It is surprisingly difficult to find EFL ESL Hobbies songs for kids. I needed some for a project recently and was surprised that there are not more of them out there. I eventually found what I was looking for though it took a while. I’ve given you a selection of different songs here. They talk about all different kinds of hobbies, sports and things to do in your free time so you could use these in a variety of lessons. I’ve tried to give you some ideas of how to do this for each song title. So let’s get moving, it’s time for my Top 10 EFL ESL Hobbies Songs.
What Do You Like To Do? by Super Simple Songs
I love this song. It’s one of those songs that gets in your head and you find yourself singing two weeks after you’ve been learning it. This is a great song to introduce the question of what your class like to do in their free time. It gives a variety of different activities and hobbies. It then turns them around to be something funny that the children don’t like doing. You could make a really fun game out of this. Ask the children to think of activities they like doing. Then ask them to think of something funny that would spoil it like in the song and make a sentence with I like and I don’t like.
What Do You Like To Do? by Maple Leaf Learning
This is a good song to introduce some different hobbies and free time activities. You can use it to drill and repeat the vocabulary and then adapt it to the activities that the children in your class like doing. It’s a very simple song so you could use it for classes with very little kids as well as for older children and make the activities as simple or as complicated as you want.
I like Baseball, tennis. by English Singsing
With this easy song, you can start introducing sports vocabulary and see who in your class likes which sport. Ask one of the kids to tell you a sport that they like and then anyone else who likes it can say “me too, I like …. too”. Get the children to see which sport is most popular in your class and how many people like doing it. Introduce as many different sports as you want and sing the song using the different sports. Make sure you introduce some less popular sports to see if the kids know about them.
Sports Song / Do you like Sports? by Fun Kids English
Do you like playing sports? This song looks at different actions for different sports. So it asks “Do you like soccer?” and “Can you kick a ball?” and so on. It’s a good way of practicing the actions that we do in different sports and activities and you could probably adapt it to any activity. Do you like music? Can you play the piano. If you sing it without the video, it’s very adaptable.
Just a small warning if you’re using it for sports; some of the comments under the video on YouTube were very indignant that the creators used American words and sports. The video was produced for Japanese classes where baseball is the most popular sport and American terms are regularly used. I’m not fussy about using American or British or any other particular form of English with my classes and mix and match quite happily. But if you are worried about this, just change the words or the sports when you sing it.
Kid’s box 2 song Our Hobbies by Learning Together
Do you like or love doing something? What is the difference? This song teaches both and would be a good introduction to a lesson about like, love, dislike and hate. The kids could choose activities for each category and ask each other questions about what they love or hate. It’s one of the more simple EFL Hobbies songs but you could adapt it and let your class add their own favorite or not so favorite activities. And everyone can sing along with the “bedum bedum” chorus.
Hobby Song by I-Learn
I can’t find a version of this with the lyrics anywhere but, watching the video, it looks fun to sing and do actions to. It’s got lots of different hobbies and you could do lots of fun actions while singing it. I’ve written the lyrics here in case you want to use it.
Hobby hobby hobby, she has a hobby
This is what she likes to do
She likes playing the piano
That's what she likes to do
Hobby hobby hobby, he has a hobby
This is what he likes to do
He likes playing games with a computer
That's what he likes to do
Hobby hobby hobby, do you have a hobby?
What do you like to do?
Do you like fishing and swimming? Do you like playing the guitar?
Do you like painting and drawing? What do you like to do?
Swimming Song by The Learning Station
Are you ready to do some swimming? And lots of movements and actions? Then this would be a good song for your class. It practices all the different swimming strokes and activities like snorkeling with actions and would be great fun for a class of older kids. It’s probably a bit too complicated for little kids but you could try as they’d probably enjoy the actions. You could also use it if you were teaching a lesson on the past simple tense and wanted something fun.
Activities Song by Maya and Mary
A song for smaller children about going to the park and what they can do there. You could do lots of actions to this and the video is fun to watch too and talk about. Could you build an obstacle course in your classroom to practice all the movements? Or maybe make an obstacle course with bricks or cardboard for teddies.
I can run by British Council
This is another simple song to practice sports actions. It would be perfect for little children to ask them what they can and can’t do. You could also use it in lots of different types of lessons. It would be a good start to a game about what the kids can and can’t do and could be adapted to lots of different hobbies. It’s another very adaptable song that could be made as easy or as complicated as you wanted for different age groups.
A Camping We Will Go by The Kiboomers
Something a bit different to finish with. Camping and all the different activities that go with it in a catchy song that, once again, you could adapt to many different activities and hobbies. There are lots of actions to do with this song and lots of vocabulary to learn. You could use this song in lessons about holidays and free time as well as hobbies and it would be good for all age groups.
Phew, that was a hard one! Song writers and video makers, if you’re reading, we need more EFL ESL Hobbies songs! I hope you enjoyed my selection and find it useful. If you’ve got any other suggestions, I ‘d love to hear them so please leave a comment. If you want to see any of my other Top 10s of EFL songs, you can find them here. To stay up to date with posts, you can follow the GoogooEnglish Facebook page or alternatively, sign up for email updates below.