Colours & numbers - kids in action

My students know the song quite well, but we haven't "done it this way" before. The Super Simple Song is just as it says on the tin, and very suitable for even very young learners. I wanted to make it a bit harder today, so we had a lot of flashcards on the floor, including numbers (more on that in a mo).

Make sure kids aren't going to dive headfirst at each other to get to the cards first (important!). As they hear the song mention colours, touch the card, then find other things that match around the room (having an interesting/colourful room helps a lot!).

After the song, a sit down - sort of! Leaving the flashcards on the floor we played colour bingo. Again, a bit too easy as most children quickly 'get' colours, so I wrote the word (blue, green etc) slowly on the board, asking the children to read the letters to me as I did so (taking a while to get fluent here). "That's it" = cue to go find the flashcard with the matching word - turn it over to reveal the colour. Get back to the table and do the bingo thing.

The actual bingo became a side show against the fun of reading out the words and finding the same spelling quickly.

We played the same game with numbers, and then placed the cards along the chalk board rail under the same (number) word (out of order). We played a "janken game" in teams - start either end of the row of cards, and read the card/say what is on it. When players meet in the middle, they do 'rock/scissors/paper' to decide a winner - who continues on while the other team replaces their player & start at their beginning again. This can get very noisy but is nice and simple, takes very little prep and is monitored by everyone! Weaker ones can go last & see how to do it/get prompting from team etc. I always answer if kids ask me nicely "What's this, please"!

Once we were done with the bingo game, I played another Super Simple Song "Seven Steps" and asked the children to point to the numbers in time to the music. Harder than you think! Remember, on a bingo card all the numbers are in different sequences...guaranteed giggles and re-starts & pleading to do it again (just what I wanted to do, but it was their idea!)

How do you teach colours & numbers after the first time?