Our Top 5 English Activities for Christmas
As the holiday season starts, we are busy thinking about the days left until the holiday, the presents we’d like to receive or give, the events and festive meals we might have. However, Christmas is different in many countries and English lessons are a great opportunity to teach students about the customs and traditions of different cultures.
In this part of the BOOKR’s Recommendation series we would like to introduce you to our top 5 Christmas activities which are ready to use in class. Whether you use these tips to teach in the classroom or online, they can be a fun part of Christmas preparations while also learning about culture which is part of the ESL curriculum.
ESL activities for Christmas
This classic game is frequently used in ESL teaching and learning. The teacher chooses a Christmas related object from the classroom – or in case of online lessons from a picture full of different festive objects – and describes it. Learners attempt to guess the object. It can be introduced as a frontal activity but learners can play it in pairs too.
If you decide to read our book ‘Christmas Surprise’ on Level 1 in the BOOKR Class application with your learners, you can use the newly learnt adjectives from the book (warm, hot, big, small, hard, soft, fluffy).
We’re sure that learners can never get bored of Christmas songs in your ESL lessons, especially when a little game is involved. Use this activity when you have the chance to sing about 5-6 songs together. You can include these short games in the beginning or at the end of the lesson as a cool down.
With this game you can definitely spice up your ESL classes. Hide tiny objects in tiny matchboxes in the classroom. The matchboxes can contain anything festive you’d like: a bit of cinnamon, a few beads, a piece of gingerbread, or a Christmas candy.
First, ask the learners to find all of these boxes, then stand in a circle, ask them to shake and/or smell the boxes and have them guess what’s inside. This task will improve their cognitive skills.
To make the Christmas preparations more exciting, you can organize a secret Santa drawing in the class. Write your students’ names on pieces of paper and put them in a hat and let the students pick.
Ask them to create crafty Christmas presents for whoever they picked or you can also make them together during the lesson. Before exchanging gifts, learners can act out or describe the person they are going to give their present to.
Use our printable festive ornaments which can be downloaded from here.
Give each learner an ornament to paint or to colour. While they are working, prepare a huge Christmas tree from paper. When the learners are finished, they can glue their ornaments on the big tree. You can also continue the task by having each learner describe what their ornament looks like and the others can guess what it is.
Christmas Surprise offers cultural content; it’s a really cozy Christmas story where everyone is trying to figure out what kind of gift they got based on the packaging. The story introduces an ideal Christmas morning and Christmas traditions: giving and opening presents, spending quality time together and playing.
To enhance the experience, use our festive word search and vocabulary learning worksheet, which can be downloaded from here.
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