The object game

November 10, 2009 | Miranda Flynn Legge

Many traditional drama games for adults can be easily adapted for teaching children English. The following game is great fun and all my students adore it! It encourages team work, self expression, independence, and quick thinking. Suitable from ages 5 upwards.

Call out the name of an object and the group as a whole or split into smaller groups of 4-5 have to make the shape of that object out of their own bodies, joining together in different ways while you count down slowly from ten to zero. Usually the group will find a different way of forming the object. Examples could be: numbers, letters, a car, a number, a letter, a clock, a washing machine, a fire, a happy machine, a sausage machine. Encourage the children to make a sound to accompany their machine or object. One of my children’s favourites is a birthday cake. Some children act as candles we sing Happy Birthday and I blow out the giant “body” candles and the children fall to the ground. Great fun and makes the language memorable.

Teaching colors with 2 year olds

November 4, 2009 | Miranda Flynn Legge

Coloured buttons

You can use anything “multi coloured” you like for this game – maxi buttons, bean bags, crayons, coloured balls, coloured pom poms. (needless to say choose age appropriate and hazardous free objects). Have containers available to match each colour pom pom you have. Sit on the floor and pour out the coloured pom pom and invite your child to pick up all the “red pom poms” he/she can find and put them in the appropriate containers. Then pick up all the “green” pom poms and put also those in the appropriate container. Make sure that you continue to repeat “where’s the green button” “Fantastic , you found a green button” as your child puts them in the correct container count them out together in English.

You can then evolve the game by having a pretend tea party and give your child a handful of buttons to share with some pretend friends or a favourite teddy – ‘a green one for you, a yellow one for me, a purple one for teddy”. Children love play acting and serving pretend food and this simple game give lots of number and colour recognition practice.

For some more toddler games to develop check out http://www.babycentre.co.uk/toddler/development/stimulating/gamestwoyearold/

Teaching English and Drama in Guadeluope

November 3, 2009 | Miranda Flynn Legge

Lorraine Rastogi from Guadeloupe (french west indies) recently wrote to me sharing some of her creative ideas . Check out the wonderful puppet theatre she built herself!

“I built up a puppet theatre and created my own puppets . A puppet maker from Brittany has made some for me BOB an American rapper(black) from New York comes to Guadeloupe and meets Mrs SLow a turtle, Penny a criol girl ,an iguana BOOBOO and BARATA an ugly witch!!! and many other puppets.. and I build up some stories with the children in the tropical forest the volcano the sea etc….My future plan is to write stories add more characters and more puppets..but I need some practice with learning this art. Children love them and it is a great tool for teaching them English Along with this I use LET’s CHANT from Carolyn Graham…”

(available from www.amazon.com)