Jacob Wore a Red Hat – An ASL Color Song

We recently posted a fun color song for children.  It is based on a traditional song and is called Jacob Wore a Red Hat.  I wrote this 1st verse based on the name of my oldest grandson.  This children’s color song is simple, repetitive, and teaches American Sign Language (ASL) for colors and other words.  

When we perform this song for children, we teach some general information on name signs and give children a simple name sign based on the 1st letter of their name signed by tapping a letter hand, using their dominate hand, to the opposite side of their chest.  If you don’t know your ABC’s watch our ABC instruction video and learn them all.  We choose a few children to wear hats featuring the colors that are in the song. Then we have all the children sing and sign the color song including the children wearing the colored hats.

When we have traveled the country, on ASL or activity kid’s songs at conferences, we encourage everyone to become creative with this song.  We suggest learning lots of colors not in this children’s song.  We suggest learning other colors found in The Color Song. Then we teach signs for sock, shoe, coat, sweater, shirt, pants, dress.  Now the song can be easily changed to feature your children or students singing and signing about the color of something they are wearing that day.  This supports the early learning of clothing, colors, and the names of everyone around them.