Why do we eat cake on our birthdays?

Advanced lesson plan (B2 and above): Why do we eat cake on our birthdays? - BUY ME A COFFEE if you like my FREE ESL content

"Make a wish and blow out your candles", your friends and family tell you every year. But how did lighting a confectionery on fire on your birthday become the "normal" thing to do? And why - just why - would somebody pay $75 million dollars for a birthday cake? 

In this B2+ worksheet, students will 

• Study a video about the origin of the birthday cake tradition
• Match cake-related pictures with phrasal verbs
• Create mixed conditionals 
• Learn six cake-related idioms
• See advanced adjectives used to advertise a cake
• Practise adjective ordering using a news article about the world's most expensive cake 

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Click HERE for the worksheet answers.

Lesson objectives:

1) To match six phrasal verbs based on "CUT" to cake-related pictures (to cut up, to cut in, to cut off, to be cut out for something, to cut out, to cut back)

2) To create second/third mixed conditionals by conjugating the verbs appropriately in cake-related sample sentences

3) To select appropriate adjectives from a list to advertise a cake (e.g. spongy, decadent, moist)

4) To practise the ordering of adjectives, using vocabulary from a short news article about a cake that sold for $75 million

5) To practise listening comprehension by studying a video about the origin of the birthday cake tradition

6) To expand the students' repertoire of idioms, matching six cake-related idioms/phrases with their definitions (to be a piece of cake, to sell like hot cakes, to be as nutty as a fruit cake, the cherry on the cake, to have one's cake and eat it, that takes the cake/biscuit!)