Eye-Popping Color Name Game

Have fun with your friends and family when you ask for the juice naranja or point out your sneakers blanc. Design and play this game to learn cool color names in other languages.

• 1.

  If you ever felt angry and were seeing red, you would see rojo in Spanish and rouge in French. Feeling blue? You would feel azul in Spanish and bleu in French. Find Spanish and French (or any other language) color names and their pronunciations. Notice that some of the names sound or are spelled almost the same, such as apricot in English and abricot in French. Practice saying and writing the names of your favorite colors in another language.

• 2.

  Make a fun color-matching game to read and pronounce your new color vocabulary. To make the game, use Crayola Twistables® to create bold and bright designs all over one side of two recycled file folders. With Crayola Scissors, cut the folder into card-size rectangles. You’ll need at least 15 cards.

• 3.

  Turn the cards over. Color half of each blank rectangle. Create eye-popping designs such as stripes, zigzags, plaids, or dotted patterns.

• 4.

  On the other half of the rectangle, use black to write a color word in English, French, and/or Spanish. Make sure the color word is different than the color next to it on the card. Draw a black frame around the color word to make it more visible. Each color word should have a color to match, but not on the same card.

• 5.

  Play the game with rules you agree on, perhaps like dominoes. Challenge friends and family to play and learn new color words with you.

Benefits

• Students research to find English, French, and Spanish color words.
• Students produce a game that involves matching colors to their English, French, and Spanish names.
• Students participate in playing the game they created.

Adaptations

• Spend time delving deeper into the science of color by exploring and experimenting with light, reflection, and refraction. Research to learn why the sky is blue and a sunset is red. 
• Investigate color terms by creating your own custom colors. Begin with a basic color or hue. Change the lightness or darkness (value) of the color. Make it lighter by adding white to create a tint. Darken the color by adding black to create a shade. Try m
• Assess students’ mastery of English, French, and Spanish color words by holding friendly Color Bees, patterned after Spelling Bees. Call out a word (azul) and ask for its equivalent in another language (blue). Start with team responses, move on to pair responses, and then use individual responses as the students become more confident and competent.