How Printable Scavenger Hunts Turn English Practice Into an Adventure Kids Beg For

We've been teaching English to kids long enough to know the truth about flashcards: they work, but only when the child is willing. The minute the child senses they're being drilled, the door slams shut.

The most powerful English-learning sessions we've ever run weren't sit-down sessions. They were scavenger hunts.

Missing Letters Worksheets

I have designed a comprehensive set of printable missing letters worksheets to aid my young students in learning and memorizing over 450 English words, ranging from basic CVC words to more uncommon vocabulary. These interactive worksheets offer an effective and enjoyable way for children to enhance their language skills while having fun.

Columbus Day Worksheets and Reading Comprehension

Columbus Day is a prominent holiday in the United States of America that kids who learn English should know about. Since I mostly teach American English to kids who learn English as a foreign language, I do my best to dedicate at least a couple of classes to Columbus Day as it’s important for my students to be aware of American culture and history. For this purpose I have designed the Columbus Day reading comprehension set that includes printable worksheets and a dice game. So, in October, my middle school students are going to learn some US history as well as English vocabulary related to Christopher Columbus and his sea voyage to the New World.

Phonics Game

Being an EFL teacher, I pay special attention to teaching phonics to my students. Unlike native speakers, the kids who study English as a foreign language are not fully emerged into the language so they have a hard time figuring out how to pronounce many English words correctly. And we all know how crazy the English phonetics can be. When I show my students how the letter o can make as many as 9 sounds in different words or introduce the letter combination ou in such words as soup, mouse, shoulder, couple, four, flour, journalist, carousel with 8 different pronunciations, they get a little bit puzzled. No wonder English phonics are often a major challenge for EFL and ESL students. That’s why I design all sorts of printable phonics worksheets, charts, flash cards, posters, and games to help my young students learn phonics in a fun and memorable manner.

BUY THE PHONICS GAME IN PRINTER-READY PDF FILES

I have recently designed a printable board game for my English classes dedicated to phonics. The purpose of the game is to help young English learners memorize basic phonics rules, exceptions and some tricky words as well as to correctly identify sounds and tell the difference between them. I designed 15 different game boards to play with more than 550 word cards.

Alphabet Games and Activities

I do my best to excite my grade 1 students about learning English from the first months of studying in my classroom. Since we usually begin with learning English alphabet, I offer them different kinds of games and activities to make learning letters even more fun. There is a set of printable games and activities I designed to help my young students learn English ABC in a fun and memorable way. I’d like to share my alphabet learning printables in this blog post.

BUY THE ENTIRE ALPHABET GAMES AND ACTIVITIES SET IN HI-RES PRINTER-READY PDF FILES.

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Printable Alphabet Game

This printable board game helps elementary school students remember how uppercase and lowercase letters look like in English.

My ABC games and activities mostly help kids learn to recognize uppercase and lowercase letters as well as memorize basic words that start with this or another letter. Therefore many of the games and activities suggest matching uppercase letters with lowercase letters and letters with pictures representing the words to be memorized. So here are the printables.

Printable board game for matching uppercase letters to lowercase letters or vocabulary picture cards. BUY THIS GAME IN PRINTER-READY PDF FILE.

Parts of the Body - Printable Board Game

We have designed another printable board game to help our young students learn English vocabulary through a fun activity. This one is designed to learn and properly memorize English names of parts of the human body.

BUY THE BODY PARTS GAME IN A HI-RES PRINTER-FRIENDLY PDF FILE

This printable dice game features 36 human body parts images and word cards. The vocabulary to be learned includes the following words: arm, back, belly, buttocks, calf, cheek, chest, chin, ear, elbow, eye, eyebrow, eyelash, face, finger, fingernail, foot, forehead, hair, hand, head, heel, knee, leg, lip, mouth, neck, nose, palm, shoulder, throat, thumb, toe, tongue, tooth, wrist.

The printable board game helps students learn 36 names of human body parts in English. You can find the game rules below.

Irregular Verbs Game

I remember the days when I was studying English irregular verbs at school. It was… well… boring to say the least. The concept of irregular verbs sounds weird to non-native speakers. All those irregular verbs lists and tables that many textbooks and dictionaries offer look intimidating to school kids. No wonder children have a hard time memorizing these verbs and their forms. Many grammar exercises designed to teach kids how to use irregular verbs do not boost young students’ memory either. Because all too often they are as boring as the long lists and tables in the textbooks. So I decided to add a little bit of fun into learning irregular verbs by offering my young students a printable board game. This irregular verbs game makes it easier for kids to memorize these special words and their forms thanks to lots of visually-appealing pictures and competitiveness of a game.

BUY MY IRREGULAR VERBS GAME IN HI-RES PRINTER-FRIENDLY PDF FILES

I have designed three printable game boards with some variations for kids to better memorize irregular verbs through a fun and visually enhanced activity. In my opinion, gamification is one of the best teaching methods to boost kids’ memory. This board game helps students memorize more than 80 English irregular verbs. Here are pictures of one of the game boards and its variations.

Halloween Bingo

Happy Halloween, everyone!!! It's the last day of the Halloween season and I'd like to show you the last printable resource related to the holiday that have not yet shared on this blog. It is the printable bingo game.

BUY THE WHOLE HALLOWEEN KIT IN PRINTER-READY PDF FILES

The Halloween kit this bingo game belongs to includes 15 printable bingo cards. So it is enough to organize a fun bingo game with a relatively large group of kids. My students love this kind of games. Activities like this are great for memorizing the vocabulary. As a rule, I use the bingo and domino games at the end of the period I dedicate to Halloween in order to revise and strengthen what student have learned.

Printable Halloween Dominoes. Part 1.

It's one day before Halloween and I keep on sharing my printable worksheets, flashcards and games that I have designed to use for my English classes dedicated to this holiday. Today's post is about my Halloween dominoes. The domino cards feature the same pictures as the Halloween flashcards so teachers can use them to strengthen the Halloween materials that students have been learning during the holiday period.

BUY THE WHOLE HALLOWEEN KIT IN PRINTER-READY PDF FILES

The domino game is a part of my printable Halloween kit that contains another game ― Halloween bingo. The kit helps me turn the Halloween season into a fun and productive learning process that helps my students memorize the Halloween vocabulary.

Printable African Animals Dominoes

Dominoes is an easy game that can be used to teach English even to the youngest students. This is why I design printable domino cards to play with kids when strengthening new vocabulary. The game offers a challenge that is easily solved by the majority of children thus leaving them proud of their achievement and experiencing some positive emotions. Every teacher knows that positive emotions in the classroom are extremely good for students’ memory and desire to learn. I also do my best to design bright and colorful domino cards to make English learning experience even better for my precious little students. I usually use the domino game along with the bingo game to gamify my teaching process and make it more effective with young English learners. Such activities bring a lot of fun to my classroom.

Buy the whole animals kit in printer-friendly PDF format
The kit includes flashcards, 4 types of worksheets, dominoes and bingo game

Since animals belong to one of the major topics with a large vocabulary to be learned, I have created as many as 162 printable domino cards (including a few for British English variations of some animal names) to help kids memorize animal names through playing individually and in groups. I designed the game in such a way that a teacher could offer students to match animal pictures with their names within certain groups of animals (African animals, Australian animals, polar animals, pets, farm animals, sea animals, forest and jungle animals, birds, insects) as well as for the entire vocabulary I based the printable animal kit on.

Printable Animals Bingo Game

The late stages of learning vocabulary for this or another topic is the most fun time for kids in my classroom as we start playing games. I usually design printable cards for bingo and domino games. Those games help my students retain the vocabulary in their memories for a long time through repeating the words they learn and using them in gaming activities.

Buy the whole animals kit in printer-friendly PDF format
The kit includes flashcards, 4 types of worksheets, dominoes and bingo game

The latest collection of printable worksheets, flashcards and games that I have designed is dedicated to animals. So, I’d like to share a few bingo cards created to teach some 100 names of animals to young students learning English as a second or foreign language.

Food & Drinks Bingo Game

I use my printable games as a special treat for my students at the final stage of learning the topic vocabulary. My students love playing dominoes and bingo while learning English. Playing games makes English classes more fun, engaging and thrilling for kids who get excited by the possibility to play and win. I divide the class into groups to play and compete. And I have all sorts of rewards for those who win. Emotions of the game help kids better memorize English words. So today I’d like to share some printable bingo cards I have designed to gamify the process of teaching the food & drinks vocabulary.

Buy the whole food & drinks kit in printer-friendly PDF format
The kit includes flashcards, 4 types of worksheets, dominoes and bingo game

The bingo game is not only an interesting activity in the context of English language gamification, but also as a technique that trains students’ brains to understand the vocabulary by ear. The teacher calls out words, and kids must understand a word and associate it with the object it means as quickly as possible. This activity will help students better parse English speech as they advance in learning the language.

Food and Drinks Dominoes. Part 1.

The more activities students are engaged in when learning the English vocabulary, the better chances they will have to memorize the words for all their lives. I offer kids a few kinds of activities that involve matching words to pictures starting from classic word-to-image and image-to-word matching worksheets to games such as dominoes and bingo. I create custom printables for my lessons designed to form strong association between a written or spoken word and the object it means. The domino game is one of my favorite activities for developing such word-object association for elementary or middle school students. Since we have been talking about the food and drinks topic for the last few weeks, I’d like to start sharing my printable food & drinks domino cards that my fellow educators can use to teach the food vocabulary to their students too.

Buy the whole food & drinks kit in printer-friendly PDF format
The kit includes flashcards, 4 types of worksheets, dominoes and bingo game

Dominoes can bring a lot of fun to the classroom. Try to share the domino cards between students or a few groups of students if you teach to a bigger class. Now you can organize an activity with a challenge and thrill of competition where students have to match all dominoes within a certain period of time, for example. Or announce a student or a group of students that has the last card as the winner of the game. I’m sure teachers with experience and imagination can use these food & drinks dominoes to make their English classes unforgettable which, of course, is conducive to the effective learning of the targeted vocabulary. So here are the first 30 printable domino cards for the food and drinks topic. Please, stay tuned for my upcoming blog posts where I’ll continue sharing the domino cards. Also you are welcome to purchase the whole food & drinks kit that includes printable worksheets, flashcards and games for the topic.

Fruits and Vegetables Dominoes. Part 1.

I often offer my students to play dominoes featuring pictures and relevant words they have been learning during their English classes dedicated to a specific topic. Such activities create productive engagement and an atmosphere competition as kids play a game with colorful domino cards I designed to help them better memorize the vocabulary. In this blog post I’d like to share the first 10 printable domino cards featuring fruits and vegetables.

Buy the whole fruits & vegetables kit in printer-friendly PDF format

The kit includes flashcards, 4 types of worksheets, dominoes and bingo game

The fruits & vegetables domino game was designed to help my students memorize some common English words for fruits, vegetables, berries and nuts. This printable game is a part of a larger set of printable teaching materials consisting of word-to-picture and picture-to-word matching worksheets, flashcards, crosswords, word search puzzles, bingo game, and dominoes created by me to teach some 50 words on the fruits and vegetables topic. I hope ESL and EFL teachers will appreciate the printables I shared with them.

Fruits and Vegetables Bingo Game

Playing games is the happiest pastime for every kid. That’s why I use games for my English classes to consolidate the vocabulary at the final stage of learning a topic. Bingo is one of my students’ favorite games. The game makes them very excited about the chance of being a winner. This excitement generates the thrill of competition and lots of emotions. People tend to better remember things that involve emotions. No doubt, such games help English learners retain the vocabulary in their memories for a very long time if not forever. If you are teaching English names of fruits, vegetables, berries and nuts then you are going to love my printable fruits & vegetables bingo game.

Buy the whole fruits & vegetables kit in printer-friendly PDF format

The kit includes flashcards, 4 types of worksheets, dominoes and bingo game

I publish only five bingo cards here. The whole fruits and vegetables kit has different types of printable fruits and vegetables worksheets, flashcards, domino cards and 15 bingo cards that can be used with larger groups of students.

Clothes and Accessories Bingo Game

As a rule I design two types of printable games to help my students consolidate the topic vocabulary: dominoes and bingo. I have already published the first batch of my clothes and accessories domino cards for English teachers to use for their classes too. Today I’d like to share the bingo game printables for the same clothes and accessories topic. This game can be a great activity to learn some 60 English nouns related to the topic.

Buy the whole clothes kit in printer-friendly PDF format

The kit includes flashcards, 4 types of worksheets, dominoes and bingo game

This blog post only shares five free bingo cards. My premium clothes and accessories kit has 15 bingo cards for larger groups of English learners besides other worksheets, flashcards and the dominoes. The kit is organized in a number of printer-ready hi-res PDF files storing the image-based teaching materials for ESL and EFL teachers.

Clothes and Accessories Dominoes. Part 1.

Playing games is one way to make kids fall in love with learning English. It is especially important for ESL and EFL educators who teach the language to non-native speakers at early stages of studying English. The key to success with young students is to make the learning process as less boring as possible because games and fun activities are the most natural way of learning things for kids. This is the reason why I introduce games to every series of lessons dedicated to a particular topic. We have been talking about the topic of clothes and accessories recently. So I’d like to share some printable domino cards I have designed to help my young students learn some 60+ English nouns related to clothes and accessories.

Buy the whole clothes kit in printer-friendly PDF format
The kit includes flashcards, 4 types of worksheets, dominoes and bingo game

The dominoes feature the same pictures I used to design the clothes and accessories flashcards. The dominoes game alone with the bingo game make part of my clothes and accessories kit that also includes a number of printable worksheets and a set of flashcards. Those printable materials are great for introducing and consolidating the clothes and accessories to young students. English teachers are welcome to either download my clothes & accessories worksheets, flashcards and games from this blog or buy the printer-optimized PDF version of the entire kit.

Printable Transportation Bingo Game

Bingo is a game I often use along with dominoes for my English classes. The activity helps consolidate the vocabulary at the final stage of a topic. Today I’m publishing some of my printable transportation bingo cards.

Buy the whole transportation kit in printer-friendly PDF format

The kit includes 4 types of worksheets, flashcards, dominoes game and bingo game

The rules are simple: the teacher draws the vocabulary cards from a bag or box to announce the words. Students have to cover the corresponding images on their transportation bingo cards with chips. The winners are those who are the first to cover a horizontal line, a vertical line or all the available pictures on a bingo card depending on the rules you decide to follow.

Buy transportation bingo only

This post contains only five bingo cards. The transportation kit that ESL teachers are welcome to buy has 15 bingo cards to be used for larger groups of students. I hope my fellow English teachers and their students will enjoy playing the transportation bingo with my cards.

Printable Transportation Dominoes

There is nothing better for memorizing vocabulary than a game. I love using printable games when teaching English to preschoolers and elementary school kids as playing is a natural way to learn things for young children. I try to design games for for every topic I teach. Dominoes are one of my favorite games. So today I’d like to share my printable domino cards I use to help kids memorize the transportation vocabulary.

Buy the whole transportation kit in printer-friendly PDF format

The kit includes 4 types of worksheets, flashcards, dominoes game and bingo game

The dominoes feature the same pictures I used to design the transportation flashcards. The cards look colorful enough to draw kids’ attention and involve them in the game that helps students consolidate the transportation vocabulary.

Buy transportation dominoes only

The transportation dominoes belong to my printable ESL transportation kit that comprises worksheets, flashcards and a bingo game. Educators are welcome to either download these pritables from my blog or purchase the premium version in high resolution printer-ready PDF documents that includes both American and British English variations of some worksheets.

Printable Christmas Dominoes. Part 1.

In this post I’d like to share my printable Christmas dominoes. Playing games is one of the most effective methods of teaching English to kids. I love playing games with my young students. They helps me engage even shy and weak student into the language learning process. Games create a relaxing and fun atmosphere during the class. Moreover games are a natural way of cognition for little kids. That’s why they seem to better memorize words whenever we play my printable vocabulary games during our English classes.

Buy the whole Christmas kit in printer-friendly PDF format
The kit includes flashcards, 4 types of worksheets, dominoes and bingo game

Buy Christmas dominoes only

One of my favorite games is dominoes. It’s a game with rather simple rules which develops such skills as recognizing the relevant vocabulary by meaning and spelling of words. I try to design dominoes for each major topic I teach to kids during the year.

No doubt, Christmas is one of the biggest holidays in the world, so ESL teachers should dedicate some lessons to Christmas traditions and the winter season. Therefore dominoes make a part of my Christmas kit that I use to introduce the holiday vocabulary to kids. The Christmas dominoes feature the same pictures I used to design my Christmas flashcards. So dominoes can be used along with flashcards as another visual stimulus conducive to memorizing Christmas-related words.

ESL teachers are welcome to make use of my Christmas dominoes too. Please, share your experience in the comment section below.