Young Learners' Activities | Animals

Children should have fun while learning

    Welcome to my blog, everyone. It has been quite a while since I posted any activities that I tried in my lessons. Since I started working with young learners again (after the pandemic) I can show you somethings. 

    Today's topic is Animals. It's a fun subject to teach to young learners. You can use TPR quite often. 

    In my class, students already knew some of the animal vocabularies. So it was an exercise lesson. 

Activity 1

    10-15 minutes / Age: 5-12 

    The first one is quite easy. My students were already talking about their pets since day one. And the book I'm following has an opening song about pets repeating "Do you have a pet?"
It would be stupid If I hadn't asked that question after this song. So, as the following activity after song warm-up, I asked them to draw and color their own or imaginary pets. I asked them to write the name, color, and any additional information they want. These are some of the examples that I loved.

I loved that he formed the sentence "My mother's mother have bird." Although all these have some grammatical errors, they were quite good.

This one is an example of an imaginary pet. It says "Scary Chucky Cat"

This was a settler activity that students enjoyed. 

Activity 2

    10 minutes / Age: 8-12 

    This one came up to me just the day before the class while organizing my old toys. It resembles to a scavenger hunt but it's a simplified version. 

    First I showed students little toys that I brought from home without letting them touch. It created a huge curiosity. I told them that we are going to play a game if they are nice, listen. and speak English (Our classroom rules). It was a great promise and it worked in that area too. After Activity 1, I brought some animal photos (cut already). We did the "show me" game for a couple of minutes then we categorized the animals as "Wild" "Farm" "Sea" and "Pets". Students glued pictures on their notebooks and wrote down the names of the animals.

    After all this, I asked students to leave the class and hid the animal toys I brought under books and school bags they have. I gave them a piece of paper and asked them to write down the names of the animals they find.

    I hid one toy on each student's desk so they don't have to run to the same place. And they had to leave the object where they have found it. 

    

It was really fun for the students. They asked to play it again the next time. But I have to make it more controlled. I could give numbers to each toy and they could write down by the number. Or I could give some hints like M_ _ SE, Z_B_A so it would be easier for them to write. After the activity, I showed the object and they told me the name of it. I suggest you try it even if you don't have any toys. You can always use flashcards.

    If you use any activities please let me know! I'll be really happy.
    I'll be posting more on my progress. Hope you have a great lesson, Good Luck :)