Teaching Food to Young Learners of English – What Do You Want to Eat? Song Part 2

Teaching food to children can be a lot of fun. Children who are learning English (ESL, EFL) love learning the names of food, It is really important to teach kids how to ask for food in English, so I made some fun videos! More below the video:

This song focuses on asking for food using “want” and “some.” For example, ” I want some pizza, I want some ice cream.”

Lyrics: What Do You Want to Eat Song Part 2:

What do you want to eat? (x2)
I want some pizza (x2)
(repeat with rice, cheese)

Do you want some spider spaghetti?
No, thank you.

(repeat with soup, fish, ice cream,
worm cookies)

Game Idea

Put a bunch of food flashcards on the floor. Have the students ask the teacher, “What do you want to eat?” The teacher answer, ” I want some pizza.” The first students to touch the pizza flashcard gets a point! You can change it up by having the students answer the question.

Be sure to check out the What Do You Want to Eat? Song Part 1 for more food vocabulary. This song focuses on using “want” and “a”. For example, “I want a hot dog.” I hope this is helpful. Happy singing!

Favorite Animal Song- A New Original Song for your Classes Young Learners of English, ESL, EFL

In this song I had a lot of fun combing a few question phrases, wild animals, and a bit of action! See below for teaching tips and vocabulary used in the song:

Target Vocabulary:
Questions: Do you have a favorite animal? Can you see the lion? Where is the lion?
Vocabulary: zebra, lion, elephant, crocodile, monkey, and tiger.
Phrases: I like zebras. It’s a lion.

The idea of this song and video is to teach the animal names in a natural way. It is a bit different than drilling the same question and answer over and over. I hope that this type of song will help students be able to have a conversation in a natural way.

Teaching Tips:
Watch the video with the students. Depending on the students age or level, you do not have to pressure them to sing along. They can watch and learn. After watching the video, you can use flash cards to make sure they learned the animal names.

Next, try asking a few questions like in the video. For example, “Do you have a favorite animal?”

Animal Matching Game:
Use small game cards to play the animals matching game. Put the cards face down, and the students have to pick up the cards and find a match.
MES-English.com has great game cards for this. Kids love this kind of game. As the students turn over the card, make sure they see either the animal name, or a phrase like “It’s a lion.”

I hope you find these ideas helpful. Be creative, have fun and your students will too! Happy Teaching!

Animal Guessing Game for Young English Learners Class

Hi, Friends! I want to share a fun and simple game with you that I use often in my classes. If you follow the Dream English Kids YouTube channel, you may have noticed that I am making videos on the theme of Zoo animals. This has been a lot of fun, and I hope useful in your classes.

whatanimalisit

The Animal Guessing Game uses animal vocabulary, animal sounds, and a bit of fun acting. This is how you play: Introduce some animals using flashcards. For example, a lion, tiger, elephant, and zebra. After introducing the vocabulary, show each card and act like the animal with sounds and actions. Asks the students to follow along.

Next, ask the students to guess which animal you are imitating. After you have done this a few times, let the students take turns. When one student is acting like an animal, ask the other students to guess the animal. Make sure every students gets a chance to act like an animal!

I hope you find this fun and useful. Happy Teaching!

The Tower Game: A Fun Simple Game for Young Learners

Games are a great way to use vocabulary with students in a fun way. Children naturally love playing games, and it can be fun for the teacher, too! I used to think you need to have new games all of the time. Now I realize that a few great games can be played over and over in class. Simply switch out the vocabulary when you are teaching a new topic.

towergame-exapmple

The Tower Game is one of my favorite games to use in small and big classes. I recommend this one from ages four and up. Here is how to play:

This is a really simple game that you can use with any flash card set. You do need a set of paper cups to play this. After teaching a set of flash card vocabulary, simply use the flash cards and cups to build a tower with the students.

You will need to use laminated flash cards for this to work. Place a cup on the table and ask the student’s a question, “What’s this?” When they answer correctly, they can place the flash card on the cup. Put another cup on top of that flash card, and repeat with the next student until you run out of flash cards, or the tower falls over.

You can use a lot of good phrases here like, “be careful” and “Oh, no!”.

What’s your favorite game to play with students? Check out my Dream English Tips Podcast to learn about some more games!

New Podcast: Top 5 Classroom Games for Young Learners

Hi! In this episode I talk about my Top 5 Classroom Games for teaching English to young learners. You only need a few good games that you can use over and over again with differnet vocabulary. Have a listen for some of my students favorites. Visit the Kids Games Page for more fun game ideas!

Click to Listen on PodBean.

Click to Listen on iTunes.

 

 

Teaching Colors with the What Color Is It? Song Free MP3 Download

Hi, Friends! I hope wherever you are in the world you are feeling positive today! Today I added the “What Color Is It?” Song as a free download on Dream English.com. This is a song that I use almost every day in my classes. I use it as an action song to get the students up and moving around the room. Young learners love to be active, and this song is a big help. If you are not familiar with the song, have a look at the video:

To go to the page with the free MP3 download of the “What Color is it?” song click here.

Why I love this song

Learning colors is an important basic part of any English course for young learners. This song teaches eleven main colors. It also teaches the question, “What color is it?” and how to answer, “It’s red.”

Students can sing the song and watch the video, or get active! I play the song in the classes, actually I play it and sing on guitar, but you can use the mp3 download. Ask your students to go around the room and touch or pick up objects with the colors they sing in the song. The second half of the song repeats the colors and gets faster. This is really fun for students!

Super Teaching Tip!

Have your students sing along, and when they get to the color and touch it have them say, “here!” when they touch the color. As a teacher, be encouraging. Say, “Great job, Sally! Nice work, Billy!” Give it a try! Happy singing and color finding! -Matt

Recycling Classroom Games for Quick Lesson Prep Time

When teaching young learners English, it is always a good idea to be prepared. Having an easy to follow lesson plan is really important in having a great class. I love to say to myself, “stick to the plan!” when in doubt of what to do next. With this in mind, having some fun and simple games you can use with a variety of topics is really important for a great class.

Example of a Favorite Game

One of our classroom favorite games is the Tower Game. For this game all that you need are some flashcards and paper cups. The children build up a tower with the cups and flashcards as they identify the object on the flashcard. You can read more about the Tower Game and how to play here. Or watch a video at the end of this post.

Recycling Games

One reason I love the Tower Game is because you can use it with any topic that you have flashcards for. Numbers, ABCs, animals, weather, really anything. You can also use question and answer phrases. For example, hold up a flashcard of a dog and say, “What do you see?” and the student has to answer in a full sentence, “I see a dog.” before they put the card on the cup to make the tower.

Having games like the Tower Game, or memory, or other fun games that you do not have to explain the rules every time you play is not only a time saver, but students will have immediate fun as they are comfortable with the rules of play after a few plays. Check out more fun Classroom Games at www.dreamenglish.com/kidsgames and Happy Teaching!

And here is a video I made many years ago demonstrating the Tower Game. Watch it for fun : )