Clothes Cups - a craft activity to teach Clothes vocabulary to kids

Teaching ‘clothes’ and clothes vocabulary to ESL kids is one of the most common themes you’ll come across as a TEFL teacher. If you’re teaching English to children, then you can bet that ‘clothes’ will be one of the units in your text books or syllabus.

This is a simple craft activity for teaching clothes to children. All you need are some plastic cups and some permanent markers to draw on the cups. You can watch the YouTube video above to see how this Clothes Cups game works and what you need to draw on the cups to teach ESL clothes vocabulary to children.

What will you need for Clothes Cups?

Three clear plastic cups per child, some different coloured permanent markers. Pre-teaching clothes vocabulary first to your children is certainly advisable and so some ESL clothes flashcards will help you. You can find ESL clothes flashcards here.

How to make your Clothes Cups

On the first plastic cup, draw a cartoon person. You can copy the cartoon character below. Have a practice first the teacher’s office. This will help you when you are presenting the activity to the children when they are learning how to make the Clothes Cups.

Once your cartoon person has been drawn on the first plastic cup, place the second plastic cup over the top. Draw on a T-shirt and colour it in. Now twist the plastic cup around and draw a shirt. Colour in the shirt with a different coloured marker. Finally, twist the cup around and draw a jumper / sweater.

Finally, put on the last plastic cup. This will be for drawing shorts, trousers, jeans, etc. Make sure all your designs are different and your Clothes Cup is all set! You can now twist the cups to have your cartoon character wear different clothes!

Get your ESL kids asking and answering questions about clothes

With each twist, be sure to ask your students “what’s he wearing?” Have your students tell you what he is wearing each time. This is brilliant practice for ESL clothes vocabulary and getting your students to say “He’s wearing ……..”.

You can also bring students to the front to ask the class “what’s he wearing?” to get used to asking questions too. Of course, you can make a female character instead and introduce skirt, dress, blouse, etc. Why not have different hats, too?

This is a fantastic way to introduce and practice ESL clothes words to your class and have your kids take home their Clothes Cups to show their parents or display them in your classroom!

by Stuart Allen