It’s the end of the school year and it’s probably hot and sunny. This is an easy to do and fun EFL ESL Beach Party lesson plan for Kids to celebrate summer and the school holidays. It’s suitable for kids of all ages and is a great way to spend one of your final classes before the holiday. It will last about an hour and you could do it indoors or outside. We’ll learn lots of fun songs and games, have a picnic and to finish we’ll do a beach scavenger hunt to see what seaside objects we can find. Are you ready? Get your sunscreen, we’re off to the beach!.
For this Beach Party EFL ESL lesson plan, you will need:
- Paper and coloring markers
- A picnic – ask the kids to bring food or bring it yourself. CHECK FOR ALLERGIES
- Beach realia or pictures
Before the lesson, you need to prepare the list for your scavenger hunt. If you’re going to be doing the lesson inside, think of what the children could look for in school. Maybe you could put some seaside themed objects around the school for them to find. Or ask them to find objects that are blue and yellow. If the lesson is outside, you can let your imagination go wild. Ask them to find leaves in the shape of fishes. Or 10 objects they might see at the beach. And if you are lucky enough to be teaching your class on or near a real beach, give them weird and wonderful things to find that they might not think of automatically.
Songs and videos:
- Down at the Beach by Music K-8
- Let’s Go to the Beach by Maple Leaf Learning
Start with a song
To start your lesson, you could start with your usual Hello routine or use one of my ideas here. Otherwise if you’ve been following my series of Beach lesson plans, you could choose one of the songs we learned in those lessons to revise some of the vocabulary you taught. Two of them are in the list above. Get the kids in the mood by showing them some beach equipment or some pictures of sea creatures and see if they can guess what the lesson is about. Then, drill the vocabulary and sing the songs again.
Play a game
Put the kids in pairs and give each pair some of your beach objects or pictures. Ask them to ask questions about what they can see and to describe the different objects: the color, the size, what it is, where it lives, what it eats. As much detail as possible. Then when they have finished preparing, play a guessing game. Each pair has to describe their object to the rest of the class, without saying its name, and the other children have to guess what it is. For smaller children, you could ask them to do actions to show the object without speaking and let the rest of the class guess what it is.
Prepare your picnic together
It’s time for our beach party. Together with the kids, prepare for your picnic. Put down a blanket and talk about the different food you have. Who likes cookies? Who doesn’t? Pretend you’re at the beach so talk about the weather and the sound of the sea. Then get everyone settled and enjoy your picnic together. Yummy! When you’ve finished eating, sing a song or two together and go over the beach vocabulary you’ve learned.
Let’s do a Scavenger Hunt!
For your scavenger hunt, put the kids in pairs or in small teams. Give them the list of what they need to find or, for smaller children, explain with plenty of actions and description. Make sure they know where they can and can’t go and how much time they have. Decide how they are going to record what they find. I don’t like picking flowers or taking things away from their home so I normally give out paper and markers and ask the kids to draw a picture. Older children who have a mobile phone could take a photo. Send everyone off and keep an eye on them to make sure you don’t lose anyone!
While the kids are doing the scavenger hunt, go around and check they’re doing it right. Ask the for the names of what they find and colors, shapes etc. When the time is up, call everyone back together and compare what you’ve found. Ask each team to show and describe their objects. Let the other children ask questions: “Did you find a shell?” or “What color is the seaweed?” When you’ve finished describing everything, if you still have time, the kids can draw and label everything they found.
Time to tidy up!
If you’ve still got some time left, sing your beach songs again. Then tidy up your picnic and beach party together and get ready to go home. Sing a good bye song, wish everyone a good holiday and tell them you’ll see them next year.
Well, that was a fun lesson to end the school year. I hope you enjoyed this Beach Party EFL ESL lesson plan. If you’re looking for other fun ways to take your class outside for their English lesson, you can find my Ultimate Guide here. I also made a collection of different ways to prepare for the end of the school year with your class which you can find here. To stay up to date with new posts and ideas, you can follow the GoogooEnglish Facebook page or sign up for email updates below.