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

Still on the topic of pets, we will be talking about unusual pets people have. I will read the story A Color of His Own by Leo Lionni  besides the one they already have in their book. They will do this activity after they listen to the story. I drew a Pinterest inspired (almost always) on a box I had, colored it and cut it out. I glued it onto a bottle cap so students would be able to slide it around. I  then painted several chopsticks I have been saving from sushi orders for students to match with the colors of the chameleon. After the matching is done, they will draw their own chameleon to match one of the other sticks. One day, when we go back to our classrooms, I want to do this activity and have the students draw their chameleons and paint their own sticks for other students in the class to match up. I love chameleons, maybe, because we have all had to become one this year. 

                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.

I made a story for my students on Google Slides and then made a shorter version of the story using iMovie. The only thing that wasn’t paper were the fireflies. My paper story is about an easygoing snail. I hope you can use it in your class or even better that it motivates you to create your own story using paper. Making a story can also become a class project. I spent one whole day doing everything but since I'm still quarantined, I've had more time. An interesting activity for older students who are at an intermediate or advanced level is to show them a character and let them create a story or a comic strip with that character. Well, here’s Shelby .

This is an activity to be done in a classroom but which can be easily adapted to online classes. In a classroom, you can tape papers like these with different letters of the alphabet for fast finishers. When they are done with an activity, let them pick a word from the little brown bag and draw it. If they don’t know the meaning of the word, let them ask a friend or look it up. The little brown bag can be made with a toilet paper roll. Write around 10 words on slips of paper and place them in the little bag. The letter can be written on a small piece of creative paper and glued on. To adapt the activity to online classes, you can use Wordwall to make a wheel which students spin. Add letters to the wheel, whichever letter the wheel stops on, students have to draw an object which begins with that letter.

Weather vocabulary is always taught in EFL classes, no mater the age. I made some paper props to use with my students in my classes, slides and in my videos. The cactuses I made on white paper with markers and crayons and glued them onto cardboard to make them last longer. The cactus flower is a bottle cap glued onto the cactus. The rain is made from Q-tips.  I always have my students tell me at the beginning of the class how the weather is. Many times now with our online classes, they'll take their phones or tablets to their windows and show my how the day looks from their house or apartment. How's the weather over where you are now?

Unboxing videos are all over the Web, so I decided to make my own unboxing video to show my students on the first day after our break. I collected things I did on my time off to share with my class on their first day back. I only wrote the word  unboxing  on the box so I could use the box again with other topics. The words  my vacation  can be taped on and then taken off and replaced.  If we were in a live classroom, I’d do the unboxing in the classroom but since we’re still online, I thought a video would be best. I asked them to create their own vacation unboxing vídeos to share with the class. Let’s hope they do! .

So, my second grade class is studying adjectives to describe animals. It was pretty easy for them to make this spider at home just by following instructions from my slides. I still couldn't convince them though that spiders are scary.