Easter in our english class

Funny Easter eggs

In our Easter lessons, which last about a week before schools close, my students are introduced to some common Easter vocabulary, make Easter cards and Easter crafts and, of course, play lots of fun games.

Our students know full well that any games we play in class will be somehow related to an ESL component, that there will be some focus on grammar or new vocabulary. Because they know that in an ESL classroom, we rarely play games just for fun…. Want to surprise your class? AND give them opportunities to learn? Try these Easter games, and you’ll have your students eagerly lining up to play. And learn!

Many of the activities below, where found either on a Burlington Easter Activities leaflet which was sent to most schools a few years ago or on the ESL kidStuff site which has even more activities than the ones that I have personally used in my class and have REALLY worked!! This site therefore, is highly recommended!

One other site where you can find lots of craft ideas that have really worked in my class is: http://www.kidssoup.com/index.html I should also not forget to recommend my most favourite site of all: http://www.activityvillage.co.uk/easter

Activity Village has a huge selection of Easter activities for you to enjoy with your kids, including colouring pages, printables, jokes, crafts and puzzles!

Easter Games & Activities

Bunny hoping

Bunny Hopping Exercises: have Ss hop to your commands (like an Easter Bunny): Hop slowly, hop quickly, big hops, small hops, turn around hops, hop on left / right foot, hop forward / backwards / sideways, close your eyes and hop, flap your arms and hop, etc. This is a great activity to do after making ‘Bunny Ears’ . (TP: V: hop, slowly, quickly, big, small, turn around, left, right, backward, forwards, sideways, flap, close. F: giving instructions to play a game using adverbs and prepositions of direction).

Bunny hoping

Easter Bunny Hop—Conduct a relay race for two or three teams.Each player must cover a certain distance while jumping with a plastic egg between his/her knees.

Easter bunny hop

Chocolate Egg Bowling: roll a ball across the classroom. Ss take turns to roll their eggs to get closest to the ball. (TP: V: roll, closest. F: giving instructions to play a game).

Duck Walk Race: have the kids line up at the Start Line, squat down and grasp their ankles with each hand from behind. On GO, they waddle to a designated Finish Line. They can’t let go of their ankles or they are disqualified. The first child over the Finish Line wins a prize. (TP: None).

Easter Egg Blow: use real hollow egg shells (before class get some eggs, puncture a hole at both ends and blow out the insides of the egg, then wash out) or plastic eggs. Use a straw to blow the eggs across the classroom. First person across, is the winner!

Easter egg blow

Easter Egg Decoration: use real egg shells (before class get some eggs, puncture a hole at both ends and blow out the insides of the egg, then wash out). Use colored felt pens, glue and glitter, stickers and anything else to decorate the eggs. You can use these eggs in the ‘Easter Egg Blow’ game. (TP: None).

Easter Egg Emotions: use real egg shells (before class get some eggs, puncture a hole at both ends and blow out the insides of the egg, then wash out). Use felt pens to draw faces in different emotions (happy, sad, angry, sleepy, etc). (TP: V: various emotions vocab. F: using adjectives to describe emotions).

Easter egg emotions

Easter Egg Faces: review face vocab (eyes, ears, nose, mouth, hair, eyebrows, cheeks, chin, etc.). Use real egg shells (before class get some eggs, puncture a hole at both ends and blow out the insides of the egg, then wash out). Do as a listening activity – T says “draw a nose” and children draw a nose, and so on. Also good for adjectives – “Draw a long nose”, “draw big eyes”, etc. (TP: V: various face vocab. F: giving instructister Egg Hunt: hide small chocolate eggs around your classroom / school / the park and send your Ss off to find them. Teach them expressions like “I’ve found one!”, “Where are the eggs?”, etc. (TP: V: I’ve found one!, Where are the eggs?).

Easter egg faces

Fair-For-All Easter Egg Hunt: this stops some kids getting all the eggs and other getting none. Simply, write each Ss names on some eggs. The Ss will have to recognize their own names. (TP: F: recognizing your written name).

Egg & Spoon Races: it’s up to you whether you use real, uncooked eggs! Teams relay race with eggs on spoons across the classroom. (TP: None).

Spoon races

Nosey Easter Egg Roll: Ss roll the eggs using only their noses. The first one over the finish line wins. (TP: None).

Hot Cross buns game: First, I talk to them about Hot Cross buns….I give my older students the recipe which in case they use at home to make some hot cross buns for their classmates to taste in our next lesson, they are awarded stickers!! I hand my younger students a picture with 10 hot cross buns hidden and I ask them to work in teams and find them. Later, they read five sentences and decide if each sentence is true or false.

Hot cross bun

Finally, pupils learn a traditional chant about hot cross buns and play the following game: I ask a volunteer to leave the classroom for a minute. I hide a hot cross bun flashcard in the classroom. I invite the students back in the classroom and ask ” Where is the hot cross bun”? The pupil must look for the hidden flashcard.

Looking for the hidden hot cross bun

The rest of the class can help the student by calling out ” hot cross bun” softly when he or she is far from the hidden flashcard or loudly as he or she comes closer to it!When the student finds the flashcard he/she says a sentence about its location eg ” There is a hot cross bun under the book”.

The Hot Cross Bun game

The Easter Egg game: This is a board game.Pupils play in pairs.The object of the game is to be the first player colouring three Easter eggs. Unfortunately, I have a copy of that Burlington worksheet at school but, I can’t find it online anywhere . You could ask Burlington books to send it to you, too, I assume…

You could easily make your own worksheet with three Easter eggs on the top and three on the bottom of it each divided into three sections , by drawing lines. Then, ask the students to roll the die, and when they land on a colour, colour the indicated section of an egg. The winner is the pupil who completes colouring his/her three eggs first.

Easter Bingo: I ask the pupils to make Bingo cards using the Easter vocabulary I have taught them in class beforehand, using flashcards .

The winner of course, is the first pupil to mark all the pictures on his/her card and call out “Bingo”!

An easter egg hunt variation for older students: turn the egg hunt into a scavenger hunt. For this idea, the entire game must be thoroughly planned out from beginning to end. Inside each plastic egg, place handwritten clues. The kids can divide into teams. Each team is given the same clue to start. When one clue is figured out, it will lead them to another egg with another clue inside. The team that finds the prize first, splits it.