What’s in Santa’s gift sack Christmas ESL game

A fun way to bring a Christmas theme to ESL class is by using What’s in Santa’s gift sack Christmas ESL game This is based on another ESL game called “What’s in the bag?”. However, this version suits all ages including teens and adults. besides, teachers don’t have to spend money on gifts and items. Since it’s Christmas, ask teenagers, adults, or parents of ESL kids to prepare a random present for other students and bring it to the class (unwrapped).

How to PLAY?

You can collect the gifts beforehand if there isn’t enough time otherwise call out the student’s name, let him or her show the gift. Have the students ask “what is this”. Encourage the one who brought the gift to reply in English similar to “It is a doll”. Now place the gift in Santa’s gift sack.

Then be the Santa of this year’s Christmas and carry the sack around the class and have one student to put their hand inside while their eyes are closed. Next, hold on to a Christmas gift and guess what it is. If they guess right, they can keep it for themselves or give it to someone else as a gift.

Carry the bag to the next student and go through the same steps till everyone has a gift

If there is a bigger sack. let everyone put their hand inside at the same time. This brings some chaos with ESL kids but makes it a lot more interesting and fair for those who had to wait for a long time

Class size

This game is recommended for small classes (not more than 10) unless you have another Santa there to carry the gift sack and ask around the class for mystery Christmas gifts.

Students’ age

There is no age limit for this ESL game. Kids, teenagers, and adults all love the game especially when it comes to share the gift and learn the value of Christmas

Check out the S-A-N-T-A song and lyrics by Super Simple Learning to flavor up every step from warm-up till the goodbye. Merry Christmas!