Roy G. Biv
by Teresa Jennings
Who is this Roy G. Biv and why are we singing about him? Actually, it's not a person, but an acronym or nonsense mnemonic that is easily remembered because it sounds like a person's name. And technically, it's just ROYGBIV all run together. But it's so much more fun to break it out into a name and sing about, don't you agree? As to the why – the letters spell out the names of the colors of the rainbow: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet.
Most kids learn about rainbows at a fairly young age, so we decided to help them with the color names and sequence with this simple song. The lyrics explain that Roy G. Biv is a way to remember the colors of the rainbow. So the hope is that all they have to do is think of old Roy and they'll mentally plug in the colors for each letter automatically. To further help with this, the song goes on to list the colors. In this section, it becomes a call and response to reinforce the names. Though we label the response (part 2) as optional, it's so super simple, you will want to use it, even with your youngest singers. And once again, music brings learning across the curriculum!
As an extension for this lesson, let kids draw their own rainbows while they sing. In our experience, drawing rainbows is a big deal for little kids. Indeed, it's a classic refrigerator art subject.
Text is taken from Music K-8 magazine.