Food games and activities
for ESL kids lessons
Games and activities for teaching “Food” to ESL kids
Apple pass
Have all students sit in a circle. Use a plastic apple and toss it to one student. But you must say one fruit word as you pass. The student then throws to another student and says a different fruit. If the student you threw it to drops it, he/she is out. And the game keeps going until you have one winner.
It can be played with different categories, such as food, animals, etc. My students love it! (Submitted by Kim.S.)
Blindfold guess
Blindfold a student and give him/her an object to feel. The student must guess what the object is by only feeling it. This works well with plastic fruit, vegetables or other plastic toy foods as they are a little challenging to guess.
Give me game
You can use with objects or flashcards. This works well with plastic fruit: Gather and elicit the different kinds of plastic fruit you have. Then throw all the fruit around the classroom (it’s fun just to throw the whole lot in the air and watch the chaos of the scrabbling to pick them up).
Once the students have collected the fruit (they’ll probably do their best to hide it in their pockets, etc.) teacher says, “Give me an apple”. The student with the apple should approach the teacher and hand him/her the fruit, saying “Here you are”. Avoid having the fruit thrown back to you as they can go anywhere and takes a long time to finish this game.
Food lesson plans
We also have a FREE lesson plans on food which includes games and activities as well as other lesson materials.
- Click to download our fruit lesson plan.
- Click to download our vegetables lesson plan.
Food songs
We have a numbers of songs available for download focusing on food:
Meal routines throw
This activities practices adverbs such as never, rarely, sometimes, usually, often, always.
First, get students to write down as many food words on the blackboard as they can in 3 minutes (if you have a large class, have the students shout out and the teacher write the words down). Then make 2 teams. In Team A, Student 1 throws a screwed up paper ball at the board. Whatever food word it hits the student must make a sentence using the structure “I _ eat _ for (breakfast, lunch or dinner), e.g. “I sometimes eat chicken for dinner”.
If the student successfully hits a word and makes a good sentence he/she wins a point for his team. If the student misses a word or gets the sentence wrong his/her team misses out on a point.
Smell & taste guess
This one takes a bit of preparation but is well worth it. Buy a variety of fruit and cut each fruit up into small cubes, so it is difficult to tell exactly what it is. Once in class, get the students to smell and taste to guess the fruit. Little kids love this. Encourage them to say things like “yummy”, “yuk”, “I like this one”, etc.
What’s in the bag game
Kids love this activity. Take a small cloth bag to class. Have the students close their eyes while teacher puts a plastic fruit object in the bag (such as an orange). One student then puts his/her hand in the bag to feel the object and try and guess what it is.
