Colours in English for Kids: Fun ESL Activities, Games and Printable Worksheets

Looking for fun ways to teach colours in English to kids without endless repetition and memorising word lists? In this article, you'll find practical ESL colour activities, games and printable worksheets that I use with young learners to practise colours naturally through movement, play, counting, shapes and simple English instructions. The ideas are especially suitable for preschool, kindergarten and early primary learners, and most of them need very little preparation, so you can easily use them in an ESL classroom, an English club or at home. 

Colours are often among the first English words children begin to recognise. They are easy to connect with familiar objects, pictures and toys, which makes learning much more natural than simply translating individual words from one language into another.

If you prefer having several activities ready in advance, my Colours Printable Pack brings together worksheets, games, flashcards and hands-on tasks that you can use across several lessons.

If you are wondering when it makes sense to introduce English to young children, you can also read my article about when children should start learning English and how early language learning can work through play.

Once children are familiar with the basic colour words, there are countless ways to practise them without turning the lesson into repetitive drilling. The activities below are designed to help children hear English, respond to simple instructions and gradually begin using the language themselves.

Why teach children colours in English?

Colours are part of children's everyday world. They see them in their clothes, toys, food, drawings, books and surroundings, so new English words can immediately be connected with something they already understand.

This is one of the reasons why teaching colours to preschoolers works so well. Children do not have to imagine an abstract concept or remember a complicated explanation; when they hear red, they can look at a red block, touch a red card or find something red in the classroom.

Learning colours also gives us an easy way to introduce other language naturally. During one simple activity, children can practise listening, movement, counting or shapes while repeatedly hearing the same English vocabulary in context.

Rather than expecting children to memorise words immediately, I prefer to let them meet the same vocabulary again and again in slightly different situations. One day we might use flashcards, another day children search for coloured objects around the room, and during the next lesson the same words appear in a worksheet or Play-Doh activity.

That repetition feels natural because the task keeps changing, even though the target vocabulary stays the same.

Which colours should children learn first?

When teaching colours in English to beginners, I usually start with the most common ones:

• red
• blue
• yellow
• green
• orange
• pink
• purple
• brown
• black
• white

There is no reason to introduce all ten colours in one lesson, particularly with preschool children. Three or four colours are often enough at the beginning, and once children recognise them confidently, more can gradually be added.

The vocabulary becomes much more meaningful when children hear it inside simple instructions instead of only repeating individual words.

For example:

Show me something red.

Touch something blue.

Point to the yellow flower.

Can you find something green?

At first, children do not even need to answer verbally. Understanding the instruction and reacting correctly is already an important part of language learning.

As they become more confident, you can begin asking:

What colour is it? Is it red or blue? What colour do you like? 

These short exchanges gradually turn passive vocabulary into language children can actually use.

Colours in English for preschool, kindergarten and early primary learners

Children begin learning English at very different ages, so I would not limit colour activities to one particular school grade. In some classrooms, children meet English in preschool or kindergarten, while others begin later in primary school, and for children learning English as an additional language, their age and their English level may be very different.

That is why I prefer to think in terms of young beginners rather than a strict school year.

A four-year-old and an eight-year-old beginner may both be learning the word yellow, but the way they practise it can be different.

With preschoolers, I focus much more on movement, listening, matching and hands-on play. With older beginners, the same vocabulary can be combined with reading, writing, counting, following more detailed instructions or creating simple phrases.

This also makes printable activities surprisingly flexible. A simple colour worksheet for preschoolers can become a listening activity for one group, while slightly older children can use the same page to practise numbers, shapes or short English instructions.

We practise colours through movement, play and hands-on activities

When I teach colours, worksheets are never the only activity in the lesson. Young children usually remember vocabulary more easily when they are doing something with it, particularly when they can move, touch, sort or search.

In my lessons, we might work with coloured scarves, hoops, sensory materials, pom-poms, cards or ordinary classroom objects. Instead of explaining a word repeatedly, I can simply say:

Find something blue.

Bring me something yellow.

Put the red one here.

Touch something green.

Children hear the same vocabulary many times, but every instruction gives them a small task to solve.

This type of hands-on ESL activity works particularly well with preschool and kindergarten learners because they do not need advanced English to participate successfully. Even a child who has only recently started learning English can listen, watch the other children and gradually understand what to do.

For teachers who like combining movement activities with something quieter afterwards, this is also where printable materials become useful. After children have already heard and experienced the vocabulary through play, a simple worksheet gives them another opportunity to recognise and consolidate the same words.

👉 The activities in my Colours Printable Pack are designed with this kind of lesson structure in mind, so you can choose a game, a flashcard activity or a worksheet depending on how much movement, listening or quieter work your group needs that day.

A colour-by-number worksheet, for example, may look like a simple colouring page, but it can be used in several different ways. Children can follow the colour key independently, or the teacher can turn it into a listening activity and give the colours orally instead.

You can also adapt the same printable for children of different ages by changing the instructions rather than changing the whole material.

Growy Lost His Little Hat

One of the activities children enjoy is a little rhyme inspired by the familiar idea of searching for a lost object.

In GROW English we say:

Growy lost his little hat,
Can you tell me where it's at?
It was coloured, let's all say,
Shout the colour right away!

After the rhyme, I call out a colour and children have to react as quickly as possible. They might touch something in that colour, point to the correct flashcard, run to a matching hoop or find an object somewhere in the classroom.

The language itself is simple, but the activity asks children to listen carefully and respond immediately, which means they are processing English rather than stopping to translate every word.

With very young learners, the task can simply be: Find red!

With children who already understand the basic colours, I can make it slightly more challenging:

Find something red.

Later, I might say: Find two red things.

The vocabulary stays familiar, but the language around it gradually becomes richer.

Children are learning much more than colours

One of the reasons I like working with colour activities is that they can connect naturally with several other early learning skills.

Children may think they are simply colouring a picture or sorting objects, but during the same activity they can be practising counting, shapes, fine motor skills, visual discrimination, listening comprehension and following instructions.

For example, instead of asking children to colour five objects in the same way, I can say:

Colour three flowers red.

Colour two stars yellow.

Find the blue circles.

Now colours are no longer isolated vocabulary. Children are listening for several pieces of information at once and using English in context.

This is also why I often combine colours and numbers activities for kids. Once children know numbers from one to ten, there are many opportunities to connect the two topics naturally.

You can find more ideas for practising numbers in my article about Numbers 1–10 in English for Kids, where I share more games, printable activities and simple ways to practise counting in English.

Colour and Count: combining colours with numbers

Counting coloured objects is a very simple extension once children recognise the basic colour words.

You can use toys, pom-poms, buttons, cards or a printable worksheet and ask questions such as:

How many red ones can you see?

Can you find three yellow flowers?

How many blue circles are there?

This kind of activity gives children repeated exposure to the same language without making the lesson feel repetitive.

A worksheet can also be turned into a listening task. Instead of allowing children to work completely independently, I sometimes give part of the instruction orally, which means they have to listen before they start colouring or counting.

That small change makes a familiar worksheet much more useful for language learning.

Mixing colours in English

Children are naturally curious about what happens when colours are mixed, so colour mixing is another lovely opportunity to use English in a meaningful way.

Play-Doh works particularly well because children can physically combine the colours themselves.

For example:

red + yellow = orange

yellow + blue = green

blue + red = purple

Before mixing them, I usually ask children to look at the two colours and guess what might happen.

What colour is this?

And what colour is this one?

What do you think we will get?

Then we mix the colours and discover the answer together.

The language stays simple, but children are not merely repeating vocabulary. They are predicting, experimenting and making connections between what they hear and what they see.

For younger children, the activity can remain completely oral, while older beginners can also read the colour words or complete a simple colour-mixing worksheet. 

👉 The Colours Printable Pack includes colour-mixing Play-Doh activities as well, which makes it easy to use the same vocabulary in a more sensory and hands-on way after flashcards or traditional worksheets.

Who are these printable English activities suitable for?

The materials are designed primarily for children who are still at the beginning of their English-learning journey, so they work well in preschool, kindergarten, early primary classes and beginner ESL or EFL lessons.

Teachers can use them during regular English lessons, language clubs or small-group activities, while parents can also use many of the pages at home without needing to prepare a complete lesson.

Because the activities vary in difficulty, they do not have to be used with only one age group. A preschool child might match pictures and colours, while an older beginner can follow written instructions, count objects or complete a more detailed colour-by-number activity.

The printable pack can therefore be useful for:

• preschool and kindergarten English
• early primary learners
• beginner ESL and EFL classes
• English clubs and after-school groups
• homeschooling
• one-to-one lessons
• parents introducing English through play at home

The important part is not the child's exact age, but whether the task matches their current English level and attention span.

What will children practise?

By working with the activities, children gradually learn to recognise and name basic colours in English, but that is only one part of what they are practising.

Depending on the task, they may also work with numbers and counting, simple shapes, listening comprehension, following instructions, matching, tracing, fine motor skills and early problem solving.

A child completing a worksheet may therefore be listening to an English instruction, identifying a number, choosing the correct colour and controlling a pencil or crayon all within the same activity.

This is what I like about combining English with play and practical tasks: the language becomes part of something children are actually doing.

Ready-to-print Colours activities for young English learners

If you teach colours regularly and would like to have several different activities ready in one place, the Colours Printable Pack contains 11 PDFs and 33 printable pages that you can return to across several lessons rather than using everything at once.

The pack includes a colour poster, flashcards, matching activities, a memory game, dominoes, colour-by-number worksheets, counting activities, a maze, shapes and colours tasks, Play-Doh colour mixing and other printable activities that allow children to practise the same vocabulary in different ways.

I created the pack because I know how useful it is to have materials ready when you need to change the pace of a lesson. Sometimes a group needs to move, sometimes they need a calmer table activity, and sometimes you simply want five extra minutes of meaningful practice without preparing something new from scratch.

That is why I prefer a themed collection to a single worksheet: you can introduce the vocabulary with flashcards, practise it through a game, return to it with a listening activity and use a worksheet later for revision.

If that sounds useful for your lessons, you can see the complete Colours Printable Pack in the Printables section of GROW English and choose the activities that suit your learners best.

Learning colours through play

Colours may be simple vocabulary, but they offer a surprising number of opportunities for meaningful English practice. Children can search, sort, count, mix, match, listen and move while hearing the same words naturally again and again.

For preschool and young ESL learners in particular, I find that this works much better than expecting children to memorise a list of translations.

When children hear red while holding a red card, blue while running towards a blue hoop or yellow while colouring a picture, the new word has a real context. Over time, they no longer need to stop and think about the translation because the English word itself begins to make sense.

And that is exactly what we want from early language learning: not as many words as possible in the shortest time, but plenty of opportunities for children to understand English, enjoy using it and gradually become confident enough to respond on their own.

If you would like more ready-to-use activities for this topic, you can find the complete Colours Printable Pack together with my other printable English worksheets, games and activities for young learners in the GROW English Printables section.