Let's Talk About Toys: Games and Worksheets

Christmas holidays will certainly have brought a large number of presents to our student's houses, so if you didn't talk about toys before Christmas, the right moment could definitely be now, when every child will be eager to tell everybody else what he found under his Christmas tree.

You can find high quality material about toys to download here:

In the file 'Little bugs story cards 1' you'll find the story of a clumsy elf who helps a young boy get a new robot. It's a story younger students can easily act out thanks to its repetitive patterns. In the file 'Little bugs flashcards 1' you'll find the flash cards which show all the toys mentioned in the story.

I printed a small card version of those flashcards so we could play several games with them.

One game I particularly like to play is 'The wind blows for…': Have your kids sit in a circle, let them choose a couple of cards and when you call out a toy saying, for example: "The wind blows for anyone who has got a scooter."  those who are holding a card with a scooter on it have to swap chairs, as fast as they can. I don't usually remove any chairs because I want them to focus on learning and not on winning the game however, it might be an option to take into account if you're teaching primary students.

Another game the kids loved was this:
Call on one of the kids, let him or her choose a card, without showing it to anyone or saying what toy is shown on it (sometimes this is the hardest part, he,he,he!). The child then has to act out playing with that toy while the rest of the class tries to guess what toy he or she is playing with.
They loved it so much that they could happily have kept playing the same game for the whole hour!

As always I looked for some songs to help them quickly memorize the new vocabulary: this one is really simple and it's the perfect way to introduce the topic. The second song inspired me to come up with another guessing game: just take a small cardboard box and fill it with the cards. This is now your "toybox". Next, slowly take the cards out of it, one by one, while the children try to guess what toy you're taking out. Of course if you have the chance to use real toys instead, go for it! 
The last one is a chant and you can make the most of it by using the expression 'have got' while playing "Go fish".

Interesting worksheets about toys can be downloaded here. I played bingo with my students and, of course, they won many sweet prizes.

Have a wonderful time heading back to school!

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Lucy dedicates a lot of time and love to thinking about and writing the posts she shares with all of you. Because she believes that a better teaching is the key for a better future. If you find any help, value or joy in this blog, please consider becoming a supporting reader. A donation, in any amount, will be gratefully accepted. 

                                                   

 

  

Winter Lesson Plan

Winter has definitely shown up here in Madrid, therefore it's time to dive deep into this topic with my preschoolers!

I discovered, thanks to a Montessori blog, a Ukrainian folktale called The Mitten written by Jan Brett.

The story is about a white mitten, laying on the snow in the wood, that  soon becomes a shelter for several animals: a mole, a rabbit, an owl, a badger, a fox etc. 

To see how it ends take a look at this video.

The story teaches sequencing and a lot of vocabulary related to forest animals and the winter.

The tale is easy to retell so you can shorten it, printing out the characters cutting out a big white mitten and setting up a little drama time instead of reading the original book. 

At the end sneeze aloud and send the animals flying into the air… The children will be happily surprised!

Some activities to do after the reading and strictly related to the story are: color and decorate your own mitten or color only the animals that appear in the story. 

Here you can find the worksheets.

Then, you can go a step forward and talk about winter clothes, cut them out and stick them inside a handicraft wardrobe to practise there is and there are  

Finally for those of you who have a lot of time to spend in the classroom I would suggest to take a look at this interesting Snow Pack

Happy February!!!

More about WINTER? Take a look at this board game

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Lucy dedicates a lot of time and love to thinking about and writing the posts she shares with all of you. Because she believes that a better teaching is the key for a better future. If you find any help, value or joy in this blog, please consider becoming a supporting reader. A donation, in any amount, will be gratefully accepted. 

                                                   

LESSON PLAN: Exploring Feelings With Cat and Mouse

Teaching the different kinds of feelings is important because it helps children recognize and express their emotions.  

But, how can we arrange an interesting and fun English class for preschoolers about this topic?

Pictures and drama will surely be useful tools to help kids learn about and explore their feelings.

So let's start with a picture book.

One of the books in the Cat and Mouse collection is exactly what we'll need: 

boredom, happiness, excitement, tiredness, thirst, hunger, sickness, fun, surprise, fear, anger, etc. are presented by the two protagonists who decided to go to the circus that has just showed up in town.

As in all the other books of this collection there's an audio CD and a dictionary at the end of the story to learn the right pronunciation and spelling of the new vocabulary.

After reading the book you can arrange a drama game, calling a child to the front of the class to pull a face to express a feeling that the others will have to guess. 

It might be necessary to hand out flashcards for clearer instructions. Here you can find some. 

In addition, once your students have learnt how to pull a face you can teach them this song about feelings.

Mr Printables.com

Finally, I found this handicraft somewhere on Pinterest and I think it would be interesting to reproduce it and let your students play with it. You'll just need some cardboard and patterned paper.

Have fun!

More about Cat and Mouse:

Meet the Animals 

Learn the Colours

Let's go shopping

Eat Good Food

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Lucy dedicates a lot of time and love to thinking about and writing the posts she shares with all of you. Because she believes that a better teaching is the key for a better future. If you find any help, value or joy in this blog, please consider becoming a supporting reader. A donation, in any amount, will be gratefully accepted. 

                                                   

Lesson Plan: Gingerbread Cookies... or Another Way To Impress Your Students

Run, run! As fast as you can! You can't catch me 'cause I'm the Gingerbread man!

Autumn has definitely snuck into our lives here in Madrid. It's cold and rainy, and I've already got a cold.

So, since it'll be impossible to go out to enjoy the rejuvenating Sierra of Madrid, I've decided that TODAY IS THE DAY! 

Time for some baking!

And, since I've already ordered my copy of the book The Gingerbread Boy on Amazon, I decided, in order to make the story and the experience unforgettable, that my students will also receive a couple of Gingerbread cookies. 

I will probably prepare a simple activity about 'the family', like the one presented on my previous post about Gingerbread People, to keep adding to the story.

But, the best part is going to be singing the chorus of  this really catchy song  while reading the book.

I can't stop singing it! 

If you decide to bake with your kids the RECIPE is HERE!

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PIPPI LONGSTOCKING by Astrid Lindgren

Pippi Longstocking Cover

I suppose that many of us watched Pippi's adventures on TV when we were children and, maybe, some of her brilliant unconventional ideas are still stored in our subconscious. In my personal experience I still dust my parquet - floor skating on a pair of dust cloths, a technique she invented first, I suppose, and, oh yes! it's fun! 

So, for those who have never heard about her, Pippi has been labelled as the naughtiest girl ever, a little 'savage' whose mother died and whose father was washed overboard in a storm at sea. She lives on the outskirt of a Swedish town with a monkey and a horse parked on the porch of Villa Villekulla.

She is the strongest girl on earth and also the most brave of all. She tells lots of lies, although I'm sure Gianni Rodari would have called them creative stories.

Her character was created when Sweden was being transformed, from a poor agricultural country, into a rich and wealthy nation, and the Swedish culture of conformity, moderation, constraint and contentment was definitively modeling the stereotype of "calm, clean, quiet, industrious and modern" Swedish society.

Can you imagine the expression of horror on the editor's face during the reading of Pippi's book? Actually Astrid Lindgren didn't get published on her first try.

The character of Pippi was so outrageous that the publisher rejected her!

What would you think about a kid who dramatically messes up the kitchen, exactly like The Cat in the Hat by Dr Seuss, to cook pancakes and rolls shortbread on the floor?

And what about school? She's never gone and even when she tries, she really doesn't fit in! She doesn't treat her teacher respectfully, she is noisy, she lies, she draws on the floor and she doesn't participate when she is required to.

Her one-day teacher was actually really lucky when Pippi decided to drop school out after just a few hours.

But on the other hand, she is the best at inventing games to play with her young next-door  neighbors Tommy and Annika. Every afternoon they can be 'thing searchers' or can have coffee and cookies sitting on the branches of a tree, they can go walking in the wood and have any sort of adventures or ghost-hunting in the attic of Villa Villekulla. 

No matter how uneducated she is, she will always be children's favorite heroine!

Take a look at these classroom activities here: 

Pippi - Lesson Plan

Pippi - Study Guide


    


Lucy dedicates a lot of time and love to thinking about and writing the posts she shares with all of you. Because she believes that a better teaching is the key for a better future. If you find any help, value or joy in this blog, please consider becoming a supporting reader. A donation, in any amount, will be gratefully accepted.