Toothpick Game

By Weronika Salandyk—Poland
Age: 8+
Times: maximum 20 minutes
Materials: Toothpicks and pictures of people doing things.
Organization: Group work.
Aim: To practice making sentences describing the pictures.
Description: Children work in pairs or groups. They take it in turns to make sentences about the pictures, and use the toothpicks to show which part of the picture they are describing.
Preparation: You will need to find suitable pictures of people doing things. These can be pictures from your course book, pictures from magazines, a photocopied picture or a flashcard. The important thing is that there is a lot of activity in the picture. Make sure you have enough toothpicks to bring to class.
Procedures

1. Divide the class into pairs or groups of no more than four. Give each pair/group a set of about 12–20 toothpicks.
2. Give each pair or group a picture. 
3. Tell the children that they have to take it in turns to make sentences about the pictures. Elicit some examples using one of the pictures, or a picture you put on the board. 
4. Here is the fun part. As the children make a sentence, they must put a toothpick on to the picture, so that the point of the toothpick touches the part of the picture that the child is describing. The next child then makes a sentence, following the same procedure. However, this child’s toothpick must touch the picture and also the previous toothpick, like in a dominos game. 
5. The children get one point for each toothpick they manage to lay down. The child who places all their toothpicks first is the winner.

Note
You might need to cut the toothpicks in half if the pictures are small.
Alternatives

1. If you have children of different levels, you can differentiate the kind of sentences they must make. For example, lower level children can make sentences with adjectives while higher level children can make sentences with particular tense patterns.
2. You can add a level of challenge by insisting that the children cannot move existing toothpicks when they lay down their toothpick, or they lose a point.

Reference
Crazy animals and other activities for teaching English to young learner book  Download PDF