Food Activities

Food Activities for the Language Classroom

Who doesn’t love food? We love to talk about it, love to eat it, and love to look and drool over it. There are tons of fun food games to play and food activities to use to get students talking. When teaching food, there are a ton of review activities that are fun and engaging. You can use manipulatives like paper or plastic food items to enhance food activities through hands-on learning supported by visuals. You can even make fun station rotations to keep students moving. Let’s talk about 10 fun food activities for the language classroom.

Restaurant Play

Role play to simulate a real-world dining situation. Set the class up like a restaurant. Drape the desks with tablecloths. Place students in groups to be servers, cooks, and patrons. Use menus from various restaurants to get a variety of food choices. Use Italian food, Chinese food, vegetarian, farm to table, or American to offer several choices. Patrons will be seated and served by the waiter. The waiter will take the order of the patrons and relay that information to the cook. The cook will “prepare” the food by drawing it onto a paper plate or using playdough to make the food. All of these communication transactions are done in the target language. Rotate students through roles to get a variety of communication options. If there is no time to draw the food, use paper images or plastic food.

Grocery Ads

Using grocery ads is a great addition to your food activities repertoire. This activity allows students to practice food vocabulary in a non-traditional capacity. In addition to food terms, students have the opportunity to practice money in a real-life activity,  grocery shopping. For this activity, you will need to visit your local grocery store and get two different grocery ads. I use one from two different stores. Pick up enough for each student to have one ad. For example, if you have a class of 40, get 20 of each grocery ad. Create questions from each of the ads for students to ask each other. Questions can be how much do bananas cost per pound to how much is a gallon of milk. Students take turns asking the questions and writing the responses.

Categorize Food

This activity is great for lower-level students. It gives them an opportunity to be successful in using the language because it calls for short, simple sentences. It also works well for stronger language-learners because it has the capability of language expansion. Create cards with phrases you want students to practice. For example, “I like…” “I don’t like…” “I have never tried…” or any phrases related to food terminology you deem important for your students. Students lay the cards on the desk/table and sort food manipulatives into those categories listed on the cards. Manipulatives can be images placed in baggies for easy sorting or plastic food items. Encourage students to further their language by giving an opinion about each food, a comment about the taste or tell why they do or do not like the food item. Use this activity as a station rotation with different foods at each station.

Play Market

Anytime you can get kids up and out of the seats is a win. Students love to role-play and pretend no matter how old they are. Use paper manipulatives or plastic food items to set up each store. You can set up stores by food type: Junk food, meat, dairy, fruit and veggies, bakery, etc. Give each student a shopping list (or have them create one). As they go from store to store to get their items, they must ask the store owner for the food. You can add a money component to this activity where students must create a meal plan and a budget. This will give a real-life scenario into the mix.

Recipe

There are two activities you can use for recipe food activities. First, have students choose a recipe and tell what ingredients you need to prepare that dish. Money can be added to the communication if students tell how much each item cost then give the total cost of the dish. You can also add a food competition and have students bring in the dish to share if your school allows this.

Secondly, give students a recipe for a non-traditional food dish. Then combine this activity with the market activity above and have students shop for the ingredients.

Chopped

This is a fun activity for upper-level students to learn terms used for food preparation. Sit a basket of food out for each team. In the basket can be real food, paper images, or plastic food. Have students create a recipe with the ingredients given to them. Then use Play-doh to be the dish created. Set a time and when the time is up, students must share their Play-doh dish with the judges. Students will explain what is in the dish and how it was created using terms and classifiers.

In order to save time, this can be a two-day activity where half of the class work in teams one day while the other half work as the judges. Rotate the next day. Judges get to decide who has been chopped and who the winner is.

Going on a Picnic

This is a great circle activity that can be done in small groups or as a whole-class activity. Students sit in a circle and say the phrase “I am going on a picnic…” then they tell what they are going to bring. Food items can’t be repeated so students must pay attention. You can have students use food terms they have memorized or place food images in the middle of the circle face down. Students pick an image and must know the word for that food item.

5-Minute Activity

Create a list of categories or questions for students to answer food terms with. For each category/question, students must answer with 3 vocabulary words. For example, What are foods that are green? Students would name three. You can find pre-made boards here.

20 Questions

Have one student pick a food item from your manipulatives stash. Be sure other students can’t see it. The class will ask the student 20 yes or no questions trying to guess what the mystery food is. Once the food is guessed or the 20 questions have been exhausted, choose another student to take a turn.

Build a Salad

This works with a number of different food dishes but a salad is a great way for students to practice vocabulary for veggies. This food activity is good for stations or interactive notebooks. Students draw a bowl and place the food items they like into their salad. Sometimes there are picky eaters and they will only put in lettuce. Give them a minimum amount of food terms that need to be used in their salad bowl. Have them share what they put into their salad.

Conclusion

I hope you have found a few new activities to put into your collection. Activities can take a bit of time to prep, but once you have it in place it is easy to use year after year. If you find you have no time, you can find activities and games here ready to go.

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