All You Need is Paper (and a little love) ESL/EFL activities

 I made a cardboard stand for that last minute substitution we might have to do. It has the opening routine with how are you, how old are you, what's the day, how's the weather, and letter of the day. The right side has community helpers kids have to match to their locations of work, two envelopes with memory games that can be changed, and an envelpoe with different words that can be used for a spelling bee or just a spelling activity. Everything was easy and fun to make. Depending on the age of your students, they could help make this. 😉

I had only one fifth grade student on the last day of class 😊 I had already planned on making a Christmas card with them so I told her we would make cards together. We first folded and cut a red piece of paper like the white paper in the photo. We laied the sheet flat out on the table and drew a wiggly line at the top to be the wire for the Christmas lights, We dipped our fingers in different colored paint to make the lights and while the paint was drying, we cut out 3 green triangles, each one just a little bit smaller than the other. We glued them together, added the sequins, and then glued the tree onto the cut out part of the red paper leaving just enough space to draw the tree trunk.  We added snow with a white pencil and then wrote Merry Christmas. I'm sure if I had more students they would have been creative with the details. We both ejoyed this Christmas card moment together and it was nice to talk as we worked and get to know her better.    

 Studying about food always makes me hungry! We've been talking about picnics and what people in Brazil usually take to one. My first-graders painted a white sheet of paper to look like a picnic towel then they made ants by dipping their fingers in black paint and stamping another white sheet. They then drew the legs and antennae. When eveything was dry, they cut the ants out and pasted them onto the picnic towel. Last, they made playdoh food and presented their picnics to the class.

 This was pretty easy for my first-grade students to make. They drew and colored their seahorses on white paper, following a step by step image. I made a loop with a strip of blue paper and glued it onto the blue paper base. Then they cut out their seahorses and glued them onto the loops so the seahorses looked like they were floating in front of the paper. Some kids also added some seaweed to their oceans. What I enjoy the most about what my students make is being able to use their creations to teach and review structures and vocabulary. And, the best part is that students pay more attention then if I just used random images from the internet. Look at all the questions I was able to ask them with this craft: How many seahorses are there? Where do seahorses live? What color is your seahorse? Which seahorse is bigger/smaller/the biggest? These questions can be also asked using the craft during a game of hot potato or even during a game of hide and seek and whoever finds the craft fi...

We're still under the sea and this time with hammerhead sharks! After watching a video about sharks, my first-graders were able to choose which one they wanted to make and surprisingly, they all chose the hammerhead. We used light and dark blue paper for the ocean and the head, and then purple paper for the mouth. The kids just drew everything with a pencil, cut them out and glued them all together. They also drew triangles on white paper, cut them out, and glued them onto the mouth and we were then able to practice answering how many teeth are there. I made sure they gave me complete answers: there are (ten) teeth. The eyes were pretty easy because they just glued googly eyes to the head. The sharks look friendly, don't they?  

So, we made turtles out of egg cartons. Took us 3 classes because we, by we I mean me and my first graders, had to wait for the green paint to try before drawing the details on the shell with black markers. I glued the legs and heads on with a hot glue stick just because it was faster but it can be done with liquid glue just as well. The last class the kids made their "sea" so their turtles could be under the sea like they were supposed to be. I gave them some blue strips of paper to glue on their blue paper base and then they added the sequins. We are studying sea animals and still working on the prepositions in, on, and under, and this fit perfectly. Of course, I played the song Under the Sea for them to try to sing and mostly to look for the turtle in the music video.