These three activities were brought about by the calendar, this title by the title of a wonderful Christmas (?) book by C.S. Lewis. The lion just found itself.
A square aka ‘The Winter Wonderland’
This is a lovely activity that was found on Instagram by one of my colleagues, Larisa. The original, created by @kardasti.saz was a lot more intricate and a lot more complex, too complex in fact for my online classes.
The activity starts with a square of regular A4 photocopying paper. It is folded diagonally, to create a triangle, twice and opened. The kids are asked to trace one of the lines, from one corner to the other. We then draw the pictures above the line: the trees, the snowman, the presents and, finally, the snowflakes. It is very important to stage the drawing carefully, element by element, modeling and pausing for the kids to follow. This way, even the younger kids will be able to create such drawings.
We trace the line along the fold, from the centre of the square to the corner, on the bottom part of the square. We cut along this line, until we reach the centre point. We put the glue on the top of one of these newly-created triangles and we put the triangles on top of each other and press.
We have done this activity online so I had to limit the materials to the simplest and basic ones but in the classroom or if the kids have it, there is more potential for the cotton snow or 3-D figures in the little yard.
A circleaka the Rocking Santa
Circle is the best shape ever and this activity has be yet another piece of evidence to prove this. I have found it online, on the Noreva Project channel but, again, because we did it online, the instructions and procedures were simplified – only the regular A4 paper, white, which, in case of the triangle, was simply coloured red in class. The parents helped with preparing the materials (a circle and a triangle) but, again, we did everything ourselves and because we went slowly, step by step and line by line, the students could follow and create their own Santa. All the instructions are in the video.
We combined this craft with the song from Super Simple Songs, Santa, where are you? and we used to practise the prepositions (in, on, under) in a guessing game in which students hide Santa somewhere in the room and we keep guessing where it is (Is it on the table? etc).
Some scotch aka the Coolest Christmas Tree There Is
This piece was a present that my niece, Mishka made for me with her mum @_mad_alen_ and I can’t repeat it enough: it is simply amazing. It would be too much to try to pull off in the online classes but it is perfectly feasible with the offline groups. I have certainly done craft that involved the same level of pre-lesson prep work.
What you need is a piece of cardboard, with the cut out shape, a few strips of scotch taped to the back of it, sticky side up and a selection of things to decorate with: sequins, buttons, pompons. I suppose there is some potential for less professional ingredients (crayons or coloured pencils shavings, sand, scraps of coloured paper) or even food (buckwheat, seeds).
The scotch here makes it a bit more manageable (no glue!) and the card can be displayed in the window to let the sun shine through it. Or simply used to check how different sources of light change the picture. And there is an opportunity (and a need) for a health and safety training on not eating craft materials and handling small objects.
Not to mention that Mishka’s Christmas Tree has been elected the Christmas Tree of the Year.
I suppose that, on some level, the idea of including the storybook illustrations and their creators into my English through Art curriculum has always been there and it was just waiting for its turn. The first lesson devoted to that happened somewhere in December 2020 with my juniors and you can read about it here. Including it in the series of lessons with my primary kids was just a matter of time. Ed Emberly (and his bestiary of monsters)* is the first one to have a lesson dedicated to. The first of many, I hope!
The artist
The idea to base the whole lesson on Ed Emberly and his art came from the Big Green Monster storybook which has been my go-to resource in all the body parts / monsters lessons for a very long time now. The kids absolutely love the fact that they can control the monster, make it appear or disappear and this way deal with the fear. I used to have students who would sneak into the storybook room before the lesson and ‘read’ the book on their own or run a reading sessions for their friends who also wandered in, both in English and in Russian.
But then, as I started to look through everything that Ed Emberly produced, it turned out that monsters really were his favourite thing and that he wrote a few books on how to create your own illustrations using finger paints and markers. ‘I want one of those!’ was the brain’s initial reaction.
First of all, we introduced Ed as our artist of the day (name, face, country and his favourite thing) and we talked a bit about the monsters which he drew, including the Big Green. The gallery walk was a very brief one this time but that is because Ed was present throughout the lesson, with the story and the craft. It was probably the most consistent and artist-focused lesson of all of those that I have ever taught on this course.
The language
This part was very simple and very straightforward – as much of the body parts practice as possible. It was the first lesson with this topic and we did a variety of exercises related
Introduction, repeating, a bit of drilling (I do less and less of that, as a teacher and I have begun to wonder why. The post will be coming soon).
Pointing and moving of the said body parts which could perhaps go under the TPR label
And a selection of the wordwall games such as matching the human body parts and the animal body parts, pelmanism (only in zoom we write the numbers first on all the cards) and describing monsters using ‘my monster has got…’ and similar structures, also with the use of a set of wordwall cards. This last one is the most generative activity and I have high hopes for her in terms of the amount of the language produced in the long run. Usually it takes a few lessons for the kids to get used to it and to become comfortable and this time round was not an exception. With my current group, the Ed Emberly lesson was chronologically the first one and it was only in the Degas lesson, two weeks later that the kids were ready to produce lots of language.
Last but not least, we watched and participated in the storytelling and it was, of course, Ed Emberly’s ‘Go Away Big Green Monster’, this time in the video format, although, ideally, we would have used a storybook only I did not have it at home at the time.
The craft
Originally, Ed Emberly monsters (and other creatures) were done with a combination of two techniques – finger paint prints and drawing with markers. For anyone willing to use this approach, his books are full of ready made ideas. However, finger paints are a tricky resource to use in the classroom, especially if you want to finger print and draw, and I just did not want to bother with the logistics of it in the online world, especially that our group is now located in three different countries. Solutions had to be found.
It does help, I suppose, that I am a lazy teacher and I have noticed that with all the obstacles of the online Art class I am blossomig and I end up with the ideas that I like. This was the case here and that’s what we did:
The first step – produce own monsters in order to test and trial and to understand how much time is required and how many monsters can be created during the ten minutes that we hae assigned for the craft activity.
Write to the parents, to inform them what resources will be necessary: a sheet of A4 paper, a marker, glue, old newspaper and magazine pages OR coloured paper.
Show the kids the finished product and describe all the monsters (colour and body parts). I did it holding the picture in front of the camera but it was not as effective as I would have wanted it it to be. Next time, I will keep the paper on the desk and I will move the camera above it, in order to make sure that the kids see only one monster at a time and that it is clear and big enough.
The monsters are super easy to make and the one thing that is necessary is a piece of paper (the more recklessly torn off, the better). It is then glued onto the paper and the body parts are drawn. Then the kids describe their own monster, ideally using full sentences but, since it is the first lesson with the new vocabulary, I accepted simple ‘three eyes’, ‘one nose’, ‘two legs’. The number of the monsters produced in class will depend on the age and the skills of the kids.
My students are already quite ‘advanced’ when it comes to craft and after they figured out how to make the monsters, they were on producing more and more of them, focused more on the craft than on the speaking (ouch!). For that reason, when I teach this lesson again, I will want to scaffold even more carefully and introduce the following tricks a) ‘dictate’ the colour for the monster, b) promote production by guessing how many legs their monsters will have, hoping that even if I don’t guess, they will want to correct me and c) introduce a punctuation mark between the monsters ie a proper introduction (My name is Polly. I am a happy monster)
I personally adore the fact that the monsters are made from newspapers and that they have the most irregular shapes, the more reckless, the better. However, I noticed that some of my parents were reluctant to the idea of letting the kids work with old newspapers and magazings, preferring the regular and pretty craft paper. I have also noticed that some of my students did not quite like the idea of the torn paper and while I was happily tearing the resources for my monsters, they simply picked up their scissors and started to cut out square, circles and triangles. In the offline classroom, I simply wouldn’t have given out scissors, trying to encourage them to work with a new resource. In the online classroom I could not control it but the monsters turned out pretty anyway.
Edgar Degas is a perfect example of a love – hate relationship with Art. I adore his ballerinas, the beauty caught in a frame, the purposeful randomness of different set-up that make it often look like the candid camera photos, caught in the act, almost random, immortalised forever. But, at the same time, Edgar is the artist that I would never want to meet in person or talk to because of his beliefs and views.
But, it so happened that we are still doing body parts with my kids and I have only girls in the group and I really wanted to make ballerinas and so, reluctantly though it was, I chose Degas to be the artist of the day.
As usual, we introduced him by name, by country and by his favourite thing (ballerinas!!!). We looked at the paintings and talking about the colours and the actions and then, we made our own ballerinas.
Our gallery with Degas
The language
We are still practising expressing opinion using ‘I like’ and ‘I don’t like’, we include it in every lesson and at this point we are (almost) at the point when the kids talk spontaneously about the different things we are looking at
We are still practising describing monsters using the sentences such as ‘my monster has got two eyes’ as well as ‘my monster is green and yellow’, ‘my monster is happy’ and ‘I like it / I don’t like it’. Apart from the regular revision and drilling, we used the monsters from one of the wordwall sets, such as this one here. I was simply over the moon to see that at this point (and it was our lesson #3 with this topic), the kids were just producing a sequence of two or three sentences. It needs to be mentioned that we still sing the song about the teddy bear and it helps us to produce, too as the key structure ‘my teddy bear has got one nose’ can be easily transformed into a sentence about the monsters or ballerinas and that definitely helped, too.
Teacher’s ballerina
The craft
The final version of the craft is a combination of two ballerinas that I have found online, one of them from Kidspot, the other from Creative Child. Since my students are still very young and our lessons are online, I needed something that we would all be able to do without my direct assitance
As usual, I sent the information to parents with the list of all the necessary items: two sheets of white paper, safety scissors, glue and markers or crayons.
In class, we checked that everyone had all the materials (‘Have you got the paper? Show me, please’ etc).
I showed the students what we are going to need: a rectangle (for the body), a circle (for the head) and a square (for the skirt).
We prepared our shapes together: I showed the students how to cut off the rectangle (the shorter side of an A4 piece of paper, approximately 4 cm wide) and I waited for them to cut off theirs. I cut out a circle for the head and I cut of a square, too. We put the scissors away.
I did not give the students (or the parents) any details regarding the dimensions of all the shapes because, in a way, it does not really matter and we could manage with the wider or thinner rectangles or the smaller squares or circles. Whatever was too big, got trimmed later on. However, I knew that my girls would be able to handle that. With some of my other students or with much younger children, I would consider asking parents to cut out the shapes for us, before the lesson.
We proceeded to making the ballerina and here are the exact instructions. As usual, I was making my own doll and demonstrating, waiting for all the girls to catch up on with us.
Step 1: take the rectangle, fold it into half, lengthways (‘It’s a book’, said one of my kids, and a book it was, although it had a slightly weird size) and we spread some glue inside of it, to glue both sides together, in order to make it thicker.
Step 2: draw the lines at the bottom and the top of of the rectangle, to make the cutting a bit easier and to ensure that the kids don’t cut it into halves.
Step 3: cut along the line at the bottom of the rectangle, say ‘My ballerina has got two legs’
Step 4: cut along the line at the top of the rectangle, fold them to the sides, say ‘My ballerina has got two arms’
Step 5: glue the circle on, draw the eyes, the nose, the hair, we were drawing and talking about it ‘My ballerina has got…’
Step 6: fold the square into a triangle and cut the patterns, in a way in which we make paper snowflakes. Decorate the skirt with markers.
Step 7: cut off the top of the square/triangle in order to be able to put the skirt on. Put it on the doll and glue it at the top (and at the back) in order to make sure that it does not fall off.
Step 8: add all the other details: draw the hands, shoes, top of the dress etc.
Initially, I had the idea of practising some Present Continous with our ballerinas but in this particular lesson we only managed to start using it and the kids were not ready. Instead, we introduced them and sang the goodbye song together.
Marta’s ballerina
Some final notes
As I have mentioned before, the ballerina does not require any careful or detailed actions and even a messy cutting or measuring do not get in the way of finishing the task, if the kids are old enough. The most challenging part was the skirt as it involves preparing the snowflake and cutting off the tip in order to put the skirt on but once the kids were shown the final product (a circle with a slit), they were able to find their own solutions. Some of the skirts were not circles, some of them were not the most regular squares, some of them had not the prettiest slits but they could all be put on and, when, decorated, they all just look beautiful.
With the younger students, I would ask the parents to prepare the shapes and to cut the slit for the skirt, too.
I have also seen ballerinas that are even easier to make as the snowflake skirt could just be replaced with tissue paper or strips of paper glued on, or, if you have them, cupcake paper liners folded in half. This would also make this craft easier to make.
I loved the fact that when I first introduced my ballerina, the kids were slightly taken aback (and, fair enough, it is not the most graceful thing in the world, my ballerina) but as we proceeded through the craft, they grew fonder and fonder of their creations. They came up with many ideas of personalising them and of adding more detail ie a separate piece of paper for the hair. Not to mention that their dolls are simply amazing.
Another beautiful that happend during this lesson was the fact that the girls remembered the acrobats that we did in a Chagal and Circus lesson in December 2021. An eternity ago and yet, they did remember!
Yes, the Halloween was approaching and my English+Art lesson was on the day. Yes, I was just googling random things hoping that if I find something interesting, I will have a Halloween-ish lesson and if I don’t find anything, well, we will go in a different direction. At this point we have done colours, we have done leaves and, ideally, I was hoping to find some cool artist, some pumpkins and some technique that we have not tried before yet. Last year, around that time, we went to Ilya Mashkov as we tried to recreate his still-life with the magnificent cucurbita pepo but it was last year (aka we have done it already) and it was offline (aka it was more manageable)…I needed something different.
Surprisingly, googling ‘pumpkin in art’ can get you when you want to be)
Enter Yayoi Kusama. Until last Monday, I had never heard of her. Since last Monday, I have been a great fan. Her art is exploding with colour and with energy and she makes me feel like being a part of the Wonderland, Alice in the real world, easily available, at hand. And she loves dots and dots are circles aka the best shape ever that can be easily used in class (here is an earlier post about that).
We met Yayoi and found out about her favourite things and we looked at some of her paintings in our gallery as is now our habit. We also talked about the paintings we like and don’t like.
Yayoi Kusama and her favourite things
Our gallery in Miro
The language
In this particular lesson I wanted to focus on practising expressing opinion using ‘I like’ and ‘I don’t like’ and that is exactly what we did. We looked at Yayoi Kusama’s pumpkins and said what we think of them (P.S. We like them!), we looked at a range of creative pumpkins and said what we think of them and we enjoyed the variety in which pumpkins can appear (photos, art, real pumpkins (yes, these were present) and, finally, the Surprise Pumpkin that I have brought. See below)
We looked at all the pumpkins, Kusama’s, the realia, the creative pumpkins
I presented the ready made product making sure that the Surprise Pumpkin is a proper surprise (‘Look, this is a pumpkin. But it is also a surprise. Are you ready? 3…2…1….’)
We went over the necessary materials with everyone (‘Have you got the paper? Have you got the pencils/markers/crayons?’)
I was making one more copy together with the kids. I am drawing on the regular paper, holding it in my hands, on a thick pad. Going step by step, slowly, pausing and waiting for the kids to complete every single step. This is absolutely crucial.
We folded the paper, stopping after every stage, showing the page to the camera. There are four essential stages: 1) show the A4 paper 2) fold the paper in half, widthwise 3) press at the crease / fold 4) fold the top flap outwards (show the kids how the edge of the paper touches the crease / fold in the middle 5) press at the crease / fold
Draw the pumpkin on the folded paper, that is at the 1/4 flap folded outwards and the 1/2 half at the bottom simultaneously, draw the stem and the leaf as well as three lines for the ribs. Don’t forget to pause at every stop, wait for the kids to complete every step and show you the result.
Open the paper and place it flat on the table. Draw the edge of the top half (‘Let’s draw a zigzac’)
Draw the edge of the bottom half (‘Let’s draw a zigzac here, too’)
Draw the mouse step by step: the oval for the body, two lines for the nose, the ears, the eyes, the whiskers, the tail and the hands.
Leave the colouring for after the lesson.
Play a bit with the surprise pumpkins that everyone prepared. My students simply recreated the ‘presentation’ that I gave at the beginning of the lesson, of their own accord, just like that.
Some final notes
Most of my students deal very well with the folding bit. Only one of us struggled a little bit and we needed mum’s help at the very beginning. It might be a good idea to let the parents know ahead of time and ask them to be at the ready, just in case.
As regards the materials, absolutely anything goes: coloured pencils are great, crayons are great, markers work, too. I am at my personal happiest drawing with markers and colouring with crayons or with crayons and markers, for the extra shine and glow.
Kids are amazing and they really can recreate the drawings or, rather, they can create their own versions of it. The only thing that is really necessary is the proper staging, going step by step, modelling and pausing, to give everyone time to complete the drawing.
It does not matter how big or how small the mouse is. It will all be hidden in the folds of the paper.
There are many variations of the craft. You can find some of them online. Below you can see what we have created ad hoc, just because we did everything that we needed and I could extend the lesson a bit. The pumpkin with a cat and the apple with a caterpillar were the result. These are only a few of the options!
I found the photograph first but then it turned out that it is a whole post with a video tutorial, too. Have a look at the Art Projects for Kids! Which, by the way, is a cool website that I will be visiting in the future!
The language
This is the second module of our course and I decided that I need to start introducing some of the natural world vocabulary, in order to be a little bit better prepared to talk about the artists to come. The first introductory set is rather modest and it includes: the sky, the grass, trees, mountains, houses, the river, flowers and leaves. We have also used this module as an opportunity to revise colours and numbers and to introduce the first two adjectives (big and small). Finally, we started to talk about what ‘I like’ and ‘I don’t like’.
The artist
Our artist of the day who introduced all of that to us was Isaac Illich Levitan, the love of my childhood and my first artist ever. The album of his works is one of the very few books that I remember from my early childhood (apart from the storybooks, of course). It was there, on the shelf and I did spend hours on the carpet, leafing through it, back and forth, making up stories taking place among the birch trees, by the river, in the forests and in some ‘Sokolniki park’ which I found out about long before I set my foot in it. This, by the way, was also one of my first encounters with the foreing languages as the book was in Russian, English, French and German and these were my first exercises in comparative linguistics. At the age of 5 and 6.
Leviatan’s was what you might call a cameo appearance because I did not want to overwhelm the kids. We looked at the four seasons, looked for the new words in the paintings (‘Can you see a house?) and talked about the colours. We also started to sing ‘What’s your favourite season?’. Not a lot, but Isaac is definitely coming back, with the arrival of the winter and then the spring and the summer. With him, there will be Vivaldi, which would have been a perfect companion but I simply forgot about his existence. I am already looking forward to our winter-themed lessons.
Levitan in our ‘gallery’
The craft
try to make the leaf at home to figure out how complex it might be and how much time we will require, think about the stages
use the leaves throughout the lesson ie while revising colours and numbers or practising ‘I like / I don’t like’
check that the kids have all the materials necessary: a piece of paper, crayons, watercolours and water
draw the outline of the leaf veins, and patterns with crayons. It is ok to use the same colour but the final product is more interesting if different colours are used. I was considering introducing different patterns to make it more structured but, in the end, decided not to. We will introduce them on some other occasion, with Kandinsky, for example. If possible, I would use special paper for watercolours but in the online world it is not quite possible. Regular photocopying paper works well, too.
colour the leaf with the watercolours. It might be a good idea to start with the brighter colours and, for the sake of staging, ‘dictate’ which colour to use, leaving the kids a decision which section of the leaf to colour. The lines drawn with crayons will not be covered by the paint and they will be still visible and it is not really necessary to be too careful with painting. Not staying within the lines or even letting the colours seep or even leak into each other create a much more interesting effect. I haven’t really encouraged my kids to create a very ‘messy-on-purpose’ picture (not yet, anyway) but I am very reckless with how I use my paints, to show the kids that it’s ok.
finish with showing the leaves, call out the colours, talk about whose leaves we like.
I have cut out my leaves to be able to use them more easily and I was planning on telling the parents that the kids can do it after the lesson, when the paints dry completely. If I still had my classroom, I would put them up on the window.
I went into this lesson on my toes, slowly, cautiously, almost unwillingly. On the one hand, I was curious, as with all the Art project. On the other hand, I was just not so convinced. On the one hand, there was a new group of kids, I did not know their levels and we were supposed to try doing online what we did face-to-face before. On the other hand, I started to look for all the Miró animals and, randomly, I typed in ‘Miró and a toucan’ and found just that. And it made me burst into laughter, just because it there was an occasion when Joan Miró held a hornbill (aka almost a toucan). I knew I would do it all anyway, even if only to find out whether I can, but I was a bit anxious.
Our Gallery in Miro
The Before
Introduction of colours, a variety of songs, wordwall games and Miro games
Working on building the routine and getting used to the online format
Introduce the artist of the day and his arts. We focused only on the animals and on the colours. We ‘visited’ our MiroBoard Gallery and we tried to guess the animals and match Miro with photographs
And, finally, we tell and listen to ‘Elmer’ for the first time (I have actually only used the video, muted, and I told the story myself. We also included some gestures to involve the kids).
It is necessary to add that this year, due to the fact that we meet online with my Art Explorers, our classes have a slightly different format and we work on two-lesson basis. In lesson A we introduce the vocabulary and the artist, in lesson B: we revise and focus on craft and creation. The activities mentioned above were also executed over a period of two lessons.
The photo of the materials sent before the lesson
The While
Get all the materials ready (a glue stick, a marker, a piece of white A4 paper, some coloured paper or pieces of colourful pages of newspapers and journals), send the list to parents ahead of time
Check that everyone has everything (‘Show me your paper’, ‘Show me your glue’ etc)
Show the kids your coloured paper, call out the colours.
Ask the kids to show you theirs, call out the colours.
Show the kids how you tear off a strip of each colour, show them a ready bunch. Wait for them to get theirs ready.
Draw the elephant step by step. Start with the body, then the legs, the tail, the head, the trunk and the ear (by the way, the full shape of an ear is here only to help the kids visualise the elephant, a part of it will be covered by the coloured paper). Show each step to the camera and let the kids copy. Ask them to show you the paper after they have finished each step. Put the marker away.
Open the glue, spread the glue all over the elephant, evenly, while holding the paper to the camera. Close the glue and put it away.
Tear off a piece of one of your colourful stripes, glue it on the elephant, and then a few more. Invite the kids to do the same (‘Now you’). After a while ask them to show you their copies or ask what colour they are using, only to check how they are doing.
Continue until the elephant is ready.
Take the marker again and draw the eye, a small black circle. This way the creation will be easier perceived as an elephant.
Put up your elephant for the kids to see. Ask them to show you theirs.
The drawing. In one piece and in the puzzle version
The After
Introduce your elephant and describe it: ‘This is my elephant. He is green, blue, yellow and black’.
Ask the kids to do the same.
Watch Elmer, the video again, and, as before, pause and re-enact it with your elephants.
We finished with singing ‘Walking in the jungle’, with our elephants, too.
Comments
I am really happy with how the activity went. Initially, I was worried that preparing the elephant will be too difficult for my kids (but they all could follow me in drawing the elephant, step-by-step, with pauses and modelling) and that preparing the patchwork will be very time-consuming but the magic happened here, too as the kids quickly realised that they were in charge of managing how big the pieces of our ‘patches’ were. The older ones were more dilligent and more accurate with the smaller pieces whereas the younger ones opted for bigger pieces and we all finished at the same time. The patchwork part took about 5 minutes. Only one of my students needed more time (as she does every time) and for that reason we started to watch the story without her elephant to give her a little bit more time. She was watching while finishing and she introduced her elephant and it worked very well.
Overall, the amount of language produced was not quite on the amazing side but this was only our third lesson of the course and I am happy. Last but definitely not least, my kids were happy and very proud of themselves and their patchwork, Miró elephants. There is definitely more to come.
Fruit, washed and cut up into manageable chunks. The most basic set includes: apples, bananas, pears, seedless grapes, seedless oranges.
A plastic plate for each child, a plastic cup for each child, a plastic spoon and a plastic knife.
A set of tissues and a set of wet tissues.
Optional: a set of fruit flashcards and the video of the Super Simple Song ‘Are you hungry?’
Procedures
Start with presenting the idea of the activity to the parents and agreeing on the list of fruit to be used. It is absolutely crucial that the parents are aware of the procedures and the ingredients and that they approve. In my offline classes, I normally send a message to find out whether the parents approve and then I send a list of specific fruit that I would like to use. I look for seedless oranges and grapes. The list of fruit does not have to be very long. It is going to be a great lesson anyway, even if only the basic fruit are used. Although, of course, the salad will look very appealing if we include more colours and adding some citrus such as orange will be beneficial as regards the flavour, even a little bit of the lemon or orange juice will bring out the flavours of all the fruit and it will blend them nicely. But it is not obligatory. In my online classes, the parents prepare the fruit that the kids really like and it might happen that our sets will vary.
Wash the fruit and pre-cut them into pieces and chunks or ask the parents to do the same at home.
Plan where (in the school or in the classroom) you are going to set up your salad production station. Ideally, it would be done in a separate room, where everything can be prepared before the lesson and where the students can relocate half-way through the lesson. In the online classroom, the kids can relocate to the kitchen or cut things up on the table in front of the computer. In the classroom or in the kitchen, prepare the working top first: wash the tables, cover them with a plastic tablecloth.
Set aside the time for hand-washing. Line the kids up and go to the bathroom, wash the hands, dry the hands and go to the classroom.
Give out the tools while pre-teaching the names and while introducing the basic health and safety rules i.e. a plate – it stays on the table, a cup – it is in front of the cup, a knife – be careful. It is a good idea to stage the giving out of tools ie: first the plates and the cups, then the first fruit and the knives, then clean up the plates and give out the teaspoons etc.
Take out the first fruit, call out its name. Demonstrate how to cut it up, for example using the following set of instructions: 1) take a piece of apple, ‘Apple, please’ 2) put it on your plate 3) cut it up carefully 4) put the apple into the cup
Repeat with the other fruit. Throw away the plates. Give out the spoons.
Stir the fruit in the cup carefully.
Start eating.
Game 1: What’s this?: it is a fun game that involves eating and guessing which fruit we have fished out. Teacher can demonstrate how to play it: take some fruit from the cup, eat it without looking or even with the eyes closed and try to guess what it is. If modelled properly, with the teacher asking question ‘What is it?’ and trying to guess ‘It’s an apple’ etc, the kids will follow and will be playing in the same way.
Game 2: Singing and eating: Play the song and pause at every fruit and ask the kids the same question ‘Are you hungry?‘ ‘Oh, look (name the fruit in the salad). Yum, yum, yum’. The only thing to remember here is to make sure that kids finish eating before we play the song again and to continue singing.
Clean up, throw away the rubbish, clean the hands with the wet tissues.
Why we like it
It is a great and relatively simple way of making the language real and meaningful. We learn about fruit and we do something with the real fruit. With many other topics creating this connection between the classroom and the real world is a bit more complicated, fruit (and food in general) is easy. After a few basic precautions are taken, such as the allergy check, the parents permission, clean hands and a safe working environment.
It gives kids a great sense of achievement despite the fact that in the eyes of an adult that might look simplistic. One of my groups called it ‘a cooking lesson‘ and after the first salad, they kept asking for more of those.
It is an opportunity to develop social skills (we are taking turns and waiting for everyone to finish), focus (we are cutting fruit slowly and carefully), fine motor skills (we are working with a knife, we are manipulating small pieces of fruit).
It is an opportunity to eat in class and that is always fun but it is also something that we do together, as a group and, as such, it can be repeated regularly, although not necessarily with the salad every single time. It can turn into some ‘teatime‘ aka a lesson when we just have a little snack together. That name and the idea is also something that came from one of the groups.
It is not an activity for the first lessons with a group
If done properly, the lesson can lead to a lot of production. The ‘What’s this game’ was something that just happened in class, just because I really could not recognise one of the piece of fruit in my cup. I fished it out to taste it and I was simply blabbling to myself. The kids were watching and quickly followed suit. Together we turned into a real game and, since then, I played it with all my groups. The other game, based on a song, was something that we played in class for a few lessons, with our set of plastic fruit and it worked very well. The kids liked giving out fruit and pretending to munch on them. Moving onto the real fruit and the salad was a natural next step.
This is the second part of the Craft ABC series. You can find the first part here.
The main activity and the target language practice
This is a craft activity that features in the lesson to provide opportunities for the target langauge practice. As an example I have decided to choose our beloved jellyfish that is the first craft activity that I do with my first-year students, in one of the first weeks of the course. This is the time when we learn and practise colours with flashcards, colourful blocks and realia in general, with simple stories, videos, wordwall games and songs. A craft activity is yet another way of ‘recycling’ the target vocabulary and of giving the students an opportunity to be exposed to it and to use it.
The jellyfish is a super simple craft and even the youngest kids can draw the eyes and the smile on the head (which can be a semi-circle cut out by the teacher or a half of a paper plate) and then to attach the tentacles to the back of it. Kids are really motivated to make their own jellyfish and to drill and call out the colours and to ask for the following one, in a very simple way (‘Blue, please’). As a result, lots and lots of language is produced and everyone leaves the classroom with a creature they made herself. What’s most important, the jellyfish looks good even with the most crooked smile and the most inexpertly glued tentacles. And even if there are only three or four colours used, with the youngest kids.
The follow-up of a story or a song
Craft in this case is an opportunity to reinforce the ideas, concepts, vocabulary and structures introduced in a song or in a story. Or, to put it differently, a story or a song is not introduced only as a starter or a side dish but it becomes the topic for the entire lesson.
The three examples in the photos come from the lessons taught based on the Playway to English 1 by Cambridge University Press. The first one is a flower we made together while retelling the story from unit 7 (The Little Seed which you can also find here) and although we were not able to use all the original story lines, the kids could use the basic ones such as It’s sunny, It’s raining. The little seed is sleeping (at the beginning), The flower is growing (while making the stem) and so on.
The second example is everyone’s favourite Very Hungry Caterpillar which is a storybook we use in year, to accompany either unit 7 (Weather / Spring) or unit 9 (Food). You can find more information on this version of the caterpillar here.
Last, but definitely not least, is a simple craft that was a follow-up of the amazing Super Simple Song called ‘Are you hungry?‘ and it can be used either with the topic of fruit (Playway to English 1, unit 3) as it goes nicely with the theme of the song of monsters sharing fruit with their hungry friends or, in a wider context, with food in general (Playway to English, unit 9). The craft activity becomes the more palpable and 2-D version of a song and it can be used in a mini-role play, sung or spoken, depending on what the kids are ready for.
Props preparation
This type of a craft activity does not have a lot of potential as regards maximising production although the kids are quite likely to use some functional language, the staples of craft (Are you ready? Let’s sit down, Blue, please etc). This type of a craft activity is also quite short, compared with the ones mentioned so far but that is exactly the point. The craft activity is only a prelude. Everything important is to happen later with the finished product used as a tool.
The best example here will be our magic wand. It is simple and easy to make and can be used as a part of a shapes lesson (though, really, there is only one shape involved). The abracadabra TPR activity (Abracadabra, 123, you are…) is a game we play from the very beginning of the course. When the kids are ready to take over, we make a wand for each other and use it in a game and at this point, the kids get to lead the game for real, waving their own, freshly-produced wands and we all mime whatever there is to mime. The langauge is produced and lots of it (Abracadabra, 123, you are…swimming, dancing, flying…OR you are a cat, a happy cat, a hungry dinosaur…) but it is not directly related to the making of the wand.
A part of a Science, Maths or Art lesson
Craft can be also a part of a CLIL lesson or a Maths, Science or Art lesson, depending on whether we are dealing with the EFL or the ESL or bilingual programmes. In this case, the craft activity will create an opportunity for the students to put into practice or to reinforce the real knowledge or skills they have acquired in class, making it more practical, kinesthetic and hands-on.
Below, three examples of such craft activities.
The first one is a Maths lesson in which we were learning about and practising measuring. Apart from working with the rulers and measuring tapes and checking how long our cars, teddy bears, desks, noses and fingers were, the kids also got a simple handout with a section of a certain length and it was their task to measure the strips of paper with rulers, cut of the appropriate piece and glue it underneath.
The second one is one of the lessons devoted to animal habitats which we studied in our Science class. Apart from categorising animals and talking about the habitat, we also did a craft activity in which we created the habitat (here the polar region made of a sheet of blue paper, waves drawn, ice made of cotton pats and the animals glued on). After a series of lessons we had a set of habitats.
The third piece here is one of the activities we made as part of the Kids in the Avangard. In this lesson Paul Klee was our artist of the day and we created our own version of his Cat and Bird.
The non-linguistic aims
Sometimes craft activities have a non-linguistic main aims. Because of their obvious relevance to kids’ lives and the excitement that they generate, they can be used to help kids develop as humans and this can be the reason for their inclusion in a language lesson.
The first activity here is one of my favourite craft activities ever. It can be used in many different thematic lessons but its main advantage is that because, due to its design, it requires a detailed micro-staging and, on the one hand, it can help kids work on their ability to focus and to follow teacher’s instructions in order to be able to turn their circles into cats, dogs, frogs and bees. On the other hand (and it has worked absolutely every single time), it brings an immense sense of achievement and confidence in kids’ own skills since a random circle can become so many things.
The other activity presented here is an example of a festive craft that finds its place in the classroom as part of the seasonal celebrations. Despite the fact that sometimes this vocabulary will be used in class only in a year, when the holiday comes up again, it connects the lesson to the celebrations at home and in kindergarten and it is the easiest way of bringing these festivities into the EFL classroom.
The final activity, our solar system was a wonderful activity that we all enjoyed and one that helped us produce lots and lots of language. However, believe it or not, that was not the reason why we did it. This was our first real whole class project because the kids got an opportunity to work on something together, sharing resources and sharing the space and we produced one huge poster that nobody would be taking home in the end.
Just one of the shots taken in the middle of a working day, before a craft lesson…
Craft has been present in my classroom life for as long as I can remember. Looking back, I can see all the pieces I made with my superstars in Moscow over the last thirteen years, the robots we constructed at the summer camp in Tuscany in 2009, some 3-D houses we made with my Navarran babies in 2008, or the magazines I put together with my cousin, my first student ever, somewhere in 2000…What’s more, craft has been present in my life since my own primary school. I loved the Art lessons, I loved the Craft lessons. I even loved the Technology classes, although craft then involved: weaving a mini rug, building a birdfeeder and making a chair for a doll.
You could say that the foundations for my future career have been built pretty early and that I have had a lot of opportunities to perfect my fine motor skills and to fall in love with craft (truly, madly, deeply). No wonder that I would try to smuggle it into my lessons.
It was only a week ago, actually, while preparing yet another session for a teacher training course, that I saw craft with a fresh pair of eyes and I saw it for what it really is: the VYL world (or the pre-school world) in a nutshell, everything that is beautiful about it, everything that can be enjoyable about it and, inevitably, everything that can go wrong with it, too.
The simple truth is that: kids love craft
Craft lessons and craft activities are these parts of the lesson when kids can do something for real, not the coursebooks, not the handouts or worksheets, not the time when you need to stay focused but the creative, the beautiful, the fun part. And, one more important factor – something that is different every single time!
If you add to it the variety of materials that are included, the variety of techniques and that, more often than not, you end up with a real product, a book, a house, a puppet or a collage, which you have created yourself and which you are allowed to take home, it is not a surprise that kids love it.
‘Ah, we haven’t done anything for such a long time‘ was something that I heard one of my students mumble to herself when she saw me reach out for the coursebook as soon as we sat down at the tables. As a teacher, I was taken aback. Because we did DO things! We sang songs, we read stories, played with flashcards and we did have good lessons. In my student’s eyes, however, all that meant nothing at all, because, indeed, somehow a long time had passed since the previous craft lesson and that, at least for this one student, was the real thing, the something!
If you want to read more on why kids need craft activities, have a look here.
The simple truth is: many teachers don’t like craft
A craft lesson takes a long time to prepare.
It is messy, both during the preparation stage (see the photo above) and during the lesson.
The teachers might not have a full access to all the resources necessary, even the simple ones so they end up buying these themselves
Classroom management is a bit more tricky in the craft lessons, as there are more elements to manage and the kids might get too excited.
If not planned properly, craft lessons can turn into a mayhem, with kids not producing the target language or even not completing the task.
Craft activites are not very well taken care of in the mainstream coursebooks and in the teachers books and so there is no resource to learn from.
If the craft activity has not been chosen properly and if it is too complex for the students or if it is not planned properly, students might struggle with completing it or they might destroy in and in such a case there might be tears of a child in despair or tears of a disappointed child.
Craft is what the VYL world is about
Teaching pre-schoolers, compared with the other age groups, will require more of your time in the preparation stage and it will be more demanding as regards the class time. It might require you to include the things that teachers, as adults, have no interest in and which they will still include because that is what can be beneficial and effective with students of that age. In the same vein, some things will have to be excluded even if teachers love them, also because of the age of the students, they will simply not work.
There is only one thing to be done…
…and that is: careful planning and Carol Read’s MADFOX (Management, Appropriacy, Design, Flexibility, Outcomes, Excitement) which you can read about in the ‘500 Activities for the Primary Classroom‘. It is a wonderful tool that will help prepare for a craft activity in the EFL or ESL lesson, primary and pre-primary. Actually, this framework will work well with any type of an activity or a set of materials, stories, songs and games.
One of my earlier posts (and my first acronym W.O.R.L.D🙂 might also come in handy while choosing a craft activity for the pre-primary EFL /ESL lesson.
The most important thing to remember everything gets better with time. The lesson planning become easier and less time-consuming. The kids know the teacher, the lesson format and their peers better and that is an important factor contributing to the success of the activities and, last but not least, if you decide to reuse a particular type of a craft activity for the second or third time, the students will also be able to deal with it better as they will have done it before.
There is hope))
This post is only the first part of the Craft ABC series. You can find the second part here. Don’t forget to also have a look at all the posts in the craft section on this blog.
Two circles cut out of cardboard (regular photocopying paper is too thin and flimsy), with the two holes for fingers also cut out before the lesson.
Glue to glue these together
Crayons, pencils or markers to draw the appropriate body parts
Procedures
Show the kids the finished product, introduce the frog, chat with the kids
Show the kids the smaller circle, show how you decorated it.
Give out the pencils / markers.
Give out the small circles, decorate it with the kids.
Give out the bigger circle, decorate it, if appropriate.
Collect the pencils.
Show the kids how to glue one on top of the other. For the younger kids, it might be a good idea to draw a small cross on the top of the bigger circle, to signal where the kids should put the glue.
Give out the glue sticks. Kids glue their circles together.
Glue the additional body parts, when appropriate.
Collect the glue sticks.
Play
@ Magdalena
Why we like it
It is super easy! These frogs here, in the picture, were produced for a child (a huge Frog Fan), rather than with a child, and that is why I went a bit crazy with the eyes but there are the simpler versions of it)
These two circles can become many many things: a frog, a bear, a cat, a dog, a monkey, a rabbit or a snowman, with little adaptations.
The task does involve a lot of pre-cutting but the rest can be done by the kids during the lesson.
Once the toys are ready, they can be used to play, as any other puppets with all the structures that the kids are familiar with and with those that match the topic of the lesson, at the very least, ‘Hello’, ‘My name is’, ‘I like…and you?’ and it is always great when you can maximise production.
