#VYLteacher

5 no-prep movement games for preschoolers

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Movement

The question appeared in one of the groups on the social media and I realised that a) I have something to share here and b) I haven’t got any posts on the movement games for the little people.

One: Abracadabra

Resources: only a magic wand. It can be made at home and producing magic wands is now a real hobby of mine. The easiest version (in the photo below) can be even made with kids, in class. Some shops sell magic wands, too but, really, kids will respond well to a simple pencil if it is accompanied by some ‘Abracadabra’

How to play: We have been using the same line for many years now, with many groups: ‘Abracadabra, 1,2,3. You are….’. The game might be introduced with the first topic that lends itself to miming, for example ‘pets’ or ‘toys’. We start with the simple phrase ‘Abracadabra, 1, 2, 3. You are a cat / a dog / a frog etc’ and I support the language with the visuals namely flashcards displayed on the board and my own examples. The gestures we use for each of the pets, toys, fruit, transport, jungle animals, fairy tale characters, jobs are not universal, they are only our creation for that particular group. Please remember that the ability to represent characters and words through gestures is not a skill that children are born with. They are developing their symbolic representation and they might need the teacher’s support in the beginning of this journey. That is why the teacher’s example is so important.

After the kids have learnt their first adjectives, these can be extended into ‘You are a happy cat’, ‘You are a sad princess’ and so on. Naturally, the game is led by the teacher in the first lessons but later on, the children are invited to lead the game and to cast some spells in the classroom. They start with the very simple and basic combinations but with time they start to be really creative, both with the langauge and with gestures. Think about all these gems from the classroom: ‘a sad pumpkin’, ‘a sleepy cat’, ‘an angry princess’…How would you mime these?

A classroom-made magic wand

Two: Musical flashcards

Resources: only one set of flashcards, I normally use the set from the coursebook, A5 size.

How to play: We stand in a circle and the cards are lying on the floor, in the centre. We move around, in a circle, just walking. The teacher sings a song and my choice is usually ‘Happy Birthday’. As soon as stop singing, everyone stops and picks up one card from the floor. Afterwards we show what we have by using the word in a sentence. The simplest version is ‘It’s a cat’ but the structures can vary and be more closely connected to the vocabulary for example: I like + food, I’ve got + toys, I am wearing + clothes and so on.

After each child produces the sentence, we put the cards back on the floor and continue the game. It works well with all the groups although with my bigger groups, I encourage the kids to speak together, in kind of a messy choir, in order to save time and not to risk any dead moment in the lesson.

This is not a competitive game, no one is sitting down or dropping out, we all play throughout the game. No points are awarded either.

A classroom-made magic wand

Three: Everybody is dancing

Resources: None:-)

How to play: We stand in the circle and the teacher is chanting or singing the phrase (the melody is made up), and everyone is performing the actions. I normally start with the easy verbs i.e. clap, march, walk, eat, drink, dance and swim but we keep adding through the entire year, more complex and more creative verbs so by the end of the first year we have lots of them at our disposal because kids learn all of them just from this simple game.

The teacher is the one to lead the game for quite a long time but the kids can be slowly involved, too by giving them a choice of two verbs, for example ‘Sasha, everyone is singing or dancing?’, Sasha: ‘Dancing’, after which the teacher is singing or chanting what Sasha has chosen. Eventually, the kids are ready to make their own decisions and to produce full sentences. And Present Continuous (because that’s what it is) will come in really handy with storytelling and picture description.

Oh, one important thing: don’t forget to add ‘sleep’, it will work wonders to calm the kids down.

A classroom-made magic wand

Four: Snake!

Resources: a long snake made of paper aka a necessary number of scrap A4 pieces of paper glued or stapled together with a head of a snake drawn on the first one and the tail of the snake drawn on the last one. I actually like to use the A4 sheet cut in half for a thinner snake and I cut out the head and the tail. Perhaps a set of flashcards in the first weeks of playing the game or with younger students.

How to play: The teacher puts the snake on the floor, the kids come to the snake one by one and stand in a line on one side of the snake. The game is intended to practise one particular group of words with some distractors included, distractors here being any other words, not in the category. For example, if the main aim is to practise colours, the basic distractor can be numbers or even kids’ names if that is the beginning of the year and the children do not really know anything else.

The teacher calls out the words, in a random order. If the students hear the target vocabulary, they have to jump over the snake (or to step over if the kids are young and not very good at controlling their gross motor skills) every time they hear the target word i.e. a colour. If they hear one of the distractors, they don’t move. In a way, actually, it is a movement variation of ‘Simon says’ only no one is dropping out.

When we start playing, we line up and I show the kids all the flashcards and we revise all the words. I also tell them that today we play with colours. Later on in the year, when the kids have more vocabulary at their disposal, the teacher can raise the level of challenge and play with two or even three categories.

The game mostly focuses on listening for the target vocabulary and discriminating it from the distractors but it can easily be turned into a productive game with one of the students standing at the head of the snake, facing the group and calling out the words. In the early stages of the unit, when the kids still might struggle with remembering all the new words, it makes sense to let them look at the cards displayed on the board or on the wall or to even hold all the flashcards and to call out the words they want to use.

I created this game for my group in Pamplona in which I had 12 little kids and no room in the classroom apart from the relatively narrow aisle in the middle of the classroom. This is how the snake game was born. We needed something thin to fit in the aisle and I chose a snake because I hate them personally and stepping over a snake is a good move, very conducive to survival. But the kids accepted it and we loved the game.

The snake itself needs to be made but it is easy to store it and to recycle it and if it gets destroyed during the game, it is also easy to fix. Or to be recreated. During one of my training sessions, one of my teachers suggested using a skipping rope and that, of course, is a solution. However, I still prefere the paper because in case of a mishap and a kid tripping over the snake, the paper seems a safe option. If it gets torn, we can fix it, no harm done. A child tripping over a skipping rope, however, might result in a child falling down. Typing that up here I realised that if the classroom has the appropriate floor, the snake can also be drawn on the floor, with chalk for example…

A classroom-made magic wand

Five: I like cats, I don’t like cats

Resources: one set of flashcards, the regular A5 set that normally come with the coursebook and two cards with symbols for I like / I don’t like, for example a heart for ‘I like’ and a crossed heart for ‘I don’t like’

How to play: Before the lesson the teacher puts up the I like / I don’t like symbols on two walls in the classroom, on the opposite ends. In the real life, these two simply stay there for the rest of the year as we use them all the time. The kids get up and stand in the middle of the room, half-way between these two signs. It is good to put there a small stool or a table with all the cards, for example all the toys, pets, colours etc.

The teacher picks out one card, for example ‘green’, calls it out and the students go either left or right, depending on whether they like it or not. The teacher points at one of the group and says: ‘Green!’ and the kids reply ‘I like green’ and ‘I don’t like green’ together with the rest of their group. Afterwards, they come back to the centre (aka the stool) and the game goes on with a different word.

This is another stirrer that gives the kids a chance to move around a bit and to produce the langauge, with the additional support since they have the flashcards to reinforce the meaning of the word and since they produce full sentences with approximately half of the group. The kids can also be invited to lead the game by choosing the words to use.

The game can be used throughout the year with almost any vocabulary and there are a few adaptations possible especially as regards the settting. If the group is big or if the kids are too energetic and too tricky to control, the same game can be played with the kids sitting on the carpet or even on their chairs. Instead of walking to the left and to the right, they can stand up and sit down or clap their hands and stomp their feet or raise one arm or two arms for ‘I like’ and ‘I don’t like’ respectively. This will make the classroom management a little bit less challenging for the teacher.

A classroom-made magic wand

Bonus activities: My favourite movement activies

Resources: the access to the internet and youtube

How to play: All of these songs here have been created specifically for the purpose of ensuring some movement in the classroom. The main aim here is not the langauge production although they do include some language but, of course, the movement is the star here.

  • Move by Super Simple Songs – a real hit, nothing more to say.
  • The Rolly Polly Roll by Super Simple Songs – another hit but only if you have a carpet because kids might actually try to roll or to crawl. You’ve been warned:-)
  • The Jellyfish Song by Super Simple Songs – I love it and it is quite a challenge to turn yourself into a jellyfish
  • Head, shoulders, knees and toes – this is the first song we sing in the classroom, mostly because kids can participate without any language production, just by doing what the teacher is doing. I like to sing this one myself, without the audio, in order to be able to control the speed and the activity. There is a version by Super Simple Songs, of course.
  • Shake your sillies out by Jose Paolo Liwag – I love to use this one with my older students, actually when they can appreciate the need to shake our sillies out and to clap our crazies out…
  • The Dance Freeze Song by Scratch Garden – the hit of this summer camp. There are some cool verbs and dance movements and we just LOVED to dance! You can also teach your kids the most important verb in the world: FREEZE.
  • Action Songs for kids by The Singing Walrus – one more fun song, with the basic verbs.
  • Make a Circle by Super Simple Song – it is a very popular song, I have seen it in many lessons that I observed but, somehow, I have never used it myself a lot.
A classroom-made magic wand

Some things to remember

  • Before you start any movement games, make sure that the kids are ready. Ideally, these games can be played in the part of the classroom where we have more room, only the carpet, no or fewer pieces of furniture. If that is not possible, please make sure that you create this space, with the kids’ help, possibly, to make sure that it is as safe as possible.
  • It is also a good idea to introduce some rules related specifically to this movement part of the lesson and these will depend on the classroom and on the group. In my classroom, we used to do all the movement games on the carpet by the window and for that reason our only rule was: We stay on the carpet, to ensure that the kids do not wander around, run around and leave the safe space.
  • Make sure that you move to this other place of the classroom in an organised manner. In the beginning it might be necessary to call the kids one by one, by the name to avoid a situation in which we have to control a stampede of five-year-olds there and back. With my groups (the maximum number of students in our pre-school groups is eight), we have our chant. I like to go to the carpet first and singing, call all the kids one by one (‘Sasha in the circle, Sasha in the circle’) and to wait, holding hands with all the kids, as they arrive. The child who is just joining is the one to choose the next child (‘Sasha, who’s next?’) and for the last one to join us we all call out loudly (‘Sasha, come here’) so that nobody feels unwelcome. Some kids actually love to be the last ones to join the circle because it is a lot of fun to be called by the whole group.
  • When the movement game is over, we go to our tables and desks, one by one or in pairs and the teacher is the one to make a decision about the order, at least in the beginning when the kids are still getting used to the new element of the routine.
  • Bigger groups can use the same pattern, but the kids move in groups of two or three so that the preparation for the activity does not last longer than the game itself.
  • One of the other things that I always do as the first activity on the carpet is to make a circle, holding hands and run a few rounds of ‘big circle’ (we stretch our circle), ‘small circle’ (we gather in the centre), a few times with these two adjectives and with the other ones, too for variation, for example a low circle (we bend), a high circle (hands up in the air, still holding hands), a wavy circle, a shaky circle and so on. It is an easy, risk-free activity, the kids love it (especially when everyone is present and we can really make a big circle) and, most importantly, after arriving one by one and being individuals, we can do something as a group, something super easy, before we get on to the more creative and productive things.
  • These games are not only about movement, although this is their reason for being in the classroom and in the lesson. However, as always, the main aim is language production and for that reason the students as the teacher, leading the activity have been included in all of the games presented above.

Happy teaching!

I am begging you, please! Introducing pairwork in YL groups

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Introduction

Can you hear some desperation, dear reader, in the title of this post? Rightly so. I started to write this post after one of the sessions of the summer camp that I took part in. My kids were amazing, of course, clever and eager to learn and, really, we did have a lot of fun. At the same time, looking at how they interact with each other, I could not believe my eyes and my ears. Despite the fact that many of them were already eight and nine, their social skills were on a disastrously low level. Practically anything that involved taking the other humans in the classroom into equation was a huge challenge for way too many of them. I did sigh with desperation, once and twice, and then I rolled up my sleeves and started to introduce pairwork, even though these were not my permanent students.

You may wonder why it shook me so much and why I decided to fix it. One reason is, naturally, my professional obsession with maximising production in kids and, really, I cannot imagine teaching a group of primary school children with the teacher at the centre, all the time. It is a waste of time and a waste of opportunities because kids of that age are capable of working in pairs without constant supervision. And if they do, they automatically produce more language.

However, there is more to it, of course because kids who work in pairs are more independent and more autonomous as learners and they have an opportunity to work with a variety of partners and to make friends and to bond with the group. This, in turns, is a better prognosis for the general classroom and behaviour management because you are less likely to get into trouble and to disrespect someone that you actually like and respect. If only you had a chance to get to know them and to like something about them.

Pairwork, yes or no? YES. One, big, decisive YES.

Where the angels don’t fear to tread. Pair-work in pre-school?

Yes, absolutely yes! I have been introducing pairwork in my pre-school groups first intuitively, simply because I had a very big group of children and we never got to produce any language apart from choral, whole class production and that simply was annoying for me, as the teacher. My students had a lot of potential and I did not want to waste an opportunity. Not quite knowing what to do and how to do it, I started to move towards working in pairs. It worked and by the end of the second year of pre-school, my group was ready and I was able to do what I do with my teens or adults: ‘Together, together, together’ while pointing at pairs of students. By the time we got to primary, this was a natural part of our lessons and some of the children were not even seven at this point. It is possible.

Then, naturally, I decided to do it again, with a new year 1 group, but this time, in a more conscious way, in order to be able to share it with my teachers. We started the course in September, we started to shape the group and the routine and we started to introduce pair-work. I kept my eyes open, I kept our class journal and we did it. It took 13 weeks of a course, with classes that took place only once a week. I presented the results of this research at our BKC Conference in 2020. and you can read more about it in a post here.

How to do it: The choice of the activity

The choice of the activity is one of the most important elements contributing to the success of the whole process. I got a heads-up here only because I have been teaching for many years and I had a chance to bump into one of the older coursebooks for kids which, although it had a few disadvantage and which does not even come close to the level of the currently used coursebooks for children, it did include a few ingenious solutions and, among them, the one I am going to describe below.

The one that featured in every unit of the coursebook was the maze the example of which you can see below. Initially, it was a simple but effective listening game, to practise the target language, especially vocabulary. Kids would listen to a robot dictating the path through the maze, for example: START: red…blue…yellow…brown…grey…etc until one of the exits, A, B or C. The words were separated by a funny sound, something that I would describe as ‘stomping by a robot, marching’ that the kids absolutely LOVED but it also gave them a great advantage of getting enough time to prepare for the following step. In every activity there were about 6 or 7 rounds of the game.

This game can be easily turned into a speaking – listening game and, eventually, into a pairwork.

It starts with the teacher NOT using the audio and dictating the route through the maze, with the kids following it and reaching the final destination. Naturally, the following step is the teacher nominating the students to decide on the following step, one word per child. This stage can go on for as long as it is necessary for the kids to become familiar with the format.

Afterwards, either still in the same unit and with the same maze or in the following unit with the new vocabulary, kids are put into small teams and they lead each other, in teams, through the maze. Eventually, they are put into pairs and they do it with only one partner, with one student speaking and the other student listening and following from the start to the exits.

In order to make it more monitorable, for the teacher and for the students and, also, to make it more achievable, we started to trace the route with coloured pencils or markers, each round with a different colour. This way, the children could always go back in case they got lost and the children can also monitor each other, the student dictating could potentially see where their friends were going.

This way, in a relatively short period of time, the kids got used to the new format, to working together, with only a partial monitoring and support from the teacher. It definitely helped that the vocabulary range in each case was quite limited, namely, only single words, from the obligatory set of words introduced and practised before. The students were not overwhelmed and could focus only on the format of the game. At the same time, however, in the later units of level 2, there were also more complex mazes, for example one in which the kids had to listen to a brief description of an animal for example: it has got stripes, it is big, it can run (zebra). Obviously, that means that the level of challenge can be raised when the children are ready for it.

Julie Ashworth and John Clarke, I Spy 1, SB, p. 23, OUP

It is very easy to recreate the idea using only the black and white clipart visuals and a grid of the required size. Here you see a maze that I created for my preschoolers (rooms).

Below you can see one more type of an activity that features almost in every unit of the coursebook and this one is specifically designed for pairwork for the young students. It was always some kind of a guessing game, with the two spies (the theme of the book, duh:-) trying to guess what the other one is thinking about. I really liked it for the visuals specifically designed for that purpose and the target langauge beautifully displayed on the page to support the students’ production. Using these was a lot of fun and it was effective but I still think that the previous one, the maze, worked better as regards the first steps in working in pairs.

Julie Ashworth and John Clarke, I Spy 1, SB, p. 45, OUP

Contributing factors

There is a whole lot of things that a teacher can do in class in order to facilitate the whole process. They can be implemented throughout the course, little by little, bit by bit.

  • Seating: make sure that the kids are sitting in a way that faciliates pair-work, in some sort of separation from the other pairs, for example by pairing up the tables and chairs, putting the chairs and kids facing each other.
  • Resources: these need to be prepared with a lot of care and attention. Apart from the example based on the activity that features in the I Spy coursebooks, described above, the teacher can also use a set of mini-flashcards, as described in my post about pair-work for preschoolers. These cards are used in a game of simple riddles but the cards themselves are small (eight or six or four that fit on an A4 piece of paper) in order for the kids to be able to manipulate them with ease. What is more, a set comprises of an envelope, too that holds all the cards. This way, there is no danger of kids dropping the cards (or if they do, these will fall back into the envelope) and the secret, very necessary in that game, is easily kept throughout the game. Even if the cards are printed on a regular photocopying paper, they are not see-through, being in the envelope.
  • Roles and turn-taking: Another thing is that the teacher only needs one envelope per pair. This helps a lot with assigning the role. It is crystal clear to the kids who is speaking (the child with the envelope) and who is listening (the child without the envelope). Turn-taking is also more obvious since the kids are literally passing the baton here, the envelope or whatever is the set of materials.
  • Signals: Introducing the pairwork is a part of the routine and, naturally, it will take some time. To facilitate it, like with the other elements of the class routine in primary and pre-primary, it would be good to include some visual representation of the pairwork, such as gestures or chants, anything that will signal to the students what is about to be the following stage of the lesson. It can be for example a simple flashcard. I love to use a flashcard with a pair of socks for the younger kids and a two pears for the older kids who can get this pronunciation joke but a picture of two kids talking will do, too. Some more modern coursebooks have started to introduce those and that is great). Another solution can be a simple chant, for example ‘Let’s play together! Let’s play in pairs! 3…2…1’. As with all the chants, this will introduce the next stage and it will give the kids a chance to get ready or maybe even to organise themselves. The same applies to the end of the pairwork stage.
  • Pairing-up: In the early stages, I would recommend a teacher-led pairing up. It is perfectly natural that in a group of children, there will be some students who will be better prepared to work in pairs early and some who will need to more time, even if all the students are of the same age or level. Based on the knowledge of the group and the individual children to end up with the most efficient pairing. This might be necessary to do over a few first lessons, later starting to experiment with some variations. I like to use a set of cards with all the kids’ names and we have a pairwork (or project) draft when we need it. The cards can be taken out of a box or a bag by the teacher or by students, too.
  • Time: Thil will of course, depend on an activity but choosing an open-ended game, without an obvious grand-finale gives the teacher more freedom and flexibility to finish the game when it is best for the class, rather than having to go until the very end when some of the kids might already be getting tired and bore and when they can start losing their focus. It might be a good idea to set a timer on the phone or to choose a song as a timing tool. It is very necessary to tell the kids how long they will play for.

Happy teaching!!!

Bibliography

The Power of Play: How Fun and Games Help Children Thrive – HealthyChildren.org

3 Ways Your Child Builds Important Life Skills Through Play – HealthyChildren.org

Why children need to play with their friends as soon as they can (theconversation.com)

Playing Well with Peers Means Better Mental Health (verywellmind.com)

What a difference a teacher makes! A post for all the novice teachers

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The beautiful tiles shown to us by engineer-history.ru

We are approaching a new academic year, new groups, new kids, new beginnings. What a happy coincidence that it is right now that I found this particular report and got to reminisce about this particular lesson that I observed many (many) years ago. Here is my start-of-the-new-academic-year post!

A quote from the report

‘It was a pleasure to watch you with that class and you have no idea what difference it makes to have a teacher who actually feels at ease in a PW class and who wants to be there. The kids can sense it and respond to it. There were many great activities and clear evidence of routine and good classroom management. Well done!’

And it was a memorable lesson for a number of reasons…

The were two teachers working at one of the branches of my school. One of them got in touch asking for help. One of her groups was a group of pre-schoolers and it wasn’t going very well. She went through the initial orientation and lesson planning with a senior teacher but, somehow, as it sometimes happens, it was not coming together. She requested to be taken off the group. It was an option that was being considered but, we wanted to see first if there was anything to be done and I went to observe the group.

Admittedly, it was not the easiest group. It was quite big, by our standards, filled up to the maximum (we had 8 as the maximum number), the kids were beginners but as it sometimes happens in language schools there were of different ages, there was a four-year-old and two six-year-olds and one of the children was also dealing with some attention disorder (according to what I could observe in one lesson).

It was not the best lesson. The teacher was trying, doing her best but, at heart, she must have already decided that this is not something that she wants to do and it was obvious, to the observer and, apparently, to the kids, too.

Two weeks and three lessons later, this group had a different teacher…

And that’s because we were lucky. During one of our training sessions, I literally bumped into the teacher and, in the hallway, in-between the training sessions, snacks and coffee, she asked me if I know of any ‘homeless’ group of pre-schoolers because she said, she would really really start teaching one. She had never done that.

And although I try to avoid doing it, this one time, I found myself observing the teacher in her first lesson with a group. I was sitting at the back of the classroom, with a piece of paper, taking notes and I could not believe my own eyes. Literally.

There must have been some magic done, some spells cast or, during these few days between the two lessons and the two teachers, these kids were tranformed into focused, well-behaved, engaged pre-schoolers! There were a different group of kids.

Everyone came, the older and the younger and the suspected ADHD, a full house! The teacher got some information about the group and the course from the previous teacher, she had some time to prepare. The teacher did her best to follow the routine of the pre-school groups that we had at the school and to manage the class. Nonetheless, it was her first lesson ever, with this group and with this age group.

Great teachers are made, not born and it was not her best lesson and it could not have been. She was just starting with the group, she was still at the stage of memorising the kids’ names and faces and yet, it was a good lesson. Not so much because of the appropriate tasks, instructions, staging and materials but because the teacher wanted to be in the classroom and, somehow, the kids knew it and they appreciated that and, as a result, they responded well to whatever it was that she brought with her. Everything else, the great results, the pleasure and the Above Standard lessons came later.

Why it is good news for all the teachers starting with a new group / level / age group / coursebook

  • Great teachers are made, not born. Even if the beginnings are complicated, stressful and scary, things are going to get better and they are going to get better thanks to the number of minutes, hours, weeks, months and years clocked in in front of a group of students. These number of minutes has its beginnings in the very first lesson.
  • You as a teacher, you can really (really) make a difference by planning the lesson and by preparing for who and what you might encounter in the lesson. By choosing the appropriate activities, by considering the things that can go wrong, by writing the lesson plan for your primary or pre-primary students, with a lot of variety, by reading about the first primary lesson survival kit and about the first pre-primary lesson survival kit, or about all the things that I wish I had known before my first lesson in pre-primary.
  • You, as a teacher, you can really (really!) make a difference by preparing yourself mentally for the first lessons and by believing in yourself! The one piece of advice that I always give my teachers about to step into the pre-school or primary classrooms is this: SMILE! That is because a smile can get us far and further! It is not so much about maintaining your muscles pulled into a shape of a croissant but about remaining cheerful. Things might not go to plan in this first lesson but it is absolutely necessary to remember that they will get better in lesson 2, 3, 4 and 5. As it is necessary to remember that we are great teachers and we love what we do. And that we do our best. When we do our best, of course, although, I personally think that most of the teacher try to do their best, on daily basis.
  • We are all a little bit stressed and feeling uneasy before the first lessons, all of us. Even those who are experienced teachers and trainers. Sorry! It is true the levels of confidence go up and the levels of stress go down with time but it is never completely relaxed. The only difference now is that at this point I am aware of the fact that things might not be perfect but I will know how to handle it. It is not ‘Oh, no! What if…’ and more like ‘Oh, ok, bring it on.’
  • Power to you, dear teacher!

What other advice would you give to a teacher who is about to start teaching Young Learners? Leave a comment in the comments box!

Happy teaching!

Crumbs # 65 Monster Bookmarks

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Ingredients

  • Colourful cardboard, some white paper, markers, scissors and glue
  • An idea to inspire you. I got mine from I Heart Crafty Things and if you are interested you can even find a template there for a small price although, I, personally, did not find it necessary.

Procedures

  • Before the lesson, I prepared the paper: small pieces of paper for the eyes, a large rectangle of cardboard (for example, an A4 sheet makes 2) folded in half, smaller rectangles (aka strips of paper) cut up for the nose.
  • We had two full lessons on the topic of body parts, monsters, health problems and going to the doctor. By the time we started the craft activity, the kids had already practised using the body parts in a sentence, they had described countless monsters, they had also created a monster with in a dice drawing activity.
  • I showed the children the ready product and we described it together.
  • We started with the kids choosing the colour of the big rectangle (the body of the monster) and so did I, in order to be able to demonstrate every step.
  • We cut up one of the longer edges, 5 – 10 mm, along the whole age (the hair). Afterwards, we applied the glue inside the folded rectangle and glued the two halves together.
  • We decided how many eyes we want our monsters to have. We drew these eyes, cut them out and glued them on the monster.
  • The kids chose the colour of the paper for the nose. We drew the nose on the back and we cut it out. On the back on the nose I drew three short lines at the top, to mark the place where to apply the glue. The kids do the same and we glued the nose on the monster.
  • We finished with drawing the smile and adding some decorations.
  • We finished with introducing the monster (name, age, boy / girl, what he/she likes).

Why we like it

  • This craft was a part of the lesson that in itself was very generative, productive and creative. That is why, for the main craft activity, I wanted something that the kids could use not only to produce the language but to use outside of the lesson. That is why I started to look for ideas for bookmarks.
  • When I showed my monster in the beginning of the lesson, some of my kids went ‘Oh, monsters, I don’t like monsters’ but, somehow, they all wanted to make theirs and they got really involved, boys, girls, the younger, the older. I was happy and not so surprised (because it did happen before) that they all left the classroom almost hugging their big-nosed creations. And, once out, I heard them report to the parents, in a very animated way, what it was that we did in class.
  • The craft is relatively easy, with some simple materials, especially that the cardboard can be easily replaced with the regular paper. It did involve some before-the-lesson preparations but nothing very time-consuming and, again, the templates were not necessary at all.
  • I have already started to think of adaptations and of replacing the monster with other ideas and shapes. I have not done these yet, but I am thinking a lot about elephants and, inspired by my friend’s son, LEGO people…Once they are ready, I will definitely share here:-)

Happy teaching!

Crumbs #63 Musical Challenge meets Andy Warhol

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Ingredients

  • A set of markers and a simple handout (eight circles and numbers)
  • A video with different music samples. I have used this one here, devoted to the unusual instruments.

Procedures

  • In our case (City Camp), the whole day was devoted to music and in the first half of the day we: learnt the names of the instruments, played different games with the vocabulary such as miming, guessing the name of the instrument by the sound and we made our own shakers. I came up with the idea for the musical challenge to follow-up on all of that.
  • First of all, we revised all the colours and we talked about the associations between colours and emotions. We used those that the kids were familiar with (happy, sad, angry, tired, sleepy, hungry, crazy, scared, energetic).
  • I showed the kids the handout, with the eight empty circles and numbers and asked ‘How is number 1?’ and the other numbers. It was clear that they had no colours and no emotions.
  • I told the kids that we would listen to music. ‘Is it a happy music?’ ‘A sad music?’ ‘Are you scared?’. I asked them to close their eyes and played the first part of the video. It is important to mention that I used my laptop here and the kids were not able to see the screen and the instrument. I did not want them to get distracted by the image and I was hoping that we would be able to focus only on the sound and the associations.
  • When the music stopped we talked about out emotions and the best colour for them. Afterwards we coloured the first face.
  • Later on, we proceeded with all the other pieces of music in the same way.
  • In the end we watched the video again, this time properly but we also paused and talked about the emotions and the colours, comparing our pictures.

Why we like it

  • This activity is a variation of the Musical Challenge that I often use with my older students. Initially, I was considering using it in its original format but later decided against it as some of the kids in the group were too young and I was worried that I would not be able to explain in English that they can draw anything they want, that they should be quick and avoid adding too much detail and that we would not really be able to talk about the results properly as the children do not really have enough langauge for that. Instead, I mixed the Musical Challenge with the Andy Warhol lesson.
  • I loved the way the activity worked. As an English teacher, I should probably start with the fact that it gave us an opportunity to produce a lot of langauge because kids started to make some comments even during the listening part and continued later, while making decisions about the colours and while presenting their smiley to the teacher and the group.
  • The same video and handout can be used with older and more advanced students because the music samples / emotions can be used in an extension acticivity i.e. group the samples/ emotions, choose your favourite, create your own instrument and play some music, choose one sample / emotion and tell a story etc.
  • It was also amazing that everyone could produce as much as they were capable of. Since it is a city camp group, we have some mix of abilities but since it is an open-ended task, kids can produce a little bit, the bare miminum (‘It is sad. It is green and yellow’) or a lot more, fully justifying their choices.
  • As an Art teacher (and yes, I dare call myself that), it was absolutely amazing to see how well kids responeded to an opportunity to look at the world from a slightly different perspective, making the connections between the colour, the music and the emotions and representing it on paper. During the entire activity, it was easy to see how the kids actually did take time to think about their impressions and how to express them best through langauge and through colour. Sometimes, they would make an immediate decision, while listening and then rethink it and change it. And the conviction with which they did it was a wonder to behold.
  • As a teacher of children, I loved this activity because it gave us all an opportunity to express our own personal views and opinions and to learn that everyone, the kids and the adults may have a completely different opinion and that there are no right or wrong answers. So at the same time, it was also a lesson on learning how to respect other people.
  • A busy/lazy teacher loves this kind of an activity because it takes about 5 minutes to prepare and to set up.
  • For us the activity was the final project but it can also be used, in a shortened version, as an introduction or a lead-in activity to any lesson related to music.

Happy teaching!

A balancing act. Non-competitive EFL games for kids

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It happened way too many times…

Here is a situation that I witnessed many times during an observed lesson with young learners: a teacher and a group of kids start playing a game, for example riddles. The teacher models, then the kids take over. One student sits in front of everyone, chooses a card for the other students to guess or to identify. Kids start shouting out words, one of them gets it and the teacher takes the flashcard and hands it over to the student who shouted the correct word. The game goes on and it takes about three rounds more for one of the students to get offended / upset / angry / sad about not winning. More often or not, someone starts crying. Oups.

It is not only about losing, although, to be honest, this is a serious problem, too. Here, however, the ‘failure‘ of some kids is clearly visualised with a flashcard. Frequently, it is also very unfair because it is the faster and louder kids that get the point and these are not necessarily the kids who really know the answer. Also, there is another dilemma in a situation when two students shout out the correct answer at exactly the same point. Will the teacher tear the card into halves? No, of course not. Sigh.

That issue, frequent as it was, was always addressed during the feedback session and I am pretty sure every session on games for VYL and YL included the commandment compressed down to ‘Don’t use flashcards as reward points’. This was the bread and butter of a trainer / VYL ados.

My real shock to the system was an invitation to volunteer at Sheredar, our rehabilitation camp for children who went through serious diseases a few years back. I had a chance to go there a few times and teaching kids was an amazing experience. However, before I went, our contact and coordinator, Ksenia, said: ‘They will be one big mixed ability group but you can choose any topic you want. Actually, do whatever, just don’t play any competitive games. These kids have fought enough’. It took me about a minute to understand that I have no games to play. All my favourite activities, those that I frequently used in my lessons, with kids, juniors and teens, all of those favourite ones were competitive. ALL OF THEM.

Should kids even be playing competitive games?

I have been looking for sources on competition in the EFL classroom and I have found…nothing. I started to look around for any texts on kids and competition and it turns out that getting engaged in competitive activities such as sports, for example, can be very beneficial for children.

  • competitive activities can be motivating and encourage kids to improve their skills
  • playing and losing and winning helps children to learn how to deal with competition and with the fear of losing
  • they are also an opportunity to learn how to deal with pressure and how to win and how to lose
  • they are good for building self-confidence
  • they teach kids about the existence of the rules that need to be obeyed
  • they can help form friendships and relationships, with peers and adults
  • and, also, even if they are sports, they can lead to improving academic performance in children

Although, of course, they can also have some drawbacks, such as too much pressure, negative feelings in children and for their self-esteem.

On the whole, competition is a good thing, although it is not a given that all the children take to it naturally. Some of them might struggle, which is natural, bearing in mind that not all the adults have learnt to deal with it successfully, and they should be given help and support.

EFL and competition

As regards our EFL classes, especially those with the younger learners, primary and pre-primary, it would be just reasonable not to abandon all the competitive games althogether but to keep an eye on the balance and on avoiding a situation when all the games and activities that comprise a lesson have promote competition. Apart from competition, there are the other beautiful C-words such as: cooperation, colaboration, cognitive skills development that can and should be the foundations for our classroom life.

Not to mention that everything that we do in our lessons, namely learning a language, is against the very idea of competition. All the kids learn for themselves and although they have the same linguistic aims, their overall results or results in certain areas of language learning do not depend on the results of the other participants. What is more, their progress is measured against their previous results and achievement, although, admittedly, the situation is slightly different when it comes to learning a langauge in the context of a state school where kids’ progress is graded at every step of the way.

Things to consider

The most important thing to remember seems to be the fact that we, as teachers, should not take things for granted and assume that all the kids in our group like competition and competitive activities and that all of them are equally prepared to win and lose with grace.

The other factor to take into consideration is the age of the students. The younger the students, the less likely it is that they have already had a chance to participate in those kind of activities and acquire these skills and that they have enough life experience to be mature about it. It is a combination of their age, cognitive and social development as well as life circumstances such as having a chance to attend kindergarten, playing at home with parents and relatives, having older siblings and so on.

Equally important is the bond between the students. A group of children starting to learn together in September is a completely from the same group in January or even in October, especially in the context of after school groups or afternoon language schools where children might land in a group of complete strangers with whom the only thing they have in common is the age and the level of English, not the family ties, the address or the school. The more they get to know each other, the more they bond, the easier it will be for the teacher to set up activities, including competitive games, and for the kids to handle ‘failure‘. After all, it is easier to lose and get over it when you play with friends.

What it comes down to in real life, with real children, is keeping an eye on the kids, checking how they react to different stimuli and then introducing some competitive games, carefully, step by step. However, with my youngest students, this non-competitive period may span over the entire length of the pre-school EFL. With the most recent group, we started to play only half-way through our third year together and even then it was the whole group vs the teacher (who always lost).

Every little helps

Here are some of the tricks and techniques that a teacher can use in the classroom while introducing competitive games or taming of the competitive games we often include in our lessons (tired and tested):

  • Playing the familiar games such as riddles or pelmanism in a less competitive way. First of all, we do not award points for the boardrush OR we award points to both teams for competing the task, not only to the team who is faster (especially that with boardrush at least it is sometimes very tricky to establish who really was the first one to touch the board). Points here can be pluses or hearts on the board or flashcards given out to the winner in a particular round. Instead, we finish the round, the praise everyone and we simply move on. The game itself (the fun of participating, the language produced or used) is the reward itself.
  • We do not determine the order of participation based on the successful participation, for example in riddles, when the student who guesses the word is the next one to play. Instead, all students take turns, one by one to make a riddle for the whole class, regardless of how good they are at guessing.
  • Playing ‘Simon Says’ without excluding the losers by asking them to sit down after they make a mistake, especially that a growing number of non-participating students is very bad for the overall classroom and behaviour management. Or, in the same way, playing the Treasure Hunt without establishing who the winner is. We all look for clues around the classroom or the school, we all participate for ten minutes and in the end all check our answers, without counting the points or the number of the elements or stages completed.
  • With pelmanism, instead of playing 1-1, with kids uncovering two cards at a time, the whole group can do it in pairs, with two kids always participating, ideally in different combinations. As soon as a pair is found, the teacher and the kids cheer for everyone, and the cards are put aside or given back to the teacher.
  • Play the game in the format of the teacher vs the whole group, to create the support for the individual child. If they win or if they lose, they will do it together, with all their friends, nobody will be singled out. Ideally, in such a situation, the teacher loses and has a chance to model the mature behaviour and how ‘a failure’ can be handled, but, of course, bending the rules in order to ensure that might not always be easy to do. If you are looking for ideas, I would recommend pelmanism. It is very easy to get distracted and to forget (or ‘to forget’) where the other card from the pair is located.
  • Any game can be played in teams, a team vs a team, instead of individuals competing with each other. This way, again, the support, the safety net or the safety blanket is created. Enjoying the victory or handing the loss is easier with your team. Even if there is one child who does not handle ‘the failure’ very well, there will be other children in this situation, too. They will serve as role models.
  • Having the teacher participate, as one of the teams, can also help soften the blow of the defeat. Again, the teacher will be the one to model the langauge use, the game rules application and the player’s behaviour, too.
  • If possible, talk to the parents whose children struggle with controlling their emotions while losing the game. If nothing else, it would be great to find out whether there have been any factors that could have played a part, whether the child reacts this way in other situations and to simply inform them what happened in class. Perhaps parents will be willing to discuss this topic at home, to reinforce what the teacher does at school and, perhaps, to also play games at home, to help the child tame that beast.
  • In one of the posts (see bibliography), I found another great tip. What is necessary is a quick game that can be played a few times, in a quick succession, in the same lesson. Some of these will be won, some will be lost, but the quick pace and the repetition will make either of the results, the victory or the defeat, not so relevant anymore and easier to deal with and to even forget.
  • Another approach that I have been using in some of my summer camp groups was the Points Poster that we used throughout the entire camp. It was very simple, only an A3 piece of paper, with the team’s name, displayed on the wall. Every time we played a competitive game, there were points, for example two or three stickers for the winners, a star for everyone else. All the kids took very well to it because winning the stickers was great but the joy lasted a brief moment only and very quickly the stickers won today would quickly get lost among all the other stickers won on all the other days. The defeat, on the other hand, was perhaps not the most pleasant thing in the world but it didn’t matter much because the students knew that they would be another game on the same or on the following day. What is more, because I was using some leftover stickers, of all kinds, sometimes it was more fun to choose one huge sticker for your team rather then three little ones…
  • Finishing each game with the teacher and the kids thanking each other for the game, with a simple handshake and ‘Good game‘, just like all the football or volleyball players do at the end of the match.
  • Any activity that can work towards bonding and building a community is also welcome
  • If there is the students who struggle with dealing with their own emotions while playing games, I have so far tried two things. One of them was pairing this student up with myself, in 1-1 games, in order to be better able to model, to monitor and to help the child control their emotions during the game. I have also experimented with pairing up with this child in the games that we played in teams because, again, losing (or winning) in one team with the teacher was easier to deal with.

Non-competitive EFL games

First, an anecdote. The heading of this paragraph is what I put into my google. Would you like to guess what the amazing Uncle Google came up with? Nothing.

‘Fun games’ – yes, ‘no prep games’ – yes, ‘exciting games’ – yes, sure. There was one post from the British Council (see bibliography) but not many of them are appropriate for kids and not many are actual games. And one article about an activity that still has winners and losers…Nada, nada, nada.

Here are some suggestions from the non-competitive games that I have played

  • Musical flashcards: a simple movement game, an adaptation of the musical chairs game, only without any kids dropping out. The teacher puts out all the relevant flashcards on the floor, kids move around with some music playing. When it stops, every child picks up a card and makes a sentence for example: I like bananas (topic: food), I haven’t got a cat (topic: food), I am wearing a blue t-shirt (topic: clothes) etc. Afterwards, the flashcards go back onto the floor, the teacher puts the music on for another round of the game.
  • All the logical games such as Find the difference (for example those that we have in the YLE Movers and Flyers) or Odd one out (for example YLE Movers) that can be easily adapted to any topic. A similar activity will be also based on the silly picture scenes that I described in an earlier post here.
  • I Spy: a variation of the game with a set of visuals such as a poster or an illustration from the coursebook. Kids work together as a group (in the early stages) or in pairs, they describe something in the picture, with the relevant sentences, depending on the age and level (I spy with my little eye something. It is big, it is green. It is next to the cat. etc). The student or the students who listen find the relevant object. This game is not competitive because there are no winners / losers and the game goes on until the child / children guess. As the game proceeds, the kids can offer more information and support to help their partner, for example the first letter / sound, the gestures etc.
  • Riddles: the same principle and procedure as above but it can be played with flashcards or a set of word cards or a set of words prepared by the kids.
  • Back to the board: it is a very popular game that can easily be played in a non-competitive way and this way it can go help build and develop a sense of community and give the whole group a chance to work together. One of the students sits on a chair in the centre, facing the group. The teacher writes a word or a simple sentence on the board and signals how many words it includes. The group work together to help the one student guess and recreate the word on the board. With the lower level kids, flashcards can be used instead of words although using simple sentences works wonders for the students to learn and to work better with the grammar, the sentence structure and, progressively, with the meta language.
  • Monster game aka Hangman aka Let’s save the little human: I love playing Monster Game with the lower levels because it helps the students work with literacy, spelling and blending and we always play it as a whole group with all the students contributing and working together to guess the letters and the words and to help the little human who is slowly losing parts of the ladder, the boat or the hotair balloon. To make the game less cruel, the element of getting points can be added (i.e. when the kids guess a part of the word or when they guess the most common letter or when they get all the vowels etc) and with my summer camp group the game finished with the kids drawing some food for the hungry monster because they developed empathy for someone hungry, even though it was a monster.
  • Telephone: this game is a variation of something known as ‘Whispers’, with the whole group sitting together and passing a word or a simple phrase, from the end to the beginning of the chain. This is not a very generative game or a very communicative one but it helps the kids work together towards one goal and it is easy enough even for the youngest kids.
  • Stations in the classroom: this is not really an activity but a format of completing tasks with kids. The teacher sets up a few stations in the classrom, for example in the four corners of the room. Kids move from one station to the other and complete the task such as unscrambling words, completing a simple handout, matching words and pictures, playing a round of pelmanims and many more. Kids complete a few tasks during the lesson and their job is done when they complete a full circle but they do not compete with everyone else in the group. It is up to the teacher to decide when then task is done and they can move on and in this way, even the ‘weaker’ students can play and participate without any pressure from the group.
  • Community building games: on of the 30 Creative Team Building Activities. I haven’t tried these yet but these definitely caught my eye: Cross the Line (22), Paper Chain Race (30), Shrinking Classroom (18), Building a tower (6 and 10). Or 22 Fun Team Building Games and Activities for Kids. Here I really liked: Forehead Dots (4), Some of them have the ‘choose the best / fastest team’ element which works to some extent as it helps the kids to bond within their team but I would still skip this element altogether.
  • Last but not least, among the things that has been on my wishlist of the things to try out in the classroom is the parachute and all the parachute games. Some ideas can be found here.

Coda

But, perhaps, the situation is a little bit better than it seems. While working on this post, I asked my audience on the social media about their opinion and I was very happy to find that those who responded use a mix of competitive and non-competitive games. At the same time, the teachers admitted that they have to deal with the competition-related stress in the EFL classroom, although not all the time and ‘some games, some days, some kids’ was the most popular answer.

What about you, dear reader? Do you play any non-competitive games with your YL students?

Happy teaching!

Bibliography

Teaching children to lose gracefully so they can lose with dignity as adults (oregonstate.edu)

Pros and Cons of Competition Among Kids and Teens (verywellfamily.com)

The pros and cons of competition | BabyCenter

How To Teach Children To Cope With Losing | Casa de Corazón (casaearlylearning.com)

6 Tips for Teaching Children How to Lose — Better Kids

australiansportscamps.com.au/blog/benefits-children-playing-competitive-sports/#:~:text=Competition Can Improve your Child%27s,high school and tertiary studies.

Six collaborative games for competitive English language classrooms | British Council

ETF 57/3 pg14-23 (ed.gov)

Problems with Games in ESL/EFL Classrooms (and Solutions) – BINGOBONGO (bingobongokids.com)

P.S. A request!

It is very simple.

I would like to know a tiny little bit more about my readers. There are so many of you, popping in here, again and again, and the numbers of visitors and visits are going up and make my heart sweel with joy. But I realised I don’t know anything about my readers and I would love to know, a tiny little bit more.

Hence the survey.

Teaching English Through Art. Jeff Koons and his rabbit

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The language

  • The activities mentioned here were a part of the final lesson of the month and in the unit on animals. We practised the names of animals and we tried to make very simple riddles about animals (‘It is big. It is green. It can swim’). In this particular lesson, for the first time ever, I invited the children to make their own riddles and, with the help of the teacher, they managed.
  • I also introduced the forest version of ‘Walking in the jungle’, which very conveniently, includes a rabbit.
  • We used the finished product for practising the target langauge (Rabbit, can you jump? Yes, I can). We created a few questions (and I say ‘we’ because I only needed to start and the kids took over), answered them and then followed that with singing the song that we learnt in this unit (Little bird, can you clap, from Super Simple Songs) which turned into our own conversation and / or a version of a song (‘Anka, Anka, can you dance?’) which is now one of our favourite parts of the lesson. Kids took a lot of pleasure in answering the questions about themselves.
Porcelain edition Jeff Koons | Bernardaud Porcelain

The artist

  • Jeff Koons was chosen to be the artist of the day only because he was what came up as a result of the google search along the lines of ‘modern artists who drew animals’. His most famous animal is, of course, the balloon dog but I really could not think of a way of turning it into a fun craft activity in the online environment, without asking parents to purchase some unique resources. Plus, we made a puppy craft only a few weeks earlier and I wanted something else. Luckily, Jeff Koons created more than just one dog and a balloon rabbit was one of his creations.
  • We introduced the artist (name, country, favourite things) and we looked at his animals and tried to guess what they are.

The art

  • We started with checking all the materials: an A4 piece of paper (either the drawing album paper or just regular photocopying paper), scissors, glue and marker. I also sent the photo of the finished product to the parents so that they could help, if necessary.
  • As usual, I was modelling every step, then waiting for the kids to complete the action before moving on to the following stage.
  • First we drew two lines along the long side of the piece of paper and we cut along them.
  • Then I put the two strips together into a letter L (although in class I used the references from Russian and we made a capital letter G) and glued the ends together. Then came the time for the most challenging step, making the harmonica (or the spring (the reference that came from the student who had a slinky and called it a spring). I used the phrase ‘on the top, on the top’ while demonstrating how I was folding the paper. We glued the ends, too.
  • On the remaning piece of paper we drew a circle and drew the face of the rabbit on it. Afterwards we drew ‘two letters A’ for the ears and cut them out. We glued them together and then we glued them on the top of the spring.
  • Next, we drew ‘4 zeros’ for the paws and we also cut them out and glued them on the pieces of spring, two at the base and two somewhere in the middle. The glue here can be applied on the top or at the bottom of the piece and glued on, it does not really matter.
  • The rabbit was adapted from the original version from DIYArtPins to make it feasible in an online class but, still, it is the most complex and the most challenging craft that we have done in our online class. I had experiemented with it before the lesson, making my own copy, checking whether the quality of paper will or will not have an impact on the final product, visualising the stages and instructions. I was ready but I still got cold feel once we started to make it. However, my amazing kids who have been creative for two years and who have been creative online for one year managed. The youngest artist was supported by her mum and she managed, too. I would not recommend this activity for beginner online artists of beginner offline artists, either.
  • Without doubt, the rabbit is just cool. It is a real toy, made of paper and when you press it, it springs back or, we could and we did say, ‘the rabbit can jump’.

Happy teaching!

Teaching English Through Art: Upgrading Picasso

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The artist

This is not Pablo Picasso’s first appearance in our lesson because last week, in our unit on animals, we looked at elephants by different artists and among them was also the most amazing and the most beautiful elephant by Pablo Picasso (see below). Even then I knew that it would not be the last we see of it.

I was planning to introduce Pablo Picasso in our traditional way, with the country and his favourite things (faces, shapes and line drawings) and I have prepared our gallery for it, but, as it sometimes happens, there was no time for that in the lesson. We are going to catch up on that next time, in our final lesson in this academic year.

In this lesson, we only looked at different one line animals created by Picasso and we tried to guess which ones they are using this set of visuals on wordwall.

The language

This lesson was a part of our Animals unit and the langauge that we have been working on and this was one more chance for us to use and to practise the following langauge: names of animals, categorising animals (big and small, I like and I don’t like) and, most importantly, talking about what animals and what we can do, using I can and I can’t and a series of verbs. We have based it on the song from Super Simple Songs, Little Bird, and we have been working on extending the list of verbs beyond the song.

We have already been playing with the spinner, asking the question: ‘Can you jump?’ and doing the actions to prove that, yes, we can but not as much language came out of it, even though it has been one of our favourite activities recently. This Monday, however, we started to adapt the song and sing it for all the kids, one by one (‘Sasha, Sasha, can you clap?’) and, finally, the langauge came out it. The girls were either singing or singing-reciting their answers, in full sentences. Hooray! Hooray! Hooray!

The art

In the last few lessons, we have done a lot of work with paper, scissors and glue, creating various toys. It was fun and lots of it but, at the same time, I was getting ready to introduce a new technique in our lessons. That is how the idea of upgrading Picasso came about.

I have looked through all the amazing line drawings that Picasso created and I was experimenting with the animals that we could all draw in class, online. Unfortunately, that meant that I had to give up on the chameleon (although that would have been the animal to upgrade with colours!) but I will leave it for another occasion. The flamingo and the horse were the other ones that I was considering but decided against, in the end, because they would be a bit too complicated for the younger students.

Eventually, I have chosen the elephant, the fish and the owl because they are simple and they represent three different actions and animals from the song which was also used during the craft activity. The verses of the song helped us to punctuate the activity as we sang it at the end of every stage of the craft, that is, after we completed the fish, after the completed the elephant and after we completed the elephant.

Before the lesson I experimented with the technique and checked with the parents that all the resources were available at home. In class, we went through all the resources, showing them to the camera, as usual: an A4 piece of paper, a pencil, paintbrushes, watercolours and two pots with water, one with the regular water and one with the water with salt.

First we drew the fish, step by step. I was drawaing one element, the kids followed and I waited for them to finish. This was not our first drawing dictation so the kids are now very good at following, showing the piece of paper to the camera after each step. Normally, I hold the piece of paper on a clipboard and I show it to the camera. This time, however, I decided to hold the camera over the paper because of the watercolours and I did it consistently throughout the activity. We drew three animals, one by one and put the pencils away.

The idea for upgrading Picasso I got from this great video on youtube. First, we prepared the based and covered the drawing of the owl with the water mixed with salt. The we put it away and started to apply the paints, first one colour, then the other. It is necessary to take some paint with the paintbrush and delicately touch the paper. The colour should spill and seep into the paper beautiful, opening like a flower. It has to be done slowly and carefully in order to be able to observe how that happens. After the first colour is applied in such a way, we repeat with the other or with the others, depending on what the kids choose.

In the end of the stage, I announced ‘I am ready. My owl is blue, red and pink’ and elicited the same from the kids. Afterwards, we sang the verse for the owl. This gave the kids a little bit more time to complete their birds.

Later on, we moved on the the other two animals and repeated the steps. I told the parents to leave the animals somewhere to let them dry completely.

My students were really involved and they had a lot of fun. One of them even used the animals to play a game with her dad and grandma (‘What animal is it? Can you guess?’). They drew their own Picasso animals themselves and they upgraded them beautifully. I was a very proud teacher that day!

And the most amazing of one line drawings and the most amazing of elephants that actually made me fall in love with Picasso…

Happy teaching!

Crumbs #59 Hello Elephant!

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Ingredients

  • One piece of A4 paper per child. It can be the regular photocopying paper or a sheet of the drawing paper, of regular texture, from a drawing album that kids use at school.
  • Markers or pencils, scissors and glue.
  • My elephant was inspired by the design I found at Creative Family Fun website, which I adapted to the needs to my group.

Procedures

  • Show the kids the finished product. I do not always do it but in case of this craft it seemed important to help the kids see the final product and to visualise how they are going to proceed during the entire activity.
  • Check that everyone has all the materials by going through the list, picking the items up and showing them to the camera, asking ‘Have you got…?’
  • Fold the A4 paper into halves, crosswise. Open the paper and draw the line in / along the fold. Cut into two.
  • Put one of these halves aside. It will be used later for the trunk and the ears.
  • Take the other piece of paper, hold it lengthways (with the longer edge on the top), draw a line along one of the shorter edges
  • Closer to the top edge draw two eyes. It might be a good time to decide if the elephant is a boy or a girl and add eyelashes and / or a bow on the forehead.
  • Open the glue and apply some glue along the line that has just been drawn along one of the shorter edges. Roll and glue into a tube. Put it on the side.
  • Take the other piece of paper. Draw a circle. Cut it out. It is ok if it is not a perfect circle.
  • Fold the circle into half and draw the line in / along the fold. Cut into two semi-circles.
  • Draw the line along the diameter of the circle, on both semi-circles.
  • Apply the glue on the line, on one of the semi-circle and attach it to the side of the head of the elephant. Press. It might be a good idea to show the kids how to press it here – with the fingers inside the tube and the fingers outside of it.
  • Repeat with the other one.
  • Prepare the strip of paper that will be used as the trunk. It will be glued under the eyes and it might be a good idea to check its length and perhaps cut off a bit.
  • Roll one of the ends of the strip around a marker or a pencil. It will twist it a little bit and it will make it look a little bit more like a trunk. Apply the glue under the eyes of the elephant, attach the top of the trunk and press.

Why we like it

  • This is a relatively easy craft that can be completed by children online, although I would not choose this particular activity as the first craft of the year. However, it is appropriate for five-year-old children, half-way through the academic year or the children who have taken part in some craft activities before.
  • It is a simplified version of the original craft and it requires less preparation on the part of the teacher. It was ‘designed’ and tested with regular A4 photocopying or drawing paper, without any real templates or special resources such as the cardboard tubes and goggly eyes.
  • If the students are younger, the teacher might choose to cut up the paper before the lesson (one big rectangle for the body, one small rectangle for the trunk and a circle for the ears).
  • It is an online-friendly activity.
  • The finished product can be easily used as a puppet (if it is put on the two or three fingers of a hand). One of my students also turned it into a bracelet, only because she chose to use a bigger square and, in the end, it was big enough to be worn on the wrist. As such, it can be used in simple role-plays.
  • It definitely has the WOW element and kids get very excited to be able to make a real toy out of a piece of paper.
  • It can be used to accompany a story, for example ‘Elmer’ or ‘Dear Zoo’ as one of the animals.
  • Our elephants were very simple and white but they can be made colourful, very much in the theme of the elephant party we know from Elmer in which all the grey elephants ‘get dressed’ for the occasion. The teacher can use the colourful paper or the kids can decorate their squares before glueing them together into a tube. If there are some leftover stickers available, these can be used to decorate the elephants in the end.
  • We used the elephant as a part of our unit Animals in Art and English classes and apart from making the elephant we also looked and talked about different elephants created by Salvador Dali, Pablo Picasso and Henri Rousseau, among others.
  • We also had a lot of fun playing with the semi-circles. We used them as our mouse’s ears, cat’s ears, sunglasses, monkey’s ears and wings. ‘I am a butterfly’ as a lot of fun!

Happy teaching!

Craft #58 Baby shark craft

by

Ingredients

  • One A4 piece of cardboard paper, ideally in colour but if that is not available, the while cardboard will do, too.
  • Markers, scissors, glue
  • Something to use as a template for a circle i.e. a small plate for the bigger circle and a small glass for the smaller circles
  • A link to inspire you. Mine came from supersimple.com, after some adaptations for our online classes.
  • A link to the song which this craft usually accompanies. This is my favourite rendition of the song.

Procedures

  • The teacher starts by demonstrating the finished product to facilitate the whole process. I do not use this kind of an approach but it might come in really handy with this particular craft activity.
  • The teacher and the class go over the all the resources necessary for the lesson. The teacher calls them out and shows them to the camera. The kids do the same.
  • The teacher demonstrates how to draw a big circle on the piece of cardboard. If the kids are ready, they can draw a circle themselves. If not, the teacher shows them how to draw around a plate. It is a good idea to use the paper economically, in order to ensure that there will be enough paper left for the small circles. The kids do the same and show their circles to the camera.
  • The teacher cuts out the circle. The kids follow suit.
  • We fold the circle into half and we draw the eyes and a smile at the front.
  • The teacher demonstrates how to draw two small circles (or how to circle the smaller object twice). Afterwards, these are cut out, too. They are folded into halves and cut into halves, too.
  • Two of these half-circles are used as fins. They are glued to the side of the shark. The teacher demonstrates that, step by step.
  • The third half-circle is to become the frontal dorsal fin. It is glued to the top of the shark, at the back.
  • The remining half a circle is cut into two pieces (in any way) and these are are the tail (or the caudal fin, what a pretty name!). Their ends are glued together to form something resembling the letter V and they are glued inside the folded circle.

Why we like it

  • It is a perfect craft to accompany the song or to be included as a part of the life aquatic-themed unit.
  • It is easy enough to make, even online. It works well in the offline classroom, too and the teacher can adapt it to the younger students by preparing the circles before the lesson or even by folding them beforehand.
  • Even if the circles are drawn by the kids themselves and they do not turn out perfect, the sharks will look good.
  • The sharks are 3D and are a lot of fun.
  • They can be used as a puppet and they can be used in role-plays.
  • The kids can decide if they make a baby shark or a mummy or daddy shark and they can decorate the sharks accordingly.

Happy teaching!