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

I strongly believe a Mystery Box is an essential item for any teacher teaching kids and teens. It can probably even be used for adults. I might just try it this semester since I do have an adult group on Saturdays.  There are so many ways you can use this box that's why it's so useful. It can be used to introduce vocabulary or sentences on slips, for example, place words in the box that are connected to the unit topic, have each student come and with their eyes closed pick a word, read it aloud, and try to guess what the unit is about. You can write their guesses on the board and then see how close they got to the correct answer. You can place different objects in the box and slowly show parts of the object for students to guess. The answer to a question can be placed in the box and at the end of the class a student can read the answer to see if students answered correctly. People always love a little mystery so this box is a great way to engage students and bring an unexpected...

 My five-year-olds have been practicing playground vocabulary. And here's how we made our paper I-can-climb craft. They first folded a white sheet in the middle and drew their playgrounds. Then, we cut a strip of paper in any color, drew the monkey bar steps, and glued it onto the folded white paper. While the glue was drying, the kids drew themselves with their arms raised as if they were climbing something. They cut their drawings out and glued them onto the monkey bars. They were then able to share while practicing the sentence, I can climb. Pretty easy and simple.

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.   

Took my 5-year-olds outside to find leaves to use as stamps to make forests. We were studying nature and of course the topic of trees came up. Back in the classroom with their chosen leaves of different sizes, we used yellow and blue paint to create our forest green. Some leaves we first painted yellow, stamped white paper, and then painted the leaves blue and stamped the same yellow prints. The other leaves we first painted blue and then yellow. The kids were curious about how the tones of green were somewhat different depending on what color we used first. We saved the leaves and each day observed as they hardened because of the dry paint and then withered away. They used crayons to draw and color the forest floor. Each part of this activity was exciting and created wonder.  

Which animals live underground? Well, ants do, so my five-year-olds made some tunnels for ants. We used toilet paper rolls glued onto a big brown piece of paper for the tunnels. Then the students made the ants. I used black paint to paint one of their fingers and they made three little circles, then used a black pen to draw the legs and antennae. After that, they glued googly eyes on the heads. Last we drew some leaves on green paper and also cut small strips of different tones of green paper to be the grass. We wanted it to look like the tunnels were underground. We made one ant, they'll probably make more next class, on a folded white paper and placed it coming out of one of the tunnels. I was able to use this ant colony to ask them how many ants and leaves there were, what color the ants were, if the ants were hungry, and they sponateously decided which ant was the queen. We were extremely proud of our ant colony creation. 🐜🐜🐜🐜🐜🐜🐜🐜🐜🐜🐜🐜🐜🐜  

My 5-year-olds are studying nature and the animals we can see in a forest. We made these owls out of cardboard, some leftover paper, and plastic bottle tops. We added a little stick for the owls to perch on. They could also finger paint some parts of the owl if they wanted to. We glued them onto black paper so it would look like it was nighttime.  When they were completely dry, we hid them around the room for students to find. We would help the kids by telling them if they were hot or cold. When they finally found their owl, we asked, what is it, and they had to say, it's an owl. I thought they all came out amazing!  

Who doesn't love to listen to a good song?! My little kids are studying about words to use to talk about feelings and specifically this day about what makes them happy. I used cardboard for the guitars. I made sure to cut them out before class because the cardboard was a little too hard for them to cut, although I do like them to be able to practice using scissors. The students painted them and glued the paper details. They pretended to play them the following classes as we sang our hello song and they would repeat the sentence: I feel happy when I listen to music.  The piano was drawn onto white paper but the black keys were srips of black paper the students glued onto their white keys. I let them choose the color of the paint they wanted for their hands. I painted each student´s hand and helped them stamp their pianos. We took around 3 classes to do all this. When the pianos were drying, I showed them a video of a little girl around their age playing the piano and they were mesme...