Just a quick post today. Today for ESL program we were teaching animals, and animal families. A very simple question for very young children. Do animals have families? Why of course. Its easy to teach mum, dad, brother, sister baby etc. Then integrate that into previously taught animal vocabulary by simply showing pictures of animal babies with their parents and reinforcing penguin mummy, penguin baby.
One of the activities I put together was printing out a mum/dad/baby for about 10 different animals and glued them to lolly sticks. During class I handed them out randomly around the classroom. Then asked the children to form a family. So if they had a penguin, they need to find a mommy penguin, daddy penguin and baby penguin. The best part of the activity was that even the smallest children understand what to do. As long as they know family vocabulary. The animals, and the number 3.
The kids loved it though. It really reinforces family vocabulary, animals and certainly the concept of animal families. But in general, props and activities such as this are just a fantastic way to review and to get the kids to stand up. Because we all know that sitting down for 30 minutes straight is nearly impossible.
Cutting out and gluing all of these was a bit tedious. I actually laminated them in the hope that they would last longer. But that was a really unnecessary step.
The lolly sticks are always reusable as well. Every week I use the same stick and simply rip the glued piece of paper off and glue on another. I do lose 2-3 a week from someone chewing on them, but I haven’t had to buy any more yet. Lolly sticks really are quite versatile and can be used for so many crafts and props.
All of the craft templates are available for free download here:
You must be logged in to download, however they are completely free. I won’t spam you with emails. I purely want to encourage people to join and leave a comment. You don’t even have to use your real email address, you can google ‘onetimeemail’ and use a temporary one. I only ask you leave a comment, let me know what you are using them for or any other ideas I can add to them or make them better.
You may want to sign up anyway. Ill be posting a lot of cool stuff to download.
See you soon,
Shannon
