I Love Cupcakes!

This Activity Center was so much fun!  As part of our food theme, the children got creative and made colourful cupcakes.

Make, create and learn!

In the Art Room agian!  This time, the kids are using a variety of different materials to make a group collage.

As well as revising vocabulary for shapes and colours, the finished product became the 'Ready-to-Learn' poster that's in our classroom.

Cloud Dough

Cloud dough is so much fun to feel, squeeze, mould and press.  It is powdery like flour one moment and moldable like playdough the next.  The kids in Group 3 playing with it and it was such a memorable way for them to learn about clouds.  

The recipe is so easy that you could make it at home!  Mix 2 cups of flour with 1 cup of hair conditioner.  You can also use food colouring to change the colour if you like.

Magic Cloud Paintings

We've been learning about the weather in class.  Everyday we observe the sky outside and talk about what the weather is like.  In the Art Room, we used candles to draw clouds and then painted on the blue sky with watercolours.  The children were amazed to see the white clouds appear as if by magic!

Flying to Australia

We've been learning vocabulary for clothing.  I thought it would be fun to go on an imaginary plane trip to Australia! These kinds of direct and enjoyable experiences provide children with opportunities to learn which are fun, meaningful and therefore memorable.

In the playground, we pretended to wash and dry some real clothes.  Back in the classroom we folded packed a suitcase and took and the plane!

Clothing & The Weather

In the classroom, we played games to learn and practise vocabulary for clothing and weather conditions.

On this programme, the children are encouraged to learn English though a variety of activities that cross different curricular areas.  As part of our Clothing and weather theme, there were lots of activites for the children to play with which incorporated the vocabulary we were learning with key numerical, motor, and social skills.

Colours and Animals

Colours and animals are two themes which go perfectly together in the young learner classroom.  Not only do they introduce language which we will see over and over throughout the year, it's also an opportunity to work with one of our favourite children's stories.

During this week we looked at all the animals from the book as well as all the primary and secondary colours as well as some shades.

• red
• orange
• yellow
• green
• blue
• purple
• pink
• black
• white

This is their first introduction to the adjective + noun word order in English, i.e: Brown Bear NOT Bear Brown.  You would be surprised how quickly the children pick this up and how easily they apply the 'rule' to other things e.g. brown hair or big circle.

One of the most popular centers this week was the button sorting.  The children use their fingers or tongs to sort the buttons by colour.  This is also great for their fine motor skills!

The children experimented with rollers, brushes and brown paint this week.  We did some wild and free painting on big sheets of paper which will be used later to make our brown bear puppets!

Mister Maker - Shapes

This is the video we watched as part of our Shapes theme!

Shapes

Learning shapes and sizes was lots of fun. From the table to the window or the tiles and the door, the children discovered that we have shapes all around us.

You can also see the video clip we watched.  It came from the show Mr Maker.

Here are the shapes we have looked at in class.

Square

Circle

Rectangle

Triangle

Star (G4 and G5)

Heart (G4 and G5)

And sizes too...

Tiny (G4 and G5)

Small

Big

Enormous (G4 and G5)

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.