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

 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...

This is pretty simple. We were studying clothes, specifically winter clothes. So, I cut out the shape of a long sleeved shirt. Everyone had a piece of paper with a hole in the shape of a shirt. Kids then had to go around the classroom placing their shirt in different places to get different colors and patterns. As they went around the class I asked them: what color is your shirt? They all had a different answers depending on where they placed their paper: my shirt is pink and orange or my shirt is blue, etc.  I punched out some snowflakes for them to glue to their papers to remind them we were talking about warm clothes.   

My 5-year-olds made some messy art to practice the idea of messy and neat. It's always good to save pieces of paper from other projects, you just never know when they may come in handy. They would have made things even messier if we had had time. This  craft was really simple to make because there was no right or wrong, just cutting and gluing wherever they wanted to. Beautiful messy art. 😉

Lots of fish in the sea! In this activity, my second-graders first added some drops of light and dark blue paint on one side of a sheet of paper and then folded the paper in the middle to make the ocean background for their fish. While the paint was drying, they drew their fish on a magazine page. I gave them many colorful circles to fold in the middle and glue onto their fish to be the scales and one googly eye. After the paint had dried and they had cut out their fish, they wrote that fish can swim and have tails and then glued their fish onto the ocean paper. The following class, each student came to the front of the class to share their fish and read their sentence.  I always love that although they are all doing the same activity, each one comes out just a little bit different. 🐟  

Children are often ecstatic to celebrate their birthdays, and what better way to do so than with a delicious cake! Recently, my second-graders and I explored the idea of celebrating birthdays with family by creating smeared paint cakes. To make these cakes, I provided each student with a piece of craft paper onto which I added drops and lines of various colors of paint. The kids used a piece of cardboard to smear the paint and create a beautiful effect. Although a squeegee would have been ideal for this activity, I unfortunately did not have one on hand. During the following class, the students were asked to add their age number of candles to the cake, write "I celebrate my birthday," and add additional details using a black marker. The resulting artwork was truly interesting, and there were many gasps of awe and appreciation as we admired each smeared paint cake. The artwork was later used as the cover of the students' portfolios, which they will soon take home to share ...

    My second-graders recently created colorful Chinese New Year dragons using paper. As we were learning about different family traditions and holidays celebrated around the world, I provided them with pre-cut dragon heads and slips of paper, and they used their creativity to glue the pieces onto black paper along a line I had drawn. If time allows, in the future, I would love for the students to cut their own paper and draw their own lines to encourage more independent production. The black paper really made the colors of their dragons stand out! In the following class, the students also wrote 'Happy New Year' on the black paper using white pens or pencils

So, we are studying multiple-meaning words and at the same time we are working on the story Frog Brings rain. In the story, a snail lives in a spring, so I decided to have the students make snails. It's the same snail I made for the Shelby snail story (video below). I brought the circles which would be the snail shells already cut out, just to save time. The students folded a paper in the middle, drew a semicircle, and cut the folded paper. After they decorated the shell, they glued it onto the snail, then added the eyes and mouth. They wrote a short text inside the snail to practice using the 2 meanings of the word spring we are studying. I had each student read their text. I love snails and how creative we can be when we color or draw them. The kids were excited to take them home to show their parents.  

Remember these? I guess we can use them at any age because my basic adult group used them successfully to practice colors, spelling, and asking and answering questions. After the whole class watched a step-by-step video to learn how to make the fortune-tellers, they colored 4 of the outside squares using different colors. They then wrote 8 different topics on the inside and a question under each topic. In pairs, one student chose a color and the other student had to spell the color as they opened and closed the fortune-teller. Finally, they picked a topic and asked and answered the question on that topic. These are something that can be used in the following classes as a wrap-up and review activity. Adults should also be able to make things and bring out the child that exists in all of us.  

 Had my bilingual group rip paper to create stems for flowers, a sun and part of a tree. They were doubtful but it worked. They used scissors for the flowers which they cut from paper circles into spirals and then rolled the paper up around a pencil to get a flower effect. They had first written about what butterflies need to survive on a white sheet of paper and glued it to the back of the black paper. I asked them to highlight the important wordds from the texts. Today they will read their texts to the class and present their butterfly houses. Here are some examples of their work. The text is mine, I forgot to take pictures of their texts.😬

 My third-grade class has started studying animals and their habitats. After trying to find some animals which use their habitats to camouflage and hide, they made colorful backgrounds as habitats and chameleons in the same colors to show how chameleons can use their habitats to protect themselves. I've shared this idea here before. This time we glued the chameleons on small paper rings so they would stick out of the background a little and then glued everything to black paper to make the colors pop out. Students also practiced asking and answering each other: where is it? Here it is.

 My third grade class was studying how animals hide in nature to protect themselves. We all drew a colorful chameleon on a a colorful background. Students each shared their chameleons with the class and were able to practice vocabulary words like hide and camouflage. We also talked about which other animals are great camouflagers such as katydids and owls. Can you think of more?

Who doesn’t like ice cream?!?! Teachers can use this easy-to-make pack to practice colors and numbers.  It can be used for fast finishers or each student can make their own.  I used an oatmeal box to make the cone, pieces of cardboard to write the numbers and creative paper to make the ice cream scoops and the bag to keep everything in. The students can pick a popsicle stick with a sequence of colors for them to copy with the colors of the ice cream. They then can be asked which color comes first, second and so on. Teachers can add plain popsicle sticks for students to color their own sequences for other students to order on the ice cream cone.  I made the paper bag using the handles of a shopping bag I had which I tore off and glued onto the inside of the pocket.  This little pack will let students work on their own, in pairs or small groups to maybe even time how fast they can copy the sequence from the popsicle stick onto the ice cream cone. You can also have stud...

Kids love a guessing game! I'll be using this activity to review pet names. I'm having a student pick a color and then a number. They have to guess which pet is behind the door. If they guess correctly, they get a star. After we play, they can choose any pet and make their own door for the rest of the class to guess. I used 3 sheets of creative paper cut in the middle. This way, I was able to make 2 doors with each paper. I drew the pets on white paper, cut them out, and glued them in the doors after I had already drawn the doors and made the details. I didn't draw a cat and a dog because these are the easiest ones and we had made cats and dogs in other classes. I glued all the doors onto a piece of cardboard, so I can hold them all up at the same time for students to easily see. I really liked the final result and how all the colors look together.