Food Unit Cutouts for Kindergarten ELL

   This activity is part of a complete Food Unit for Kindergarten ELLs.Get the full resource here and simplify your lesson planning while maximizing student engagement! LINK: https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Food-Unit-for-Kindergarten-Holistic-English-Series-15-6741090

These food unit cutouts are the perfect tool to bring your lessons to life through movement, speaking, and interactive play. Designed for young ELL students, these printable cutouts help reinforce food and drink vocabulary, support oral language development, and create meaningful opportunities for real communication in the classroom. Whether you teach in-person or online, these activities will keep your students engaged, motivated, and speaking English from the very beginning.

Food Vocabulary Practice with Cutouts

Use the Food and drinks cutouts exercises  to review the vocabulary and play games in class. They can also be used for online teaching.

I have seen that many teachers make wonderful banners for their classroom themes. I made one with the cutouts and used it to ask questions about the food items.

Teacher: What drink is this?
Student: milk!

Ask & Answer (Speaking Practice) with the cutouts

 Speaking Activities Using Food Cutouts

Students should make sense of the content learned through the unit by solving new tasks that you prompt. Show the lunch box cutout and ask students what they would put inside. Or ask them, what's inside their lunch box.

Students: sandwich! Milk!

Ask questions:

Teacher: Is there any chicken?

Student: No, there isn't.

 Interactive Classroom Setups (Basket & Cart Ideas)

 I made my food basket and shopping cart using the cereal box and pasting the cutout on it. This can work as a feed me box.
Place the basket and/or the supermarket cart with several cutouts inside. Ask questions:
Teacher: What’s in the basket?
Students: bread! Soda!
Teacher: What’s in the basket?
Students: bread! Soda!

Give instructions to the students:
Teacher: Put the milk in the basket.

Students will learn to make polite requests

Use the basic: Please, thank you.
Place the cutouts on the table or the board. Ask students questions.
Teacher: What do you want? What would you like to eat?
Student: a hamburger,please!
Teacher: Here you are.
Student: thank you.

Listen and place in order 

Have the students place the cutouts in the order that you say.
Teacher: carrots, hamburger, peas.

This is how I did the activity.

ESL Games with Food Cutouts

Place several cutouts face down on the board or a table. Point to cutout and ask the students to guess what it is.

Take a look!

Turn Cutouts into Puppets

The cutouts can be glued onto craft sticks and make puppets. Use them to mime eat.
Teacher: I am eating a hamburger. Do you like hamburgers?

Students: Yes!

 Shapes + Food Cross-Curricular Activities

The food can come in shapes with these clipart. There are shape flyswatter to print out onto cardboard or glue onto a thicker cardboard to make them stiff.

Have the students grab a fly swatter and swat the same shape.
Teacher: Rectangle! Swat all the rectangles!
What are rectangles?
Students: The cereal! Juice! As they swat.
Do the same with the pizzas.

More on the cutouts shapes video!

You can even go ahead and introduce the table eating utensils.

Why Use Food Cutouts in ESL?

These cutouts are more than just visuals—they are active learning tools:

• Build vocabulary recognition
• Encourage speaking in full sentences
• Support TPR (Total Physical Response)
• Promote interaction and participation
• Work perfectly for games, centers, and routines

Food vocabulary worksheet for kindergarten ESL students, included in the complete resoure, go to the blog post:   https://eflpreschoolteachers.blogspot.com/2021/04/food-unit-worksheets.html 

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