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

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?  

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...

 I had to teach some basic math vocabulary to a bilingual group and what better way to get kids interested in math than with cookies, even if they are made of paper. I used the inside of a cereal box to draw 6 cookies and drew from 1 up to 6 chocolate chips on the cookies. I drew the minus, plus, times and equals signs on small pieces of paper and also made a cute paper pocket to store the whole set. Students made the cookie sets in one class and each student got to present a different math problem for the class to read and answer in the following class.  I added all the steps for them to make the chocolate cookie math set onto my slides and even added some cookie math problems for them to answer so they would know what they had to do with their chocolate cookies. It was all easy and fun, plus they could save their cookie math sets to be used at other moments with their families, friends or in another class. It would be a nice touch to have them make real cookies in another cl...

                In August, my first grade class will be studying pets. I found some simple ideas for using corks to paint on Pinterest. Kids use the corks and paint  to stamp circles on a white sheet and complete the animals using a paintbrush or a pen. These animals can be cut out and glued onto bottle caps to produce other activities. You can have the students add or subtract animals. See how many animals there are altogether. You can use them to help students practice making or completing patterns.The animlas can also be used to play Tic-Tac-Toe. When they play, each time they place an animal, they have to say its name.  It's great to see how just one craft activity can be so flexible.

Here’s a game young learners can make and play to practice numbers, how many, there is/there are, colors, vocabulary words bees beetles flowers and have fun trying to balance bugs on a flower.                 

One of my classes was studying numbers from 10 to 100. I asked them to pick their favorite 2 digit number which didn’t include zero, draw, color and decorate it, and then cut the numbers out, glue them onto a thicker paper, tape them onto sticks and see how many numbers they could make using the two numbers they had. My favorite number was 36, so I was also able to make 63, 93 and 39.  Each student shared their numbers with the class, so they had to say and listen to quite a few numbers. For more practice, you could ask them to tell you which number comes before or after each number.

O ur new unit is about sea creatures and going to the beach. In one class, we made pails and decorated them with the different sea animals we were studying about. Each student got to say what was on their pail. The following class the students helped me count seashells. If the student said the number of the shell correctly, they got to place it in their pail. We later looked for some seashells which were hidden around the classroom. At the end of the class, each student made their own seashell to add to their collection and take home to count with their families. Aren't all the colors beautiful?