Game: Parachute - Colours and Numbers

Parachute games

There are lots of games you can do with a parachute, specially to practise numbers and colours. Here are a few ideas.

• Don’t drop the ball: Place a soft ball of any size in the centre. Shake. Count to 10 (or any number). The object of the game is for each team NOT to let the ball fall off on their side. Main learning objective: counting.
• Shake it: Place a soft ball in the centre. Shake the parachute counting to 10 (or any other number) and then drop the parachute to the floor. Ask what colour the ball landed on. Main learning objective: counting and colours.
• Arriba/abajo and dentro/fuera vocabulary: teach words. When you say arriba/abajo, kids lift parachute up/down. Also you can say niños dentro/niñas dentro/todos dentro/todos fuera. Main learning objective: arriba/abajo/dentro/fuera
• Colour and ball game: say a colour. The students need to work as a team to get the ball on a specific colour. To make it more challenging: ask half the students to try to avoid that.
• Mushroom game: children lift and lower parachute counting to for example 1-10 or 10-0 in Spanish. When finished counting they all go under the parachute and sit on it, trapping the air and creating  a “mushroom effect”. Once inside talk about what colours they can see, maybe call out colours and see who can touch it without standing up. However, this trick doesn't always work, so it could be they just all end up under the parachute, but that's fun too.
• Popcorn: Place a number of small balls onto the parachute. Shake to make them pop up like "popcorn". Count to 10 and when finished put the parachute on the floor and children get one ball each and say what colour.
• All Change: The Teacher calls out 1 or 2 colours and the children holding that colour swap places under the parachute before it falls.
• Musical statues: put a ball on the parachute. Shake the parachute. When the music stops drop the parachute to the floor and say what colour the ball is on.
• Sit down: call out a colour and ask the children to sit down/stand on that colour.

You can even buy parachute game accessories and a little booklet with game ideas for example from www.playm8.eu