I want to play Secret Santa with my students but I was lazy to make name cards for them to draw because I had to do the same activity for all my classes, so I came up with this modified Secret Santa game!
Materials:
- The Secret Santa card (there are around 30 something of the same ones, please modify it as you see fit)
- Number Cards (we had some at the school so I don't have a template, but honestly just writing it on some small pieces of paper helps, just make sure you have just the right number of cards that matches how many kids you have in that class)
Optional:
- A powerpoint on sample Christmas greetings (I just wrote some on the board but a powerpoint would be good too!)
- a shopping catalogue of a selection of things you the ALT is selling (I thought about making one but ran out of time, you can have all kinds of ridiculous stuff and prices like a rock you picked up on the street for $50,000 or an actual spaceship for $10)
Before class:
- Number your Christmas cards starting from 1 according to how many students are in your class (I just wrote mine with a sharpie in the corner)
- Bring the number cards according to how many students are in your class
How to play:
1. Tell your students congratulations! They've just won the lottery (I like to draw a big dollar sign on the board and get the kids all confused but excited) for 1 million dollars! It helps to tell them what that is in Japanese yen too.
2. Hand our the Christmas cards
3. Tell them that they have to buy someone in this class a gift, but they do not know who and that this will be completely random
4. They have to try to use all of the money they have, they can buy multiple items, it is also okay to just give all the cash as the present (one of my students' present was 1 million USD converted all to PayPay Points, lol)
5. Draw their present in the green box and write down their present name (if they buy multiple presents they have to make sure they can fit everything in the box)
6. Write a Christmas greeting for the person receiving their present (depending on your students' English levels, they can make their own or you can explain some sample greetings and they will pick what to write)
7. Finally, write their own name and the ALT and JTE will collect all the cards
8. Get out the number cards, students will randomly draw a number and the corresponding Christmas card will be their present
This activity doesn't use a whole lot of English (once again this is for my kids that don't even know the alphabet lol) but it is a good end of year Christmas activity.