Wintertime in my classroom

This school year has mostly been about young learners for me. I still teach two groups of pre-intermediate students but most of my students are ages 6–10. This also means my classroom is stacked with pictures, posters and other projects from my students.

This is how I approached the topic of winter with my first graders:

• We listened to The Little Magician story and acted it out. I made the story up myself and it goes something like this:
  
  
  Once upon a time there was a little magician. He had no mother, no father, no sisters, no brothers and no friends to play with. The little magician was sad and lonely.
  
  
  One winter's day the little magician was sitting in front of his house when suddenly it started to rain. (RAINDROPS!) The raindrops were very friendly to the little magician. »Let's play!« they said. So he played with the raindrops.
  
  
  After a while the little magician thought of something fun. He waved with his magic wand and turned the raindrops into snowflakes. (Abracadabra, one, two, three - SNOWFLAKES!) The snowflakes were very friendly to the little magician. »Let's play!« they said. So he played with the snowflakes.
  
  
  After a while the little magician thought of something fun. He waved with his magic wand and turned the snowflakes into a snowman. (Abracadabra, one, two, three - SNOWMAN!) The snowman was big and white and fun! He was very friendly to the little magician. »Let's play!« he said. So the little magician and the snowman played together.
  
  
  After that day, things were different for the little magician. Whenever he wanted company, he just waved with his magic wand and he had friends. The little magician was never sad and lonely again. The end.

• We sang the Snowman song. As for the snowman puppet, I made it myself while attending the course on puppets (see ZGUČAN).

I'm a little snowman, short and fat,

here's my scarf and here's my hat.

(melody: I'm a Little Teapot)

• As a CLIL activity, we made paper snowflakes. I'm sure you know how to do that but just in case you forgot, here's a Youtube tutorial.

We had lots of fun doing it. All that's left for us are some Christmas activities next week and then, finally, winter break!!! 

My school's contribution to the Christmas spirit of Ljubljana

Trick or Treat!

Halloween's here again. As English teachers, we're bound to cover cultural aspects of the English speaking countries as well as the language, so there's no way we could skip Halloween lessons. And besides, why would we want to? I always have so much fun celebrating Halloween with my young learners. Here's what we were doing for this Halloween with my first graders:

• Paper pumpkins

They're so easy to make - what you need to do is cut two equal pumpkin shapes out of paper, colour them, staple them together (for obvious reasons, it's better if you do that for your students) and fill them with leftover paper from cutting. Staple the top last.

I'm a little pumpkin, come and play!
It's Halloween! Hurray! Hurray!
(sung to: I'm a Little Teapot)

• Magic tricks

My favourite one is mixing colours with water - say, yellow and blue. Abracadabra, one, two, three and here's green! Also great for revising colours.

• Talking about our costumes (introducing YL Halloween vocabulary)

• Trick-or-treating

I tell my students to bring costumes to our Halloween lesson if they want. I always wear one myself for Halloween. We then go trick-or-treating around other classrooms. Of course, you'll need to ask your colleagues in advance if they're OK with the idea and give them some candy. Alternatively, you could ask some of the colleagues to NOT give you candy so you can play an innocent trick on them. From my experience, the students almost prefer NOT getting candy so they can play a trick!

All I have to add is I can't wait for next year's Halloween! :)