Clothes games and activities
for ESL kids lessons
Games and activities for teaching “Clothes” to ESL kids
Clothes fun
Students form teams of 3. Each team has a bag with some clothes in it. The first team member puts on the clothes. He/She must say, “This is my shirt”, “These are my trousers”, “This is my hat”, etc., with each item of clothing. Then when all the clothes are on, they say, ” I’m dressed” and start removing the clothes, passing them to the next team member, who repeats the process.
If you have some fancy high-heeled shoes and silly hats this is a really fun game! Very young beginner students will normally only say, “shirt”, “hat”, etc. but it’s still a worthwhile game for the vocabulary. My students loved it!
Clothes lesson plan
We also have a FREE lesson plan about clothes and getting dressed which includes games and activities as well as other lesson materials.
Click to download our Clothes lesson plan.
Clothes song
We have a song available for download focusing on clothes and getting dressed called “Let’s get dressed“.
It includes the key vocabulary: shirt, [hide_on_uk]pants[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]trousers[/hide_on_us], socks, jacket, shoes, hat.
Drawing clothes fun
Split your class into groups of 6 and give each student a piece of paper to draw on. Assign what each student in the group will draw: Student 1 will draw a hat, Student 2 a head, Student 3 a shirt, Student 4 pants, Student 5 shoes and socks, Student 6 arms and a watch. Don’t let each student see what the others in their group are drawing. Also, get them to [hide_on_uk]color[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]colour[/hide_on_us] in their drawings. Finally, give each group a piece of construction paper and get them to cut out and glue their creations to the construction paper. They will love what they have created!
Get dressed!
This is a game that I used with my primary school children who have just started learning English. You need a big bag of clothes to play this game.
- Split the class into 2 or 3 teams.
- On the board write teams 1, 2 and 3 plus the names of the team members.
- Each team needs to designate who they are going to dress.
- Write items of clothing (between 4 and 6 items) under each group.
- Tell the children that the first team to dress their person is the winner. Tell them to ‘get ready’, count down and then empty a bag of clothes on the floor.
The kids loved this game. Even the 2 children who wanted to sit out and watch were screeching with laughter. To add a bit more fun, if the team has chosen to dress a boy in their group I add ‘dress’ or ‘skirt’ to their list. (Submitted by G Holwill)
