Saturday 12 December 2009

Christmas Decorations



An easy idea for Christmas decoration is to use Laundy pins and decorate them with cardboard to make a little reindeer, a little Santa or an angel...


you can then clip them on a Christmas tree made folding three pieces of green paper...


A letter to Santa

This week's actitity at the kindergarten featured "writing" a letter to Santa.

I read them the book "Dear Father Christmas" by Jeanne Willis and Rosie Reeve http://www.amazon.com/Dear-Father-Christmas/dp/0141502096/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1260636382&sr=1-4




After that I asked them to draw what they wanted for a Christmas on white paper...then I sticked a DEAR SANTA and LOVE at the top and at the bottom (they can't write yet, just their name :) )


then I folded the sheet and I sticked a "stamp" outside, I wrote the address and I told them to hang it on their Christmas Tree as a present for Santa :)


Tuesday 8 December 2009

12 Days Of Christmas

I have this English Classes at the local kindergarten...considering that the kids are about 150...well, to have handouts every week ready for them seems a waste of paper and toner..so I decided to switch to class posters! they're great, children have fun doing them, you hang them on the wall and they're all proud of showing them around...:)
So for Christmas the idea was to have The 12 Days of Christmas poster...but not the traditional one...but Sesame Street Version, which is way funnier for them :)
http://www.amazon.com/Sesame-Street-Christmas/dp/B00000DSMS

So here's the thing:
I prepared the posters, with all the twelve days' presents written on and I prepared flashcards to show and then to colour of each present...so on the first day of Christmas my true love sent to me One delicious cookie, a cookie, on the second day of Christmas my true love sent to me 2 baby frogs, 2 frogs...and so on...

Before listening to the song, I had them go throught all the flashcards as a class, reinforcing and repeating each time the names of the objects. at the end I sang the song and then we listened to it!
They were then given flashcards to colour and we then stuck them on the poster, once again repeating each word...while they were colouring the songs was still on and I was singing it out loud ;)

it's great to review numbers and introduce new vocabulary and moreover it's a different song for Christmas instead of the usual ones, Jingle Bells and We wish you a merry Christmas :)
Kids loved showing it to their class teacher and school director :) they also showed it to their parents when they came to collect them at the end of the day and they where so proud :)

Let's start

I've decided to start this blog more to keep track of all my ideas than anything else...
I have to plan lots of classes each week and I'm afraid not to remember everything I invent :)
And then it'd be great to share some ideas with all the teachers' community, I know how hard it is sometimes to find the right idea ;)
I mainly work with children, ESL teaching, so that's what the blog would be mainly about, but I still have some adults and teens classes, so I'll share my ideas for those,too...
Hope I will succeed in being constant and precise and be helpful for all the teachers' community as well ;)
take care