What Actually Happens When You Use Figurative Language Color By Number
These worksheets are straightforward. Students answer questions about similes, metaphors, personification, hyperbole, and other figurative devices. Each answer corresponds to a letter or phrase. They then color sections of a picture based on a code key. That's essentially it. The activity has been around in one form or another for decades because it works for what it's meant to do — it gives students practice with identification and reinforces vocabulary through a low-stakes, repetitive format. The core mechanic is matching an answer to a color. You'll typically see a coloring page with numbered or lettered regions, and a legend that says something like "simile = blue, metaphor = red." Students work through the problems, and as they identify the correct figure of speech, they fill in the corresponding area. It's visual, tactile, and occupies enough attention that most kids don't immediately zone out. I built a batch of these for my seventh-grade class once and hit a snag that I didn't anticipate. The original coloring template had overlapping shaded regions where two different answers would both apply to the same visual area — like when a student couldn't tell whether a line was hyperbole or personification because the text used both techniques simultaneously. They just sat there, crayons hovering. I ended up making a second version of the worksheet where I split those ambiguous sections into separate zones with slightly different coloring codes, and added a margin note that said "if both apply, pick the dominant one." It solved the problem without changing the actual content.
Most downloadable versions you'll find online follow a simple structure. There's a page of questions, a page with the answer key, and a coloring page with the code. Some publishers bundle them together in a single PDF. The questions themselves vary in difficulty — you'll see basic ones asking "what figure of speech is this?" and harder ones that present a sentence and ask students to identify multiple devices at once. Here's something people usually miss about these worksheets: the cognitive load isn't evenly distributed across the figurative language concepts. Similes and metaphors tend to get the most exposure because they're the easiest to construct questions for. Personification, idioms, and onomatopoeia often get squeezed in with shorter lists of examples. If your curriculum requires heavy coverage of, say, synecdoche or metonymy, you'll find very few ready-made color-by-number sheets that handle those well. The visual medium favors clear-cut, easily recognizable examples. Subtle devices don't translate as cleanly into a multiple-choice or short-answer format that maps to a coloring code. Another thing worth noting is the answer key distribution. In a well-designed set, the correct answers should be roughly evenly spread across the color categories. Otherwise you end up with a worksheet where half the picture is one color and the other half is barely touched. I've seen several free versions online where the test-maker accidentally overloaded one category, and the resulting image looked like a blob with a few stray patches. Not great for student motivation, even if they got every answer right.
The main downside of this approach is that it's limited to identification practice. It won't teach students how to use figurative language in their own writing. If you're looking for something that builds creative application, you'll need to supplement it. A companion exercise where students rewrite sentences using a specific device, or create their own examples, pairs well with the worksheet. But the color-by-number part itself stays in the recognition lane. Here's a basic workflow if you want to make your own. Start by writing or selecting ten to fifteen figurative language examples. Group them by device type. Assign each type a color. Draw or source a clean coloring page with enough distinct regions to match your question count. Build the answer key. Print. Done. The whole process takes about twenty minutes if you have a decent template to work from, or closer to an hour if you're designing the coloring page from scratch. For teachers who don't want to build from scratch, there are plenty of sites hosting free resources. Teachers Pay Teachers has a large selection, both free and paid. Pinterest also links back to classroom resource pages. The quality varies enormously between sources. Always check the answer key for consistency and make sure the figurative language examples are grade-appropriate before handing them out.
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The activity itself works best as a formative check or a filler on days when you need something that keeps students engaged but doesn't demand heavy discussion. It's not a replacement for direct instruction on figurative language. But as practice, it gets the repetition in without feeling like a drill. That's probably why it's still in use after all this time.
