Christmas Mimes: A Fun ESL Game for Practicing the Present Continuous

Looking for a lively, movement-filled Christmas activity to energize your ESL classroom? This Christmas Mimes game is perfect for reviewing Christmas activities and practicing the present continuous tense. Students will love acting out holiday scenes while building speaking fluency and having a lot of festive fun together.

Christmas Mimes

This entertaining miming game can be used to teach or review common Christmas activities and the present continuous tense.

Preparation

Before class, make one copy of the worksheet and cut as indicated.

Procedure

Warm-Up
Begin by asking the students to watch you and guess what you are doing. Mime a simple Christmas activity and encourage the students to call out their answers. Make sure they answer using the present continuous tense.
Form Teams
Next, separate the students into two teams. Teams take it in turns to play.
Goal of the Game
The aim is for the students in the teams to guess the correct Christmas activity using the present continuous tense.
Introduce Vocabulary (Optional)
If your students are unfamiliar with Christmas activities, you may wish to introduce the activities and write them on the board. Then, the students can guess by matching the mime with an activity.
Start the Game
Pick a team to go first and ask them to choose a student to do the first mime.
That student comes to the front of the class and you give him/her one of the mime cards.
Miming and Guessing
The student then asks the class, “What Christmas activity am I doing?”
Then, the student does the mime on the card.
When a member of either team thinks they know, they respond using the structure:
“You are verb+ing…”
Example: You are making a snowman.
Scoring Points
The students must guess the exact words on the mime card to win.
The first team to get the mime correct wins a point.
Winning the Game
The team with the highest number of points at the end wins.
Adaptation for Shy Students
If you think your students may be embarrassed to mime in front of the whole class, let them do the activity in groups.

Conclusion

This Christmas Mimes activity is an exciting and effective way to combine movement, laughter, and language learning during the holiday season. Students will enjoy practicing the present continuous tense while acting out festive scenes. Simply print the free cards, explain the rules, and watch your classroom come to life with Christmas spirit and joyful communication!your classroom!