The Hokey Pokey!

Here's a fun song that we did in class as part of our theme on the Face and Body.

Now you can sing along at home, too.!

My School

As part of this theme, we learned the names of objects in the classroom that we use everyday.  This helps us to use more English in our everyday lessons, like moving from one activity to another and doing art and craft.

For those of you who would like to support your child's learning at home, here are some words you could use at home.

• chair
• table
• floor
• crayon
• marker
• scissors
• glue
• paper

All About Me

In the second week of classes we continued exploring the topic All About Me.

We read the story Spot Makes a Cake by Eric Hill.

We made our own birthday cakes in the playground, sang the 'Happy Birthday Song' and learned to count our candles in English.

The language focus this week was...
Saying Hello and Goodbye
What's your name?
How old are you?
What's your favourite colour?

Technology as a Teaching Tool

Ipad day is always popular with our students.  To make sure they are getting the most out of this time, the apps are pre-selected to match the language we are learning that week.  There are also activities and whole-class games played which introduce and practice the language they will need to play the game on the ipad.

Here are some that you might like to download and play with your child at home:

• Agnitus (colours, numbers)
• Make Monsters (body party)
• Mr Potato (body parts, numbers)
• Cut The Buttons (classroom objects, fine motor skills)
• Dr Panda's Hospital (body parts and health)

Learning English through Art & Craft

Once a week, our English class takes place in the Art Room.  Art activities provide a wonderful medium for learning languages with plenty of opportunities to consolidate what the students have been learning in an independent and creative way.

Over the course of the year the children will have the chance to experience and experiment with a wide range of mediums.

As part of our colours theme, we old recycled coloured markers to make watercolours.  This free activity allowed the children to use the colour vocabulary we have been looking at all week in a natural context.

The children also used crayons and coloured pencils to draw portraits of their friends as part of our All About Me theme.

We had a lot of fun colouring shapes to make displays for our classroom.  We used crayons and markers, but experimented with a new texture by using black paper and chalk to colour our shapes.

 

To learn the names for materials we use in our classroom, the students did a collage using the materials of their choice.

Activity Centers

Our activity centers give children not only give them opportunities to use the language we are learning, also work on other skills that they are developing.

The class is divided into small groups, offering the teacher a chance to interact more closely with the students and provide extra language support where needed.

 

Playing Outdoors

Every week, we take the children out into the playground to learn games and play in English.  It' s a wonderful opportunity to get physical, burn some energy and learn outdoor games that children play in different countries.

As you can see, it's lots of fun!

Back into English...2014 has begun!

The year has gotten off to a wonderful start.  We started off the semester by establishing our routine and some basic classroom language.  As you know, this allows children to understand what is expected of them even if they are not yet able to understand what the teacher is saying in English. Within no time the kids pick up on the routine, understand and respond in English! Aahhh… to be young again.

Here are some of our lesson stages which make up our routine.  Click on links to see some photos.
Greet the students with our 'Hello Song' song.

The class register (British English)/ Attendance (American English)

Circle time

Activity Centers
Art & Craft Activities
Technology
Outdoor play
Songs
Story-time
Tidy up time (please note this song can also be adapted for home ;-))
Goodbye song

The subject for the first two weeks of school is “All About Me”. In the first week the kids played name games, learned name songs and completed some activities of their favourite colors/colours.

They have also been reviewing their shapes (circle, square, triangle, and rectangle) with various activities. They painted, colored/coloured, watched a video, and played some games to test their knowledge.  And guess what? They all passed!

At The Car Wash

Here is a wonderful activity that you can do at home with your child.  It's a lot of fun and creates opportunities to practice naming colours in English.  Take some toy cars and paint them different colours, wash them off and start again! You'll be surprised how many times they'll want to do this before the novelty wears off.  We have great big sensory tub at school but at home you should probably get your child to do this in the shower cubicle.   ;-)

Free Play in Shoe Box City

We took the shoe box houses that we made during the week and turned them into a mini-city that the kids played in today during English class.  It was a great way to finish off our unit of work on My House.

The Three Little Pigs

The groups have been enjoying hearing the classic story The Three Little Pigs as part of our theme My House.  As a follow-up activity, I set the sensory tub up for the children to act out the story using some different props.  It was interesting to hear the language they have picked up from they story appearing while they played.

My House - My Home

We are learning the rooms of the house this week: bedroom, bathroom, living room and kitchen.

Here are some pics of our students doing worksheets.  One was a listen and paint activity and the other was a free activity where the students could decorate a picture of the house in any way they wanted.

We read the story of the Three Little Pigs and as a follow up activity made 3D houses using straws, sticks and bricks.

Then along came the Big Bad Wolf to blow the houses down!  There were two things that I really loved about this activity.  The first was hearing the children using English spontaneously as they played, calling out to the wolf and then chanting the lines from the story.  The second was seeing how hard they worked at building strong houses which would withstand the wolf.

Australia Project: Australian Aboriginal music

This song was such a big hit that I've been hearing it sung around the school all week.  Taba Naba is a traditional children's song from the Torres Strait Islands of the North coast of Australia. 

Here are the words and translation:

Taba naba naba norem
Tugi penai siri
Dinghy e naba we
Miko keimi
Sere re naba we
Taba naba norem (style)
(repeated 3 times)

Translation:
Come on let's go to the Reef
Get into the dinghy when the morning tide is low
Let us row to the edge of the reef
Come on let's go to the reef.

Most of you have probably seen the video performed by XuXa.  While she got the words right, unfortunately the costumes and music are from Hawaii NOT the Torres Strait.  Here is an Australian version:

Australia Project - Story: Ernie Dances To The Didgeridoo

This story tells the tale of a boy called Ernie who goes to live in a remote part of Australia where the lifestyle and people are very different to what he is used to.  He has a great time making new friends and learning new things.  The children at UPUERE did, too!  Each time we read the story we would follow up with a game or activity from the pages of the book.

• Playing Tin-Tin.
• Making a traditional Australian bread called Damper
• Face painting
• Learning the words and actions to a traditional Australian song: Taba Naba
• Dot painting
• Listening to Didgeridoo music

Here's a link to the recipe!  DAMPER

Learn more about this ancient art form here.

Australia Project - Story: Wombat Stew

Gooey, brewy, yummy, chewy...Wombat Stew!  This chant is from the book we read this week called Wombat Stew by Marcia Vaughan.  This hilarious story tells the tale of a group of Australian animals who try to save their friend Wombat from ending up in Dingo's stew.

To follow up our story, we played with some Australian animal puppets and pretended to make Wombat Stew in the sensory tub.

Australia Project - Inspecting, counting and sorting coins

I brought some of my coins to school today for the children to see.  They had fun looking at them with the magnifying glass and naming the animals they could see - platypus, kangaroo, echidna, and emu.  There were also some tongs to use to sort the coins by value.

I Like Bananas

This song originally came from the Robby Rabbit EFL textbook by Carol Read.  I use the words and melody to play a game which is similar to Duck, Duck, Goose.  Everyone loves this game and the song is extremely catchy.  Here is how we play…

The children sit on the floor in a circle.  One child is chosen to go around the outside of the circle tapping each child’s head in turn while the group sing…

I like bananas,

I like apples,

I like sandwiches,

I like biscuits, too.

At the end of the song, the standing child must ask the child sitting before him/her a question “Do you like (apples)?”.  The sitting child must answer the question before jumping up to chase the other. The objective is to get around the circle and sitting down without being caught.

Bean Bag Toss

For our outdoor game this week the children had to throw old socks filled with bean into hula-hoops and name the food flashcard inside.  It was a fun way to revise the vocabulary we had been learning that week.

Sometimes and everyday food

Our project on food looked at and compared the food which we should eat every day and that which should only be eaten sometimes. Through stories, songs, experiments, art and games the children learned the names of at least 15 foods as well reinforcing the importance of eating well to stay strong and healthy.

apple banana biscuit sandwich chicken meat cake
lollipop pasta tomato pizza juice water milk chocolate

 

The Very Hungry Caterpillar

This classic children’s book by Eric Carle tells the story of the lifecycle of a butterfly.  It also introduces the days of the week and the concept of healthy eating habits.  It was the perfect story for our unit of work on Sometimes and Everyday Food.