Teaching Kids resource
Food
On the LearnEnglish Kids website you will find many activities to practise the topic of food. The topic
covers the vocabulary areas of basic foods, fruit and vegetables as well as cooking, recipes and healthy
eating.
These can be practised using downloadable worksheets, a simple song, a story, quizzes and interactive
games. Go to learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/en/category/topics/food. On this page you will find
suggestions for exploiting and using the materials in the classroom.
Introducing the topic/Learning vocabulary
You could use the flashcards (learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/en/worksheets/food-flashcards) to
introduce the different lexical sets in the topic of food. Make sure you introduce a limited number of items
at the beginning (e.g. 10) and then build in revision of these items and extend vocabulary in subsequent
lessons. You may wish to add other more culturally common items in the fruit and vegetable lexical sets.
Practise vocabulary by playing games with the flashcards. For example, stick ten flashcards randomly on
the board. Put your class into two teams and call out sentences about the food you like. (e.g. I like pizza
and chips.) One child from each team runs out to the board to touch the correct items. This game is good
played with fly-swatters!
To consolidate written forms of basic food vocabulary you could use the simple food vocabulary worksheet
containing a matching exercise, a wordsearch and a picture to complete. PLEASE NOTE this worksheet
is no longer available.
Other simple vocabulary games are the food wordsearch (with clues):
learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/en/word-games/wordsearch/food and the simple category matching
game of fruit and vegetables learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/en/word-games/paint-the-words/fruit-and-
vegetables.
Skills building
For very young learners the song ‘Pizza and chips' (learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/en/songs/pizza-and-
chips) provides very simple lyrics and a catchy tune which is easy to sing. Vocabulary is very limited and
also covers days of the week. Use the follow-up worksheet to practise food words. Then ask your students
to design their own pizzas using their favourite ingredients. Or ask them to draw a large circle and design a
‘pizza face' and label the ingredients in English.
To develop reading and listening skills at a higher level you could use the ‘The greedy hippo' story
poem: learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/en/short-stories/the-greedy-hippo. Warm up for the story by
asking the children to predict what a greedy hippo might eat (this could follow on well from Exercise 3 on
the simple food vocabulary worksheet). Use the activities on the worksheet to check comprehension
(ticking the correct food and correcting sentences from the story). You could use the interactive gap-filling
game as a further check: learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/en/word-games/fill-the-gap/the-greedy-hippo
As follow-up work you could ask children to prepare a horrible recipe for a new hippo pie (and send them in
to the website!). Or you could ask children to draw a picture/poster of the greedy hippo with all the food it
eats, labelled in English, or invent another greedy animal.
Teaching Kids resource
Cross-curricular work
The topic of food has cross-curricular links with health education and you may like to focus on the area of
looking after your body, fitness, healthy diet and nutrition.
You could use the simple worksheet ‘How healthy are you?' to introduce this topic focus and ask students
to complete the questions in pairs or groups before doing class feedback and using the questions as a
basis for discussion on what is healthy. PLEASE NOTE this worksheet is no longer available.
You could use the food quiz (or the questions from the quiz) as a class quiz:
learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/en/play-with-friends/quiz-food. Put your students into teams and award
points for the correct quiz answers.
At a slightly more difficult level you could do the same with the healthy-eating quiz:
learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/en/word-games/multiple-choice/healthy-eating. For this quiz you will
need to teach the vocabulary of food groups e.g. cereals, proteins, fats etc. This could form the basis of
further written and creative work. For example you could ask students to design a ‘Healthy Eating' poster
showing the different food categories and types and why they are important. You could do this in pairs,
groups or even as a homework task.
Practical activities
All children like cooking and learning to cook! Exploit this interest by teaching them some basic cooking
vocabulary. Use the worksheet ‘Let's cook' to pre-teach the vocabulary of cooking equipment. Use the
visuals to help you. Then move on to some basic recipes. At primary level these must be kept very simple -
such as the ‘boil an egg' instructions on the worksheet. Complete the recipe together and then mime the
actions. Ask your students to join in. Concentrate on teaching imperatives and instructions such as put...
take... add... You could use the banana milkshake re-ordering game to do more practice on instructions:
learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/en/word-games/order-the-sentences/banana-milkshake
If you feel ambitious you could make something simple to eat in class - for example a fruit salad. Bring in
the equipment and the ingredients and ask children to identify words and food items first. Write the steps of
the recipe on the board as you do them. For example: 'First, cut up the bananas, apples and oranges etc.'
You could ask individual students to help you with simple steps such as: put in... add... mix... etc. but take
care with knives and sharp objects.
Fun and motivation!
Finally you could use the Trolley dash game just to have fun and motivate your students. This is a
competitive shop against the clock vocabulary game which children find fun and exciting. You can start at a
simple level and move to more difficult ones. Children can compete against each other to see who can
shop the fastest. Go to learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/en/fun-games/trolley-dash.
Contributed by
Sue Clarke
