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How to teach colours to ESL toddlers with a song
One colour, one minute, one word. A ten-minute routine for teaching colours to very young English learners with a short video, and why the video should say less than you do.
Toddlers do not learn a list. They learn one word, hard, and then another one. A four-minute rainbow song offers ten words in the time it takes to learn one. So we cut ours up.
One colour per video
Each of our colour videos is a minute long and teaches a single colour: red, blue, green, yellow, orange, pink, purple, brown, black and white. Ten videos, ten words. You pick the one you are teaching today and you play that one. Nothing else is in it to compete.
The characters do not speak. That is not a gap in the video; it is the point. There is no dialogue for a two-year-old to mishear, and no mouth to watch instead of the object. The word is sung by a narrator, in British English, while the colour is on screen.
A ten-minute routine
This is what a lesson around one of these looks like. It works with a class of eight and it works with one child on a lap.
- Show the object first. Hold up something red before the video starts. Say the word once. Do not ask for it back yet.
- Play the video. One minute. Let them watch. Do not talk over it.
- Pause and point. Play it again and pause on the colour. Point, say the word, wait. Some will say it. Most will not, the first time. That is fine.
- Find it in the room. "Touch something red." This is the part that sticks. A word attached to a movement outlasts a word attached to a screen.
- Play it once more. Third time through, some of them will sing it. Let them.
- Finish. Put the red thing away. Say goodbye to it. Tomorrow is blue.
Ten minutes is a long time for a toddler. If you lose them at six, stop at six.
When to use the longer one
Once a class has four or five colours, the surprise eggs video is a review. It runs just over four minutes and covers more than one colour in a sitting, which is exactly what you do not want on day one and exactly what you want on day ten. Use it to check what has stuck, not to teach.
Where the rest are
All of the classroom videos are on the teachers page, with their running times. Every one is free to play in a lesson, and none of them run personalised advertising, because they are marked as made for children on YouTube.