Are your little English learners crazy about the movie Frozen? If you teach children or have children, the hit song Do you want to build a snowman? is probably stuck in your head. We’re having some fun with Christmas puzzles and games this week on Sprout English. Here’s a fun way to turn your students’ obsession with Frozen into a vocabulary game!
1. Tell your students they are going to pretend to be elves. The elves are going to build some toys.
2. Place students in small groups or pairs. Each group has to think of a toy or other object to build for kids this Christmas.
3. Now have your students think of the parts they will need. What basic parts does each toy or object have? Have students pick 5–10 parts to write on a list. Help your students with vocabulary that they may need.
For example: a toy car
tires, doors, horn, seats, windows, steering wheel
4. Give each group or pairing a chance to come up to the front of the class to write out (or shout) their list of required parts.
5. The other students will pretend to be the Parts Department at the North Pole. These elves must be quiet until the list is complete.
6. Finally, on the count of three, the Parts Department will guess what the elves want to build. They must guess using the tune of Do you want to build a snowman? To make it more fun, you might want to tell your elves to choose a toy/object with two syllables, so that it fits perfectly with the tune (e.g., Do you want to build a doll-y / toy-train / ro-bot?).
Builder Elves: To build this toy, we need: tires, doors, horn, seats, windows, and a steering wheel.
Teacher: Ready to guess? 1, 2, 3…
Class (singing): Do you want to build a toy car?
If it’s too chaotic having the whole class sing the answer, have students take turns being Santa. The elves can present their parts list to Santa. Santa will go to the front with the elves and sing the answer. (Switch Santas each time a new group goes up or if a guess is incorrect.)
Do you want to build a snowman?
Just in case you don’t know the tune, here it is.
Related
Alphabetizing Fun – Christmas
Christmas Word Puzzles
Christmas Vocabulary Lesson
Christmas Podcast
Christmas Flashcards
