Activity 89- Playing with Children- Prepositions

Practicing prepositions of place has never been that fun for young learners! 

Level: Beginner

Skills: Listening and Speaking

Material Needed: Colored balloons

Instructions:

Give each child a colorful balloon. Give instructions about where the balloon should be placed according to the prepositions they have learned. Also add different colors to the commands.

Examples: “If you have a red balloon, put it on the table.”

                  “If you have a yellow balloon, put it under the teacher’s table.”

                  “Put the green balloons behind our classroom door.”

Tip: remember that it’s always important to model the activities before you actually ask students to perform the.

Variation 1: The teacher can also put students in charge of the activity by inviting a student to say the commands. They will love it!

Variation 2: For prepositions, you can also have different colors of Hula Hoops, for they practice “in”, “out”, “through”, “over” and so on in a fun and different way.

Source: Vânia Rodrigues

Picture credits: Mads Danquah/ Flickr

Activity 85- Me Against Me

This game is a great way to review and practice parts of the body. Young learners will definitely have a blast playing it! 

Level: basic

Skill: speaking, listening

Vocabulary: parts of the body

Material needed: none

Instructions:

Ask students to stand up and pair up with a classmate. Tell them they are going to take orders from the teacher and must follow them. Here is an example of what could be said: " head against arm". Then, one child of the couple must put his head against the arm of the other kid. Check if everyone is doing it correctly. After giving some orders, say the line : " me against me! " Then, in this case, students must pair up with someone else and you have to find a child to pair up with you as well. The child who has no pair has to give the orders until he/she says "me against me!" and students find other partners. 

Source: Unknown
picture credits: Flickr (egonwegh)

Activity 46- Tiny Bubbles in the Air

                                          picture credits: sodahead.com

Great outdoors activity aqnd specially designed for young kids! Fun garanteed!

 Level: Basic

Skill: Speaking

Materials needed: a wand and a jar with bubble solution

Instructions: 

Individual students or members of each team are given a jar with bubble solution and a wand. The teacher calls out a category of nouns, adjectives, or verbs as a student begins to blow bubbles. That sudent, or another member of the team, tries to say as many words as s/he can that pertain to that category before all the bubbles disappear. If this is played as a competition between teams, the team that is able to say the most words receives a point.

Source: "Activities for the ESL Classroom Brasil 2010"- David Malatesta

Activity 5- Survivor Spelling Game

                                           picture credits: mentedespenteada2.blogs.sapo.pt

This is a fun game for young learners and a creative way to work with spelling! 

Instructions:

Make a list of words covered in previous lessons and ask students to stand up. Call out a word. The first student gives the first letter, the second student gives the second letter, and so on. If a student makes a mistake, he/she should sit down, and the next one should continue spelling the word. Then, you should pick another word and start the game with a student who was waiting for his turn. In the end, the student who is left out standing is the “survivor”and winner of the game.




Source: iteslj.org/games

Activity 3- Name Six

          picture credits: eyefetch.com

  This is a fun challenging game to review vocabulary that requires very little preparation and can be adapted to different levels and lessons. It is very successful among young learners.

            Instructions 

            In a circle, give one student a stuffed animal or object. The teacher says what the student holding the stuffed animal/object has to name six of. The teacher says “GO!” and students pass it around. The student must say the six words before the stuffed animal gets back to him or her.(example: name six animals, six irregular verbs, six phrasal verbs, six sports, six adjectives to describe someone’s mood, etc)

            Tip: Depending on the size of the group or level of difficulty, the teacher may change the number of vocabulary words the student has to say.

Activity 2- Jump to the Right, Jump to the Left

                                         picture credits: jingliving.com

  This is a kinesthetic correction activity in which students have to jump to the left (if the sentence is correct) or to the right (if the sentence is incorrect).

             Instructions:

            Ask students to stay in a line, one behind the other. Tell them that you are going to say a sentence and they have to decide if the sentence is grammatically correct or incorrect. They should jump to the left or right side immediately after you say “Jump!”

            Display sentence on the board and elicit the mistake. Have students correct it.

            * This activity can be adapted to any kind of content being taught.

            Source: www.eslsite.com