If you’re looking for some of the best ESL Christmas games and activities, then you’re certainly in the right place. We’re going to give you the run down on the best 17 of them, along with Christmas worksheets and lesson plans to consider using in your classes.
Top 17 ESL Christmas Games
Are you ready? Let’s get to the Christmas ESL activities and games.
#1: Charades ESL Christmas Game
If you want to have some fun with your students, then consider playing Christmas charades. You probably already know this game—it’s when someone has to act out a word or phrase and their teammates have to guess what they’re doing. The only preparation it requires is coming up with the Christmas words.
Want to know more? Find out how I play this game in my classes:
#2: Partner Conversation Starters for Christmas
If you ask your students what they want to work on in class, “free-talking” or “conversation” is usually right up there at the top! Except in my experience, it can be difficult to just tell students to, “talk about ABC.” They’ll often talk for a minute or two and then there will be a lot of silence!
This is preventable if you give them a bunch of conversation starters related to a topic. In this case, just a few of them could be:
- Do you celebrate Christmas in your family? (more ideas here: ESL Family Games)
- What are some of your traditions?
- What’s a holiday in your country where family gets together? Tell me about it!
- What do you think about giving presents at Christmas? Consumeristic or a nice idea?
- Etc.
Find out more details here:
#3: Christmas Songs for Kids
What says Christmas like some Christmas carols, right? Have a sing-a-long with your kids and even if you don’t sing that well yourself, no problem? Just use YouTube! Here’s one resource but there are lots of other ones:
#4: Christmas Candies in the Jar
A fun, school-wide Christmas ESL game that you can play is to put some Christmas coloured candy in a sealed jar of some kind. Then, each student gets to make a guess about how many candies there are. The person with the correct guess (or the closest) wins the candy!
#5: Picture Prompt
Unless your students are absolute beginners, it’s likely that they already know many Christmas words. If this is the case, it can be helpful to get them to activate their prior knowledge before teaching them new things.
One way to do this is to show a picture filled with Christmasy things. Then, depending on the level of the students, they can do various things. One thing is to simply shout out words of what they see. Or, they can make sentences using them. For example, “Santa is sneaking down the chimney.” Or, even more advanced students can talk with a partner about what they see and if it reminds them of anything in their own lives.
Find out more details about this super simple yet versatile activity:
#6: Christmas-Themed Presentations
A fun idea for a holiday class is to have students give some short presentations about a holiday tradition in their family. Or, if the students are all from different countries, they could talk about a certain holiday that they have that’s roughly equivalent to North American Christmas.
If you want to do some ESL presentations, you’ll want to check this out first:
Presentation Project Guidelines and Ideas.
#7: The Christmas Tree Game
#8: Make Homemade Christmas Cards
A fun activity is to get students to make some Christmas cards for their friends and family members, or even other teachers and students at your school. Bring in a variety of paper, glue, glitter, pencil crayons, and other art supplies and let students get to work!
Consider showing some samples of Christmas cards from Google Images so students can see the possibilities. Trees, Christmas scenes, Santa and reindeer, etc.
#9: Taboo ESL Christmas Game
You’ve probably played the party game Taboo before. The way it works is that you have to describe a certain word but you can’t use certain other words from a list. I modify this game and just get students to describe the words using any sort of vocabulary that they want. It’s a nice game to use with Christmas vocab.
Want to check out the modifications and how I get my students playing Taboo? Find out here:
ESL Christmas Game
#10: Chain Spelling With Christmas Words
A quick time-filler is this easy game, chain spelling. It helps students practice this important skill but it also requires nothing in the way of preparation or materials, making it a serious winner in my books.
The way it works is that students have to spell various Christmas words one-by-one. If they miss a letter, they are out of the game and it continues until only one person is left standing. Want to give it a go in your classes? Learn more here:
#11: Just One Question
If you want to get students up and out of their seats talking to their classmates, as well as using a whole bunch of skills in a single activity, consider trying out Just One Question. In this case, you’d want to set the theme of the questions as related to Christmas or other holidays.
Basically, each pair of students has to think of one interesting question and then survey at least 10 of their classmates to find out what they think about it. After that, they compile the results and then report them back to the class. As you might guess, this requires some serious language skills!
Find out how to do this activity right here:
Just One Question ESL Survey Activity.
#12: Christmas Vocabulary Guessing Game
#13: Christmas Dictogloss
A challenging activity that works on listening skills in a big way is dictogloss. Find (or write yourself) a passage of someone describing their Christmas traditions or experiences. Then, read it out to the students at a faster than normal pace.
Students have to work together to recreate what they just heard, either by speaking or writing. Then, read it again and students do the same. After that, they can compare what they have to the original version.
Want to give it a try in your classes? Check it out here:
ESL Dictogloss Listening Activity.
#14: Movie Day—Home Alone
Watching Home Alone is a classic Christmas activity in many countries and students seem to love it! It has a nice combination of speaking but then action so that even students who are not great at English can easily understand what’s going on. Of course, you could be kind and use subtitles.
#15: I’m an Alien
A fun activity that I like to do with kids is this simple one. I pretend that I’m an alien and ask them to describe Christmas (or another holiday in their country). Of course, I play it up and ask a whole bunch of “Why” questions. Find out more about it here:
#16: Christmas Bingo Game
Who doesn’t love playing Bingo in English class, right? I like to play some holiday-themed Bingo whenever possible. However, to make it a bit more difficult, I only describe the words instead of actually just saying it. This is a far more challenging way for students to get some serious listening practice as well as review their Christmas vocabulary words.
Want to know more about this version? Check it out here:
ESL Christmas activity
#17: Telephone Speaking and Listening Game
It’s always nice to have some games and activities that require absolutely nothing in the way of preparation or materials, right? Telephone, aka Chinese Whispers is one such activity.
The way it works is that you can say a phrase to the first student from each team. They pass the message along to the end until that person has to say the phrase. It’s rarely the same and the results are often hilarious. In this case, make your sentences Christmas related.
Find out more details here:
Christmas ESL Vocabulary
Here are some of the most common words related to Christmas that you might want to teach your students:
- candy cane
- chimney
- Christmas tree
- elf
- gingerbread
- holly
- lights
- ornaments
- presents
- reindeer
- Santa
- sleigh
- star
- stocking
- snowman
- wreath
ESL Christmas Lesson Plans
A huge time-saver can be ready-made lesson plans that you can just print off and use. Why reinvent the wheel if other teachers have done the hard work for you, right? Here are some of my top picks:
Christmas ESL Worksheets
There are lots of great TEFL Christmas worksheets out there to choose from. Here are some of the best options:
Did you like these Christmas Class Ideas?
- Amazon Kindle Edition
- Smith, Jennifer Booker (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
- 132 Pages - 03/31/2016 (Publication Date)
Yes? Thought so. Then you’re going to love this book over on Amazon: 101 ESL Activities for Kids. The key to better English classes for kids is a wide variety of interesting and engaging games and activities and this book will help you get there in a big way. There’s enough good stuff to get through the entire semester in style.
Keep a copy on the bookshelf in your office to use as a handy reference guide. Or, you might consider taking the digital version with you on your phone, tablet or laptop to your favourite coffee shop for a serious lesson planning session.
Whatever the case, it’s some ESL teaching awesome. So, check out the book for yourself on Amazon but only if you want to level up your TEFL classes for kids:
Have your Say about these ESL Christmas Games?
What’s your top pick for an ESL Christmas Game? Is it one of the options from this or do you have another one you’d like to recommend? Leave a comment below and let us know what you think. We’d love to hear from you.
Also be sure to give this article a share on Facebook, Pinterest, or Twitter. It’ll help other busy English teachers, like yourself find this useful resource.
Last update on 2020-03-29 / Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API
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