The three little pigs

This is a board game: students are going to retell the story and collect the window, door and the chimney.The first one to collect everything is the winner.




The three little pigs houses and finger puppets





It's like a memory game. The first one to collect the three houses is the winner

Itsy Bitsy Spider Book

It's not like the song, but it works as a Science activity

caterpillar bingo

Prepare a supply of caterpillar bingo mats by cutting out different color circles and forming a caterpillar out of them. Make color cards using the same circle cut outs. Have children flip the color cards over and identify the color. Once the color has been identified have the children find and place a matching color pom poms on that color circle. Once the caterpillar has all its pom poms game is over. If your children need to work on fine motor skills have them pick up the pom poms with tweezers or tongs.

Source: http://learningandteachingwithpreschoolers.blogspot.com/2011/04/caterpillar-color-bingo.html

Thinking Outside the Book

This is a post for those who teach teens...

Textbooks are an important part of an ESL class. They provide direction and explanations of key ESL concepts. While textbooks are of great value to the ESL teacher, the world outside the textbook is vast and has limitless potential

How to Think Outside The Book

1
Dig a Little Deeper
Magazines and newspapers are some of the best reading materials that you can use with your ESL students, and there are several activities you can do with just one paper. With just a newspaper you can review and practice all three reading strategies that your students should know.
☛ Skim some articles for the main points. Encourage your students not to read every word, but to focus on headlines, subheadings, and portions of the rest of the article.
☛ Scan the paper to see when a movie might be playing or for the events that will happen locally this weekend. When scanning, students should look for answers to specific questions.
☛ Finally, do some careful or detail reading for other articles, and ask comprehension questions. Also, review unfamiliar vocabulary with your students. You will find many opportunities to expand their knowledge of vocabulary in the newspaper. There is also culture to be learned from the paper, especially in the obituaries.
Your students can see what a culture value is by noticing what is mentioned in an obituary. In addition, do some compare and contrast work between this newspaper and one from a student’s native language. If possible, borrow a foreign newspaper from the library and ask your student to explain the different sections. He will be challenged to use English to explain to the rest of the class, and they will learn more about his culture.
2
Something May Catch Your Eye
Now that you are out of the book, keep going with a movie. Movies are a great resource for many different classroom activities. Some ESL programs have entire classes devoted to American film. How you decide to use movies in your classroom is up to you. Generally, you can choose to use one movie and do several activities with the whole movie or particular scenes. The other option is to pick and choose scenes from different movies and do one or two activities with each.
One activity you can to with any move scene is a cloze listening exercise. Be warned, this will take some preparation ahead of time. Before you meet with your class, type out the dialogue from a particular scene of the movie. Then delete key words in that dialogue and leave blank spaces for your students to fill in as they listen. If you have already taught them the vocabulary, play the scene one or two times and have them fill in the blanks. Then have students compare answers and give them the correct answers. Then have groups of students read the dialogues as if they were the actors. If you have not taught the vocabulary to your students prior to watching the movie clip, give them a word bank from which to choose the answers. Before watching, read through the words in the word bank and review their pronunciation so your students will be able to recognize the words when they hear them. It is also beneficial to your students if they think of words that would logically fit into the blanks in the dialogue before watching the clip. They may be able to guess some words correctly, but most likely your students will come up with synonyms for the words actually in the scene. You can then explain to your students that guessing in this manner is a useful strategy for ESL reading. When they encounter an unfamiliar word in their English readings, they can guess at the meaning of the word based on the context, and they should be able to determine a synonym or a word with similar meaning to the target word. This will increase thier comprehension without them having to use a dictionary.
3
Get Out (and about)
To get your students using language in authentic situations, take a field trip. It does not have to be something elaborate or requiring special transportation. Think of the resources that lie within walking distance of your school, and make use of them. This may mean that your students go to a restaurant and place an order or ask the server questions about a menu item. If you teach in a city and there are public courthouses nearby, take your students to listen to some of the proceedings and then discuss what was said with them after returning to your classroom. If you teach near a beach or a public park, take your students out to do some surveys with people who might be there. There are also many restaurants, theaters, post offices and other businesses that will give free tours to students. All of these trips are great speaking activities and listening comprehension activities for your class, and it can also be a way to learn less common vocabulary in a purposeful way.
You do not have to keep your students’ noses in their textbooks to ensure a productive ESL class. Sometimes the best thing you can do for your students is to get out of the book and into the real world.

Your students will be challenged, but the opportunity for learning will be unlike anything chapter six has to offer. So next time you want to liven up your class, get out of the book and into some real life situations to practice English.

this article is from: http://busyteacher.org/6516-b-thinking-outside-the-textbook.html

Use red and green felt to cut out ladybugs and leaves.
Number your leaves 1-whatever.
Draw spots on your ladybugs to correspond with your numbered leaves.
Cut them out and get out your felt board!
Explain to your preschoolers that the ladybugs are lost and they need to find their way back to their homes, the leaves. Have them count the spots on the ladybugs and match them to the numbers on the leaves.

This is an activity from: http://www.brilliantbeginningspreschoolutah.com/

a letter to parents

Dear Parents,
I give you back your child, the same child you confidently entrusted to my care last fall.
I give him back pounds heavier, inches taller, months wiser, more responsible,
and more mature then he was then.
Although he would have attained his growth in spite of me, it has been my pleasure
and privilege to watch his personality unfold day by day and marvel at this
splendid miracle of development.
I give him back reluctantly, for having spent nine months together in the narrow
confines of a crowded classroom, we have grown close, have become a part of each other,
and we shall always retain a little of each other.
Ten years from now if we met on the street, your child and I, a light will shine to our eyes,
a smile to our lips, and we shall feel the bond of understanding once more,
this bond we feel today.
We have lived, loved, laughed, played, studied, learned, and enriched our
lives together this year.
I wish it could go on indefinitely, but give him back I must.
Take care of him, for he is precious.
Remember that I shall always be interested in your child and his destiny,
wherever he goes, whatever he does, whoever he becomes.
His joys and sorrows I’ll be happy to share.
I shall always be his friend.
~Author Unknown~

Winter vacation

I don't know about you guys, but during my winter vacations I think about the second semester. What have you been doing to welcome your students back in August? I'm thinking about to review everything we learned so far during the first week.
Here are some activities I have planned:
Act 1: we are going to review last semester vocabulary. I’m going to spread the flashcards on the floor and students will have to point me them while I yell them out
Act 2: musical chairs: the child that it is out of the game will have to tell me the name of a flashcard.
Act 3: Switch places: I’m going to stick on the wall some flashcards and each student is going to tell the name of the flashcard they have chosen to stand in front of. When I say switch places, they are going to switch their places and I’m going to take someone’s place. The child in the middle will have to say “switch places”. They can’t stand on the same place again, in order to identify other flashcards.
Act 4: I’m going to take some toy food. In trios, we are going to pretend we are in a restaurant and we are going to order the food. When we finish ordering, we are going to see which group has more or fewer than the other.
Act 5: Family member treasure hunt: I’m going to hide some family members flashcards and students are going to try to find it. (I usually repeat : where is mommy? can you find mommy? in order to help the students with some input. They need to play in English, not only play)

I'm thinking about other activities...I'll post them soon.