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Farm animals


So introducing new vocabulary with flashcards can be great fun and there are tons of games to play with flashcards. But as I said before, it can get quite boring if you always do the same stuff.
I bought those little farm animals (nothing fancy) and introduced them to the kids. Having a surprise box is a lot more exciting than just placing the animals in front of their noses right away and telling them "This is a cow".  Make it a bit mysterious and take out one animal at a time and wonder what this is and what sound it makes. joke around and show a cow, but make a pig sound, for example. and then have the children correct your sound.

A game I love to play is to put all the animals in a bag. One child gets blindfolded and takes an animal from the bag. He/She then has to feel the animal and guess which one it is without peeking. If the child can't guess it or guesses it wrong, the other children are allowed give some hints, but not say what animal it is.
The kids always have a lot of fun playing this. You can also do this as pair work, if you have many children in your class. One child gets a bag and the other child the blindfold. Make sure you go from pair to pair to check.


A craft idea that I often use with the kids is to come up with a poster of a farm. This is one simple example.

Guide to fold the farm:
Take a DinA4 sheet and do this:



Then have the kids color/decorate it the way they like. If you wonder about the cow, tree and house:
I bought the Usborne stencil cards. Simply love them. Here's what they look like:


They use the cards to make the forms, then cut them out and draw on the details, such as eyes etc.
You can use a lot more stuff to decorate and make it more fun, such as glitter, stickers, feathers, ....


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