CLOTHES

I’m back…

These days have been a bit different at home, kids were excited for their school festival so they were nervous, restless… For kids nervousness means happiness, but for mums that means quarrels and shouts.

I can’t change school events, so I did what I thought it was best: I joined the enemy!

I knew it was going to be impossible to sit them in a circle, to read them stories and talk about them afterwards, and that kind of thing, so as I had in mind to work with CLOTHES, I made my kids help me.

I love playing games IN ENGLISH. They think they are just having fun with mum but I am actually ‘organizing’ the game and repeating the same words all the time. My purpose is to teach them a particular vocabulary, not just play. Seriously, I love playing with them for the sake of playing, but I wouldn’t do it in English because it’s not my mother tongue. When I play in English it’s because I’ve got something else in mind.

In this case my ‘Guinea pigs’ (lovingly, I used to call them my Guinea pigs) coloured and cut clothes worksheets. We pretended we were hanging up the laundry (believe me, children think this is fun) so they had to find and hang up the garment they heard me call out.

They also did two types of carton board dice, one with drawings of pieces of clothes, and the other with clothes names written on it.  This game consists of rolling the dice, reading the word and saying the name of the drawing. If both dice match, you score a point.

We had fun with these activities, but I know they don’t understand this vocabulary yet. They still have to listen to these words many more times before they can start saying them spontaneously. No doubt, it means I HAVE TO say those words in English every time I use them.

Remember, the bigger the input, the quicker the output.