Kindergarten English Lesson Plan - Party Theme
I love special themed lessons.

Last night I covered a class and taught a party theme. We decorated the room in party streamers and balloons, and played party music. And the class even sang ‘Happy Birthday’! (Its surprising how many young children already know the words to the English version of Happy Birthday.) I usually like to choose simple versions of such songs, which don’t require much vocabulary knowledge for the kids to sing along.

The vocabulary for the unit (which included cakes, pizza, and sweets) was presented using realia, and we played traditional children’s party games, adapted for the English classroom. Because children tend to enjoy watching other children, I introduced each of the games with short clips from YouTube of children playing the traditional version of the games.

While there wasn’t as much student-student speaking as I’d like, this was only the first lesson in the unit, and my aim was to make sure they had a great time learning English.

Here are the games we played:

  • Egg and spoon race – the traditional game of run and touch adapted with children holding (plastic) eggs on a spoon and running to the flash card.
  • Three legged race – similar to the first activity, but cards were put inside hoops around the room and children ran to the hoops (in pairs with their legs tied).
  • Pass the parcel – a small gift was wrapped inside photocopied flash cards. Inside random layers were other gifts (stickers). When the music stopped, the child holding the parcel had to say what the photocopied flash card was. The other students confirmed yes/or no if they were correct.
  • Pin the tail on the donkey – students pinned tails on a donkey on the interactive whiteboard with superimposed vocabulary flash cards over the donkey.
  • Guessing game – to finish, we quickly played a guessing game where a blindfolded child would guess the colour of the candy they were holding. The other students assisted by answering ‘Yes, it is’ or ‘No, it isn’t’.

For the craft, we made party hats. It was a memorable lesson for all. I’m pretty sure the children could not have foreseen the amount of fun we’d have in the class on that evening.

Next time I teach that theme, I’d love to try making a piñata.