ESL games and activities for kindergarten

York Fern

20 April 2022

Last Updated: 24 January 2023

When it comes to teaching kids, perfect knowledge of the language is not enough to become a good teacher. Grammar tenses and speaking exercises don’t make any sense if they are not accompanied by playing games. In comparison with teenagers or adults, young learners don’t have any logical reasons to attend your class but feelings. Children will love English if you show them how much fun there. It is crucial to be positive, easy-going, and patient when you teach kids. Don’t try to push them to do something because it’s a rule, make them interested in the learning process. It seems to be difficult, to come up with games for kids and create something entertaining all the time, but it is highly rewarding job.

Young students have no intention to win a game, they just want to have some fun during your lesson. That is why, it is so hard to make them focus on one thing for a long time. Whether you teach listening or vocabulary, it must be an active task.

Fortunately, children memorize everything easily and quickly, you just need some supplies to catch their attention. We would like to tell you the most interesting and effective ESL kindergarten ideas that you can implement right away.

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Alphabet songs

This is an obvious start of your course with kids, who can’t pronounce some letters and sounds in English correctly. Needless to say that rhythm helps to memorize words faster, however knowing all letters in English alphabet isn’t the objective of this activity. It is significant to know but not enough to improve reading or pronunciation. What is more important that children should differ some sounds, which start from the same letter. It helps them to start reading too. For example, we know that C might be different in some words, like crocodile and cinema.

There are plenty of songs you can find on YouTube. Write some simple words to each letter on a board and make students repeat after you. Then change the game rules. They have to recall some words, which start from the letter you show.

Flashcard games

Flashcards is a flexible and adaptive type of ESL classroom games suits almost all vocabulary topics. Firstly, you can teach new words showing cards one by one. But there is a way to make such an exercise more interesting. For example, if you teach animals, start telling a story about all characters of a farm or a forest, and make some pauses to let students fill them in with a particular animal.

If you want to revise animals, choose one card and show to kids. They must raise their hands to say some facts about the creature on the picture. Prepare some small gifts or stickers to encourage students to compete a bit. Give such prizes to those, who names right facts about an animal.

What is missing?

It is a good idea how to conduct a lesson about face features, parts of the body, or rooms. Prepare ESL flashcards relate to the topic you want to teach. Also, you can make such cards on your own selecting appropriate photos on the Internet. List them and say to students, they have only 10 seconds to memorize all things they see. Count backward loudly to hurry them up a bit. Then, ask them to close eyes or turn off screen sharing if you work online, and delete a card while they don’t see it. When the list of things appears again, there will be one missing card that kids must identify and name.

If you have on offline class, you can use toys or other tangible things instead of pictures.

Find something blue

As little students love to move, you can have a short useful break during a lesson. As soon as you teach colors, use all things in a classroom as a vocabulary game. When you say, «find something blue» or whatever color you name, all class must find the color and point it out. It might be a spot on a t-shirt, or a pen in someone’s pencil case, what is more important that students have to identify the color as soon as they can.

An online version of this game might be conducted through bright pictures. Prepare some colorful illustrations with small details or animals on it. So, students will be able to revise one more topic, because they have to pronounce what things they have found.

Guess the color

There is one more easy game to work on colors. However, in comparison with the previous one, it has an opposite objective. Instead of naming some colors, you show black and white pictures of things or animals that learners know. As soon as they recall what something looks like, they have to describe what colors there must be.

You can change the rules to train listening skills. Ask students to take their drawings from home. Then each participant should explain what they have drawn, whereas the rest of the class guesses what colors are in the drawing. It is more difficult, because the imagination of children runs wild and they can paint usual things like sky and field different colors.

Where is that?

Teaching grammar isn’t something detached in children’s course. It is integrated in all vocabulary topics to help young learners produce not only phrases but also sentences. They usually don’t care what prepositions mean, or how to use Present Simple, they just learn through conversational patterns and lexical approach.

That is why, you should think in advance, how to combine two similar topics to train all productive skills. For example, if you are going to teach rooms and things there, include prepositions of place in your lesson plan. Show a picture for 10 seconds, while class memorizes all things and their positions. After 10 seconds, hide the picture and ask each one to recall one thing and its location in the picture.

Can or can’t

There is a fun ESL game that doesn’t require preparation at all. It perfectly fits animal topic. In order to help students use grammar correctly and increase their vocabulary, implement it while you teach names of animals. Discuss and show if you can, what each creature can or can’t do.

Each kid thinks of an animal and explains what it can and can’t do instead of just naming it. Other classmates try to guess what it is. It is also a good chance to train Present Simple after that. Such an exercise help to get used to endings in English. For example children may say, «A rabbit can hop. It hops every day».

If you want to make the game more difficult, pronounce your examples keeping secrets what animals you mean. You may ask, «It can swim but can’t fly. What is it?»

Feelings and emotions

The most difficult thing in English for the majority of people is the verb «to be». Adolescents may understand the meaning of it, whereas children couldn’t care less. So, the best way for them to get used to it is repetition. In addition to this activity, you should stress all options of «to be» when you speak.

This game is supposed to teach kids how to talk about mood in English. Prepare some flashcards with peoples’ facial expressions and ask questions using basic adjectives.

Ask yes or no questions accompanied by a picture with some feelings. The learners have to answer either «Yes, I am» or «No, I’m not». For example, ask your class, «Are you tired?», while you show the picture where a person smiles. According to such a facial expression they will likely answer «No».

What time is it?

It is not a secret that some kindergarteners struggle to pronounce the time even in their mother tongue. However, we have a new version of such a trivial exercise. Firstly, make sure that young students know all numbers. Then draw some watches on cards and give a card to everybody. Choose the first host, who should stand in front of the class and write down the time, which their classmates pronounce.

For instance, the student says the time on their card, «Half past seven», whereas the host writes 7:30. You check and help if it’s necessary. Then, the turn of the next pair of learners, where one is a host, and another is a participant.

Categories

When little students have enough vocabulary to describe basic things like fruits, furniture, and animals, you may conduct a revision game. You need some baskets to prepare, the amount of those depend on the number of categories you want to have.

There might be following groups:

• food;
• jobs;
• colors;
• things at home;
• family.

Write down relevant words to each category on small pieces of paper and put them on a surface. Everybody should move quickly as possible to take a sticker and choose what category it fits. Then one by one, they run to a certain basket with that category and put the word in it.

Who are you?

Jobs is one of the basic topics. That’s a chance to have a role-play and an introduction game with little English learners. Write down all professions on stickers and give to everyone. Each kid should explain the job with some prompts, whereas others must guess it.

If it seems difficult, assign learners to think of only one fact. If the word is «chef», a child may say, «I cook food», or «I make dinner». Also, you can change the rules and explain different professions, where children have to listen to you carefully and answer correctly.

Close your eyes and show…

Parts of the body might be a piece of a fun game, if we add some physical work. Everyone must close eyes, while you as a host give instructions what to do.

For instance, «jump on your right leg» or «bend with your left knee». Keep in mind, you should observe everyone’s result and pay attention to those, who couldn’t figure it out quickly.

Also, you can use this game again in terms of imperative verbs. When you start teaching road signs or popular phrases, your students will recognize this grammar pattern. You may say, «count you fingers», and they will know what to do.

Describe a picture

It is better to show the meaning of the structures «there is» and «there are» on tangible and bright examples. Teaching ESL offline, go around the room and ask children to describe different places of the classroom.

When it comes to online teaching, you can find 3-5 pictures with furniture, food, or animals, in that case learners don’t have to move, they can do everything verbally. In order to challenge your class, ask questions to confuse students. If there are 7 dogs in the picture, you may ask, «Are there 3 cats in the picture?».

Charades

There is another ESL idea to make kids laugh. Learning new words might be boring for little students, so let them let their hair down and move a bit. The important rule in this game is to use only nouns. Choose a topic that you would like your class to work on, and give everybody a role to play. Explain that hosts can’t speak only show the word they have on a sticker. That’s a good way to recall some words, which students have learned recently, and finish a lesson.

Simon says

When we teach imperative verbs, it is also essential to drawn students’ attention to politeness. The ESL activity «Simon says» is an illustrative way to make a group get used to saying «please». You as a Simon should speak quickly and check kids’ reaction to your words. The point is to say random instructions, whereas class must do what you say only if they hear the word «please». It doesn’t take much time, however everyone will love such an active break.

Hot potato

Truth be told, this type of game is so convenient, because you can adapt it to a topic every time when you have no idea what to do with ESL kindergarten. Turn music on and warn students that when music stops, nobody will be able to pass a hot potato. Start passing it around the class adding some emotions to show that a potato is real, it makes students feel excitement too. A person, who holds a potato when music is mute, must do the task. It depends on the topic you have chosen.

You can assign:

• name 3 red vegetables;
• say 5 your favorite animals;
• how many pictures on the wall;
• what time is it.

Quiz

We know so many interactive activities for speaking and vocabulary practice, but what about listening? This ESL game takes some time on preparation, but the result is worth it. Make 10 questions to a topic you would like to have a revision on and draw them up on a colorful worksheet with bright illustrations. Encourage students to participate by some rewards and make a table to count everyone’s points in the end.

Ask questions and give options to answer helping if some team members hesitate. As your class already knows the topic, probably it won’t take much time, however listening practice may make it more complicated. Anyway, you can stress some words or even show some guests to help kindergarten kids understand you.

Emoji game

The young generation is better at technology than we. That is why, they will be amused by this ESL game. Start a new message in a chat on your phone and make a list of emojis. Try to place them in order that seems to be someone’s day in life. If you teach offline print it out, or share this picture on your screen if you work online.

There is the great idea to demonstrate household chores or daily routine. Firslty, teach phrases according to the emoji, and then assign students to match each small image with a phrase. When students know all necessary vocabulary, get rid of prompts and phrases and show only emoji in a particular order.

The point is to make a story about one day in somebody’s life. Each child makes only one sentence according to his turn and emoji. It is better to write the whole story down and laugh together in the end.

Summary

As you understand, there is much work to create a worth lesson and make young ESL students happy. Teaching English includes a lot of things at the same time except having fun with students.

There are some basic duties of English teachers during a lesson:

• to make instructions short and informative;
• to make sure that everybody understands what to do;
• to check difficulties that class faces during an exercise;
• to explain words in the easiest way and even show their meaning;
• to change and adapt activities very time when students get bored.

All ESL games that we have prepared might be changed in terms of a topic. There is only one principle to teach children – make them curious. Try to become a students’ friend but stick to your guns as a teacher and an adult. Whether you have teaching experience or not, it might be difficult to catch young learners attention and make them listen to you.

TEFL/TESOL courses provide knowledge on how to react on children’s offense, or how to give them a positive but an honest feedback. Also, there are so many materials to use whether you teach online or offline. After a TEFL/TESOL course you won’t be surprised by kids behavior or expressions, and will always know what to do.

Enroll in an online TEFL/TESOL course to become a high-qualified ESL teacher in a couple of months. Check the link to get a course program with a 50% discount.

We hope this article will help you to organize your lessons and amuse little learners. What are you favorite ESL games and activities for kindergarten kids? Let us know in the comments below and don’t hesitate to leave there your questions if you have.