The butterfly finger play

Hi everyone. Yesterday in class, our teacher gave us some stories for pre-schoolers to practice the storytelling. My story was “The Butterfly finger play”, that is a story about the life cycle of a butterfly. It´s not too long (5 minutes) and it´s very funny because children learn the life cycle of a butterfly through a finger play. This story is recommended for children 4-7 years old. It doesn´t need materials, only our hands and fingers.

Here I leave you the story with the gestures. I hope you like it and you work it with your students.  

This butterfly is going to lay an egg…

here on this leaf.

 

Where is your egg? 

Here is the egg.

 Can you see? The egg is opening

Here is a caterpillar!

 Look! The caterpillar eats the egg.

Eat the egg of the leaf, everyone. Now the caterpillar is eating the leaf. 

Yum, yum, yum.  

Now the caterpillar is eating another leaf

Yum, yum, yum.  

The caterpillar is eating another leaf… and another! Yum, yum, yum. 

Now the caterpillar is very full. 

The caterpillar is climbing a tree.

Look the caterpillar is making a cocoon. 

The caterpillar is inside the cocoon, It’s very sleepy. 

But look! It´s moving 

And here is a beautiful butterfly. 

Fly, butterfly, fly!

The ugly duckling

In this post I am going to show you two different activities related to fairy tales. The first one is an adaptation, for pre-schoolers, that I made with my partners, Raquel y Samanta, of a classic fairy tale: The ugly duckling.

The first thing we have considered is that English is the second language that our children will learn. For that reason, we have based ourselves on the original story and we have made an adaptation according to the characteristics and capacities of our children (3-6 y/o). To achieve this, we have shortened the story and we have used an easier vocabulary. 

In addition to creating our adaptation, we have had to create a new ending for this story. To do this, we have taken into account the age of our receivers. In this way, we invented a finish that we believe suitable for children from three to six years. I mean, we have invented a simple end, with an easy vocabulary, which makes sense to our students.

For those people who are interested in reading the original story to be able to compare the changes, I leave you the link:
http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/Collections/ClasFair.shtml.

·       Our adaptation of the story: 

It is a beautiful and sunny day. The sun was shining. The pond was beautiful. Behind, a mother duck is sitting on five eggs. Father duck is nervous waiting for his ducklings.

"Tchick." One by one all the eggs break open. All except the biggest one.

Mother duck sits and sits on the big egg. At last it breaks open, "Tchick, tchick!" The last baby duck was born!!!!!!

But… what has happened? He looks big and strong.

“It is grey and ugly!” The father ducks says, and then he leaves. 

The next day mother duck takes her four little yellow ducks to the pond. The ugly duck jumps into the water imitating his brothers, but mother duck and her ducklings reject him. “Quack, quack! Go away from here, we don´t love you”  Mother duck says. 

The poor duckling is so unhappy there. He runs away crying.

He´s looking for a family where he can live. However, he doesn´t find it.

Finally, he arrives to a river. He sees many beautiful big birds swimming there. Their feathers are so white, their necks so long, their wings so pretty. They are beautiful swans!!! 

The little duckling wants to be like them but…he is ugly, so he goes away from there.

One morning the ugly duckling sees the beautiful swans again. He is afraid, but he wants to swim with them in the river. So, he runs into the river. 

And…. When he looks into the water, he sees a beautiful swan. It is he! He is no more an ugly duckling. He is a beautiful white swan.

He had finally found his family!

·       Our new ending:

By the trail, he´s looking for a family where he can live. However, he doesn't find it.

Finally, he arrives to a river. Suddenly a duck appears. She looks like him.  She asks him if he wants to be her friend, because she has no family. They became friends.

The days were passing, and ducklings were growing. They were still best friends.

One morning, both were a big surprise when they woke up. Its feathers were not already grey and ugly, now they were white and beautiful.

Oh dear!  They are swans!  How happy were the two ducklings!  

After a while, they fall in love and form a beautiful swans’ family.

Heretofore this post. I hope you liked it and I invite you to create your own adaptations of classic tales.

Have a nice day! 

How to make a listening for kids

Hello, everyone: 

In this post I will teach you a very simple way to create your own Listening. It is an activity I have done with my classmate Samanta. 

This activity consisted of creating a Listening, for children, and their corresponding activities, based on an aliens’ photo.

The first thing we did was to take an easier picture (because we have focused the activity for pre-school children)  and invent a small story, very simple and repetitive. Once written, we create activities for before, while and after the listening. 

This was the result:

Have a nice day!

Making books

This morning in class, Susana, our teacher, has taught us how to create different kinds of books.

As teachers, we can create our own books to work different topics with our students.

The types of books we have learned to make today are the following:  

-          Boxes

-          Beaks 

-          Jump out and up plus stick-on figure

-          Jump out and cut-out figure

In addition to these techniques, there are many other ways to create books.

The truth is that it has been a very fun and enriching activity. As we know, tales are essential in infant education. For this reason, I think that knowing how to create our own books (both teachers and children) is very useful.

I leave you some examples of the different types of making-books that I quoted you before:

• Boxes

• Beaks: 

    

• Jump out and up plus stick-on figure /   Jump out and cut-out figure

I hope you liked my post. And remember .... LET YOUR IMAGINATION FLY.
Have a nice day!

How to choose the best storybook?

In this post I will talk about different books that I have worked in class. My goal is to see which ones are suitable to tell (and not to read) in infant education. To see if the books are appropriate or not, I will follow the following criteria:

-          Good enough

-          Children should enjoy it 

-          Teachers should like it and feel they can tell it 

-          Appropriate for children

-          Wide language experience

-          No long descriptive paragraphs.

-          Connected with previous and succeeding work

 

Let's begin!

 -   Princess Smarty-pants: It is a very fun story. It tells the story of a princess who breaks the schemes of the tales of princesses we are accustomed. However, it is not a book for pre-school children. It vocabulary and the plot of the story are more suitable for children in primary education.

 

-   The mixed-up chameleon: In my opinion, It is a difficult story for infant education because the pictures are not very clear and can confuse children. Personally, I do not feel very comfortable telling this story. However, we can shorten it and accompany with a drawing, made by us, in which we will adding the different parts of the animals. 

-    Do you want to be my friend?: It is a perfect book for children in early childhood education. Although the story has no text, the teacher can use images to tell the story as he wants. These pictures are very clear, they call the child's attention and they make them guess the tail of the following animal. 

To make it easy, we can repeat the same phrases to involve the children in the story. 

-    Zebra: It's a tale suitable for young children.  It has short and repetitive phrases.  His vocabulary is simple. At the same time, children can follow the story thanks to the large and beautiful drawings that have. Children will also be vigilant, if we can keep them intrigued, to find out what has happened to the zebra stripes. 

-    The Emperor´s egg: It's a book recommended for primary education. It is about the penguin’s life. However, their phrases are very long and it have a very complex vocabulary. Despite this, its drawings are wonderful. 

-    Handa´s surprise: This book talks about topics interesting for children, such as the different types of fruit, the numbers and the colours. However, it emphasizes in the flavours and textures of fruits. I believe that these aspects are complicated for young children. I think that it would be more interesting if we focus on the animals.  I think also that it is a book better for read. Nevertheless, it is a book with beautiful illustrations that help the children to follow the story. 

-    Lost and found: is a very striking book. It has flaps that open and eyelashes to move drawings.  It also has very clear images that help the child to go guessing what is going to happen in the story. However, it has very long sentences so I think that it is a book to read and not to tell. Another problem is that the vocabulary is a little complex for children of three years. 

-    How to be a dog: is an easy and entertaining story. In my opinion appropriate for preschool children. You can read it but also could tell as storytelling because drawings are very clear and it allows kids to follow the story.  At the same time, the vocabulary is simple and suitable for those ages.   

Then I leave a table summary. In it you can see what criteria are met in each of the books.

BOOK	Good enough	Children should enjoy it	Teachers should like it and feel they can tell it	Appropriate for children (Infant education)	Wide language experience	No long descriptive paragraphs.	Connected with previous and succeeding work
Princess Smarty-pants	V	V	V	X	V	X	-
The mixed-up chameleon	V	V	X	X	V	V	-
Do you want to be my friend?	V	V	V	V	V	V	-
Zebra	V	V	V	V	V	V	-
The Emperor´s egg	V	V	X	X	V	X	-
Handa´s surprise	V	V	X	V	V	X	-
Lost and found	V	V	X	X	V	X	-
How to be a dog	V	V	V	V	V	V	-

I hope you liked it. In a couple of weeks I'll upload new books to analyse.

Have a nice day!