teaching english to lil cuties--esl tips, tricks, and stories

Tuesday, February 28, 2006

cards

whenever important things happen to the kids (birthdays, graduating, etc.), we always make them little cards. sometimes i gripe about this because i often spend quite a lot of time that i don't really have on these cards (one time i actually spent about 4 hours at home after work working on them), and then the kids crumple them up and throw them into their bags.
so today we had 4 kids graduating, and i had made 4 cards. they were actually pretty simple. construction paper in their favorite color with their name written in glitter on the front. a short message inside. cute punch-outs glued on for decoration.
i gave each of the kids their card and for each one i sang this little "hooray" song.
this was at the end of the day and so some of the kids go on to take a nap and i went into the nap room to watch over them.
i was surprised cuz all of them took their cards with them.
little yuno was lying on her cot on her stomach. her blanket was over her head like a tent. she would get up on her elbows, look at the card for a few seconds, then try to go back to sleep. but soon she'd look at the card again. i was so touched. of all the kids, she was the least affectionate towards me, but you could tell how much she like the card and how happy she was to get it. (however, i kinda think that she thought it was her birthday....)
and even after naps, i saw that the kids were still holding on to their cards as treasured posessions.
i think i'll never gripe about making cards again...

Monday, February 27, 2006

graduating

i've only got 12 kids in my class. last week, 4 of my original ones graduated and i got 3 new ones.
tomorrow is the last day for 4 more of my kids. i know that they are ready to move up, and i love getting the new ones (who are *babies*. literally. one of them doesn't even speak japanese yet.), but it's still sad to see them go.
of course, they're just in the next classroom over and i'll still get to see them every day. but it's not the same.
good luck little ones!

Sunday, February 26, 2006

you snooze, you lose

my boss is a little strange and about a month ago some of the teachers and i were joking about how he came into the classrooms to count the chairs. not to make sure that we had enough chairs for all the students, but to make sure that we each had an even number of red, yellow, and blue chairs.
when i started teaching in this classroom, way back last september, i had requested that i have little cushions for my kids to sit on. he just gave them to me last week.
despite his anal retentiveness regarding the chairs, he gave me 2 pink cushions, 1 blue cushions, and 9 yellow/green cushions (some are yellow, some a green but you can hardly tell the difference between the two colors). i was appriciative of the cushions, but anticipated some fights over cushion colors.
sure enough, the first time i told them to go get their cushions, yoshi starts throwing a fit cuz he wants the blue one. now, my students are all 2 years old and they don't get the concept of sharing and taking turns all the time. yoshi is pretty territorial over where he sits. before the cushions, we would just sit on the carpet, which has animals all over it. yoshi has decided that his animal is the chicken and if anyone else would sit on it, he'd start screaming "yoshi chicken! yoshi chicken!!" me and my assistant teacher were always pretty tolerant of this and we would encourage the other children to sit on a different animal, all the while snickering at yoshi, because let's face it....chicken is about the least cool animal there is on the carpet.
but i wasn't going to give in with the cushions. i looked at yoshi and told him "you snooze, you lose." this prompted laughter from my assistant, who is japanese and had never heard that phrase before. i continued to tell yoshi that tomorrow he has to try to be faster and get the blue cushion first.
fortunately, every day since then he has been super fast and has always gotten the blue cushion. and also luckily, none of the other kids seem to care what color cushion they get.

here i am!

i decided to start this blog to help others who teach kids, specifically esl teachers. i'll offer tips and games. and also tell all the funny stories about my lil cuties.