Crafts Tips
for ESL kids teachers

Paper Plate Faces.  Paper plates are great for drawing faces on (to teach nose, eyes, hair, ears, mouth, hair, eyebrow, eyelashes, cheeks, moustache, beard, chin and so on).  You can get really creative too - use string for hair, paints, play doh for noses, etc.  Click here for an example.  Stick popsicle sticks on the bottom of the plates so children can hold the faces up and play out conversations between the plate characters.  Emotions can also be draw (happy, sad, angry, sleepy, excited, surprised, etc.) and then used in touch games.

Play Doh Recipe. Play Doh (see picture here) is such a useful supply, especially for younger students.  It can be used for making food and animals, teaching colors and even used to make alphabet shapes.  You can buy it at most toy stores but it can be easily made - either before class or during class as an activity.  Here is a worksheet recipe that can be used to make play doh in your class - click here.

Sesame Street Craft. If you use any of the Sesame Street course books or puppets then why not check out this craft page: click here.  Kids love making their favorite character crafts - a sure fire way to get everyone excited in the activity. Many of the characters are here for you and your students to make  - print out and glue together.

Sock Puppet Dialogs.  Learning and acting out dialogs can be dull, embarrassing and sometimes seem pointless in a young learners classroom.  However, dialogs can be a lot of fun with simple sock puppets.  Students can act out skits with them (for example, based on a story they read in class) and use them to ask other students' sock puppets all kinds of questions.  Students can even make the sock puppets in class - see here for instructions.