Skip to main content

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, ....


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Testimonial - Syrine (12)

Svenja has been my English teacher for 3 years now. At first I didn't like English in school but with Svenja we tackled English differently. She is very patient and understanding. Her methods were interesting and I came to like English. Today I can say that thanks to her, I have excellent results and I really like English. Thank you Svenja. Syrine 5e

Who took the cookie? Game

A game you can play using this song ...  Have the kids sitting in a circle and close their eyes. (Prepare a biiig cookie, that you can reuse all the time, maybe using salt dough or just a paper cookie), walk behind the kids, sing a song together, drop the cookie behind one of the children without them noticing and sit down with them. Start the nursery rhyme using the real names of the kids instead of the animals. Each time a name is mentioned this child has to look behind them and then say "Not me"  or "Yes I have the cookie, mniam mniam mniam."

Outline of a kids lesson

This week I sat down with one of my trainees and we discussed how a lesson for small children should look like. She will take over a class of 3yo. Our lessons are 90 minutes long and this is what we came up with. This plan is one that she will keep for the rest of the year, just changing up the   songs, games and activities for each lesson. Cuts down planning time quite a bit. 1. Routine: Circle time: - singing hello song - asking "how are you", always adding more feelings throughout the year - weather chart - once they are a bit older, the today's day - TPR - show the children a box with a puppet inside (the puppet is scared when there is too much noise, so they have to be quiet in order for it to come out of the box. And of course, it only speaks English!) - have a conversation with the puppet and with the kids (good time to repeat old vocab and questions and get the kids talking) - repetition of old topics through old song, vocab game etc - repetition of l...