Teacher Discussion Forums

Happy holidays to all you English teachers at home and abroad. It's that time of year again for those who wish to let Christmas spirit into their classroom to come up with fun, experiential ways to use Christmas to teach English. I have already begun singing Christmas songs (Santa cluas is coming to town, We Wish You a Merry Christmas, etc.) and showing pictures of me celebrating with my family last year at christmas. My Japanese students were amazed by the pictures of my grandmother pulling a huge turkey out of the oven and then reaching in with a spoon to get out the stuffing.
What kinds of activities will you be doing? Crafts? Word games? Throw some ideas out.
Nick

I usually just go over some Christmas vocab, talk about what the students want for Christmas and call it a day.

This year I'm planning on adding a wordsearch, crossword, my free Santa and his reindeer game and some yet to be discovered craft activity.

I have some Christmas flash cards on my home page www.mes-english.com/flashcards/christmas.php with Bingo cards to match. I usually have a few rounds of bingo and there are game cards to we use to play other games.

Here's what I did last year with lower ele. down.

Make a Reindeer:
time: 15-20 min. (longer for kindergarten and below)
materials: scissors, pens, 3 shades of construction paper, glue


1. Cut out a triangle with rounded tips using light brown construction paper(this will be the face)
2. Trace the students hands onto dark construction paper (antlers) and cut out.
3. Cut out a circle from red or black construction paper (nose)
4. Glue the antlers to the back of the face and the nose to the front of the face near the bottom. (The face should point down like a yeild sign.)
5. Draw in the eyes.
6. Write the students name and year on the back of their reindeer

If you've got computers here's a christmas game www.marks-english-school.com/games/mes- ... as_01.html

I hope that helps.

- Mark
www.mes-english.com