any fruit, we can draw such salad. The child names a colour of a fruit which should be included in it, e. g yellow, and we fulfill the wishes. Of course, you can also change roles and describe your own colourful fantasies.
5. When our sense of taste is satisfied, it’s worth feeding our spirit as well, for example by recalling the time spent together on the previous holidays. Looking at the pictures from the summer before, the child can describe what is in them and also name the colours of nature – water, the sky, plants, and also describe people’s appearance by telling the colours of their eyes or clothes.
6. If we want to strengthen the acquired knowledge, we can use the well-knowngame of colours. Throw a ball and name a colour. If we want to strengthen the acquired knowledge, we can use the well-known game of colours. Throw a ball and name a colour. It’s worth repeating this game by changing roles so the child can also say the colours in a foreign language.
7. Another common game is “Find something…”, in which the player has to find something that has the specified colour. It might be a good activity to add some fun to tidying the child’s bedroom, where sometimes colourful building blocks are scattered on the floor.
8. As a summary, we have prepareda short worksheet which also will help you to solidify the spelling of the new vocabulary and develop reading skills.
Have a fruitful and colourful learning time!
QUIZ: I & the world of colours
