It’s always fun to do something a bit different with your classes every now and again. A large scale art project is something that all the class can get involved in. It is also a great way of using the English you are learning in a practical and fun way. I’ve thought of five ideas for EFL ESL Class Art projects which you can adapt to your class size and level of English. I’m also going to give you ideas of how to use these projects to get your class speaking as much English as possible both while you are creating them and when they are finished. So get your art supplies ready, we’re ready to be creative!
For these EFL ESL class art projects, you will need:
- A large roll of paper, white or colored
- Card, cardboard (you can recycle old boxes or any card you may have lying around)
- Coloring markers, crayons, coloring pencils or paint (choose whichever suits best your age levels and class)
- Scissors
- Glue, scotch tape and sticky tack
Giant City Map
This is such a fun activity and can be adapted to lots of different themes. It is really useful to practice prepositions and asking for directions. To do it, you will need to put a couple of tables together so you’ve got one long table that all the kids can get around. If you’ve got a huge class, split them into two groups and use more tables.
How to do it:
- Roll out the paper over the tables until you have one long sheet of paper. then attach the paper to the table underneath so it won’t move when the kids are drawing on it.
- Tell the class that they are going to draw a town. Drill the different vocabulary for all the places in the town and assign each child something to draw as well as someone to draw the roads.
- Give out drawing materials and let everyone start drawing the city. It doesn’t matter if it’s not in scale or perfectly organized, the crazier the better.
- When the map is finished, carefully remove it from the table and hang it on a wall.
- Then you can practice asking for and giving directions to different places in your city and describing exactly where different places are located.
- You can adapt this to lots of themes. You could have a map of a school, a pirate’s treasure map, a zoo, a Wild West town, a whole imaginary country, whatever you want really.
Enormous Board Game
Board games are a really useful way of practicing vocabulary especially with little kids. If you have a dice and lay out a line of flashcards with a start and a finish, this is a super easy way of getting them to learn and say different words. So this is the same idea but just a bit more organized.
How to do it:
- First, decide on your theme. What are you learning about at the moment in class? We’ll take a walk in the jungle as an example.
- What can we see in the jungle? Make a list with your class. What is nice to see? What is scary? Give one object to each child and tell them they are going to draw it and then cut it out.
- Give one piece of card to each child – the bigger the better!
- Make a big die
- Let them draw their animal and cut it out. Once they are finished, put a number on each one starting at 1 and going up to however many cards you have.
- Lay the cards in order on the floor and you’re ready to play, either in teams or the whole class.
- You can make your game as easy or as complicated as you want. Add challenges for older kids if they step on certain cards or make them answer questions to go on. For smaller kids, you could make them have to go back some spaces if they tread on a scary animal or go ahead if they land on a special animal.
Let’s be Archaeologists
Children are fascinated by dinosaurs. This is a great way of learning about dinosaurs and parts of the body and is a really good class art project to have on your wall.
How to do it:
- You’ll need to make a skeleton of a dinosaur or different types of dinosaur. You could use something like this or invent your own. The important thing is to make it as big as possible.
- Then you can hide the bones around your classroom or even outside. It’s time to become archaeologists and go on a bone hunt.
- Let the kids look for the bones and make them describe where they are as they find them.
- Then, once you have them all, they’ll need to put them together and decide exactly what each part is.
Once the skeleton is complete, you can put it up on the classroom wall. This makes a really striking wall decoration especially if you decorate the bones. One word of advice, if you’re doing different dinosaur skeletons at the same time, do the bones of each one in a different color so they don’t get mixed up and become a weird hybrid dinosaur. You can of course invent your own skeleton and make imaginary monster creatures too.
Make an Art Gallery
This is one of my favorite EFL ESL class art projects that can be adapted to lots of different topics. For smaller children, you could ask them to draw portraits of their family or of different animals that you’ve been learning about. For older kids, the sky is the limit really.
How to do it:
- Choose your topic or theme
- Show the kids some ideas about art galleries. Have they ever visited a gallery? What did they see? What did they like or dislike?
- Now, create your own art exhibition. Give them the materials they need, this could be paint to make a portrait or playdough to make a sculpture. Don’t help them too much, it should be their ideas.
- Once they have finished their art work, they need to display it. You could make special frames for the paintings or a cardboard stand for the sculptures.
- Ask them to prepare a title and a description for their work. They could write this down or read it out to the class.
- Now have a grand opening of your art gallery and invite parents or other classes to come and see it. Get the kids to act as hosts and present their work to the visitors.
Collaborative Posters
If you want to get your classroom looking colorful and put up some fun art, this is a quick way to make large scale posters. Basically it’s a large poster made up of different work by each child in the class. Letting everyone contribute means that everyone gets to have their art up, everyone produces something on the theme you’re working on and everyone is important.
How to do it:
- Choose your theme. I’ve made this kind of posters in classes about sea animals, gardens, pirates, the Gingerbread Man or even about different countries such as the UK or Canada.
- Explain to the kids that you’re going to make a poster and that each one of them needs to draw something to go on it.
- Decide what each child will do. “I want to make a fish” or “I want to draw Big Ben”.
- Decide whether they will draw directly onto to the poster paper or onto a separate sheet and then cut it out and glue onto the poster.
- Give out materials and get drawing!
Once everyone has finished their part, you can glue them onto the poster if needs be and label with their name too. Then hang up your beautiful Under the Sea or Monuments of London poster on the wall for everyone to admire.
I hope I’ve given you some ideas for your own EFL ESL class art projects. If you’ve got any great ideas to add, please leave them in the comments. I’d love to hear what art and crafts you do in your classes. If you want to see more teaching ideas, you can find them all here and you can also see all my lesson plans here. To stay up to date, please follow the GoogooEnglish Facebook page or sign up for emails below.