Top 10 conversation activities for kindergarteners

If you’re looking for some of the best ESL kindergarten games, then you’re certainly in the right place. We have the best ones to try out today, including how-to's. Have some fun with your kindy kids who are learning English. ------- • Check out this blog post for more ESL Kindergarten Games and lesson plans: https://eslspeaking.org/esl-kindergarten-games/ • Read my book: 101 ESL Activities for Kids here: https://amzn.to/4cAgwiZ • Join Jackie's email list: https://eslspeaking.org/subscribe/ • Watch my other video on No prep video here: https://youtu.be/w7X6zvRo4X4 ------ https://www.facebook.com/eslspeaking https://www.pinterest.ca/eslspeaking/ https://www.instagram.com/jackie.bolen/ https://www.tiktok.com/@englishwithjackie?lang=en #teachingenglishwithjackie #classroominstruction #simpleenglishgames -------------------------------------------------------- Transcript: Here are 10 of my favourite conversation activities for kindergarten, so I'm talking mostly about ESL or EFL, very Young Learners. The first activity I like is flash cards. I almost never go into a Kindergarten class without a set of flash cards. They're kind of like my security blanket. If you have flashcards, you can do a million things. You could show, for very very beginners, you could show a picture and students have to say the word: cat. For slightly higher-level learners, you could get them to make a sentence. Hot Potato. This is when you have an object, it can be the actual, if you have the real Hot Potato game, it can be that, or you can find like a soft object. I like to do a soft object like a stuffed animal, maybe like a soft ball, something like that because people kind of get like a little bit rowdy during this game and they might end up like throwing things. I don't want anyone to get hurt, if it's like or anything to break. Students pass around the stuffed animal and then you can have some music and when the music stops, that person that's holding that object has to answer a question. Songs and chants. If you're maybe, you're kind of like me and you're not musical at all, that's no problem. I just go on YouTube and you can find a million different songs and chants for little kids kind of related to conversation, and just whatever topic you're teaching that day. Picture prompt. So this is when I flash up a picture related to the topic of the day and then I just kind of elicit some words or just kind of like feedback from the students related to that picture. For example, maybe we're talking about like at the playground or something like that. I would flash up a picture of maybe just a lots of kids playing at the playground and then I would ask students like, What do you see? Use some routines. So little kids love routines. I think adults often like routines as well but especially little kids because they just kind of want to know what to expect when they come into your classroom. And it's actually easier for the teacher if you do routines and students kind of know what's happening and there's no real confusion about what's going on. When students come into my class, into my kindergarten classes, I kind of, we have a little circle time and then I kind of ask the typical questions, What day of the week is it? How's the weather? Show and tell. This is where students can just bring in a little object from home and if it's like an animal, maybe they don't want to bring their cat, for example, so they could do a picture. If they like love their piano, they could do a picture of a piano if it's something too big, but they can just do like a very quick presentation and just kind of show their object or their thing to their classmates. And what makes it into a conversation activity is that I try to encourage follow-up questions. I'm an alien. This is a fun way to kind of introduce holidays. If there's a big holiday coming up in your country where you're teaching like Christmas, Halloween, whatever pretend that you're an alien and you don't know what this holiday is and you say Christmas, What is Christmas? And then students could shout out at you: it's a holiday, and then you could say,What kind of food do you eat? Focus on questions. I know that it's often the case where the teacher asks questions and then students answer the questions. However, I like to get my students also asking me questions. It's quite easy to do this. For example, if you're having a little circle time, or just a little conversation time, if I'm asking students, How are you today?And they say, I'm great. And then I just kind of wait and then I gesture with my hands and then they then usually like at least one or two students will say, How about you teacher? How are you today? Timestamp conversation activities video: 0:00 Intro 0:13 flashcards 0:51 Hot potato 1:32 Songs and chants 2:06 Picture prompt 2:5