Using LearnEnglish Kids - British Council


	Visit colourful worlds and meet strange creatures with Billy and Splodge.

more tips

Colouring and drawing

Colouring and drawing activities to help your children practise English on the British Council website teaching English.

Colours: What is pink?

Activities for encouraging children to read and write poetry in English on the Language Assistant website.

USEFUL WEBSITES

Here are some websites with useful activities to help you develop the topic of colours.

Cbeebies
Pictures to colour and talk about from the BBC's channel for young children.

Sparklebox
Flashcards and other resources to help your children talk about colours.

Up to ten.com
Early-learning games and activities to help you develop the topic of colours.

	using learnenglish kids with your child


	Colours

Colour gives children huge scope to develop their ability to talk about whatever interests and excites them. They may use colour to help describe what they see around them everyday, or to create strange and colourful imaginary worlds. Colour is often found as a topic in courses and coursebooks for young children. You can find resources and activities about colours on LearnEnglish Kids. at www.britishcouncil.org/kids-topics-colours.

With these materials children will be able to:

			talk about colours and use the vocabulary to describe the world around them.
			sing along to a song about the colours of the rainbow.
			listen to instructions and colour in pictures online.
			read and listen to a story about Billy, his dog Splodge and their adventures in space.

Activities are marked with a symbol on the topics webpage www.britishcouncil.org/kids-topics-colours to indicate the best age group and level. Look at these when you choose which activities to use with your child.

Younger children may enjoy the song 'I Can Sing a Rainbow'.which will help them to remember the words for different colours in English. There are also pictures online, children can listen or read, then colour in.

Older children might like the space story 'Our Colourful World', this may give them ideas for stories of strange planets which they could write and illustrate themselves.

Below you'll find an idea for an activity you can try with your child using some of these materials. On the left you'll see a list of links to resources about this topic on teaching websites and other external websites that you may find useful. Please note that the British Council is not responsible for the content of external websites.

SOMETHING YOU CAN DO WITH YOUR CHILD

This activity allows your child to use a structured story to develop their own ability to use language imaginatively. It encourages them to be creative and express their own ideas in English. It can also help them understand how to organise a simple story in either written or spoken form.

			Read or listen to the story 'Our Colourful World'. Use this to revise colours, ask your child to describe what they can see in each picture, encourage them to predict what will happen next.
			When you feel they have understood the story tell them that you are going to imagine a new space adventure for Billy and Splodge.
			Ask your child what kind of planet they think Billy and Splodge will visit next. Your story may follow the same pattern as 'Our Colourful World'. You may begin with other colour planets, purple, or orange, or you could encourage your child to think of different kinds of planet, "Ice -cream planet" or "Robot Planet". Use the vocabulary of Our Colourful World as a starting point but encourage your child to develop their own ideas.
			Encourage your child to describe the planet. You might use questions to guide this. What colour is the planet? What kind of animals live there? Are there any aliens? What do they eat?
			Depending on their level of English children may write up and illustrate their story, or simply draw a picture which they can then talk about with you.

You may follow this with a 'planet project'. Your child can invent, describe and draw their own planet. There are questions to guide this activity following another story about Billy and Splodge The Cold Planet. Teachers and parents can find suggestions for developing this project with a variety of online resources on the British Council/BBC website Teaching English.