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Contents:
1. "Winter Clothes" cards, games + picture book
2. Snowball Fight
3. New Years' Ideas
4. Kids Price
5. And finally...
Hello,
Welcome to 2007 and what an exciting year it's going to be! Here we go....
1. "Winter Clothes" cards, games + picture book
As you may have found, "clothes" can be a tough theme to teach
for a number of reasons. One being that for example "pants" and
"vest" have very different meanings in the UK and US. But luckily
at this time of year things are a lot simpler with "Winter Clothes"
e.g. hat, scarf, coat, boots etc.
"Put on your ..." and "Take off your.." are phrases
that crop up a lot with winter clothes in school, especially around playtime.
So in the
warm up, simply mime putting on and taking off some winter clothes. Then you can
try a few games....
Clothes Race Game
Like the
Christmas Clothes race have a pile of clothes at the far end of the classroom. Then...
1. You shout out "Put on the ..." + one item of clothing.
2. The first kid in each group has to run and put on the item.
3. The fastest person gets a point for their team.
Or play the
Freezing Monkey Game:
1. Draw freezing Baby Monkeys on the board ( see the website for a cute
picture). One for each team.
2. Mime putting on a piece of clothing.
3. The quickest team to guess what it is rolls the dice.
4. On their team's Baby Monkey they draw on the item of clothing that corresponds
to the number on the dice.
e.g. 1=hat 2=scarf 3=coat 4=boots 5=sweater 6=take one item off.
5. The first team to a have fully clothed baby monkey is the winner.
When the kids have got the hang of it, treat them to the new
"Baby Monkey's Clothes" Picture Book or get them into the computer lab for the talking online
Winter Clothes Online Game.
Plus you have A4 picture cards and minicards of the words all at:
http://genkienglish.net/winterclothes.htm
Enjoy!
2. Snowball Fight
This is a great, and chaotic, game sent in by reader Jonathan Shaffer.
1. Give each kid a piece of paper.
2. On the paper they write down one question.
3. They crumple the paper up into a "snowball".
4. Everyone throws their snowballs at each other.
5. When the teacher says "stop" ( or maybe blows a whistle?),
everyone stops.
6. They quickly pick up the nearest "snowball", uncrumple it
and run around trying to ask the question to as many people as possible.
7. Repeat from step 3.
You can also use it for kids who can't read ( and have small hands ) by
using crumpled up minicards. The kids ask each other today's question and
they answer with the "snowball" they have. You could try this
with almost any theme, e.g. weather, transport etc. etc.
Jonathan has also sent in lots of variations of the idea at:
http://genkienglish.net/snowballfight.htm
Thank you very much!
3. New Year's Ideas
If you're in Japan, one January tradition is to play games. The most popular
is called "Make a Face" ( or "Fuku warai") which also
happens to be great for teaching some very useful English. You basically
draw a big circle on the board, then blindfold one kid. Give this kid one
face part ( e.g. mouth, nose etc.) and the other kids have to direct them
left, right, up, down etc. to get it in the right place. Lots of fun. The
teachers will also be really happy that you are teaching some "Japanese
culture" in English class.
Of course it works just as well in any country.
To get the English firmly stuck in the kids' heads CD6 has the "Make
a Face" song especially for this game and CD1 has the infamous "Left
& Right" song for practising directions. Do the songs first (
or even in previous lessons ) and the lesson should go really smoothly.
There are face parts picture cards on the site at:
http://genkienglish.net/makeaface.htm
Plus one other request was for a 2007 Genki English Calendar. It's now
up on the site and makes a great wall decoration.
http://genkienglish.net/2007calendars.htm
4. Kids Price - 62,790 Yen
If you're been on the site recently you may have noticed that we now publish
the new price of the "Kids English" CDs, Picture Books ( hardback)
& videos set. It normally retails at nearly $4,000. Yes, that's right,
nearly four thousand dollars. But.. we have a limited amount of sets where
the videos are on VHS. Hence the price now works out at only 62,790 yen.
It's a huge set and most of the themes work great in elementary school.
If you have video decks in the classroom it's an excellent bargain. Plus
if you ask your school they will probably pay.
Find out more at:
http://genkienglish.net/kidsenglish.htm
5. And finally ...
These few games should get you through the Winter months ( or enjoy the
beaches for those of you teaching in the southern hemisphere).
There's also a new "For students" link on the top of the main
page. Tell your students about Genki English and they'll be able to get
to the cool stuff for them without having to wade through all the stuff
for teachers.
I'm currently in Europe recording some more songs and materials so keep
checking back for lots more on the site soon.
This year's Germany workshop will be in Cologne on the 20th of January.
It's 3 hours in the afternoon and if you're in the area, get in touch and
please come along!
Be genki,
Richard
======================
Richard J. Graham
The Genki way to Teach.
Primary School English Games, Songs and Activities
http://www.GenkiEnglish.com
=====================
" One kind word can warm three winter months"
Japanese saying
And if you like the ideas in this newsletter, please feel free to pass
it along to your friends!
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