funny punishment

when i was a child and throwing a temper tantrum, my mom used to give me a great punishment...i had to go to my room "until i could come out with a smile on my face". i remember quite clearly being angry about this and eventually leaving my room with an obviously fake smile.
well, i've got a girl who throws temper tantrums. whenever she didn't get her own way. very spoiled only-child who has never had to share. she would drive me up a wall. i have no tolerance for that type of behavior.
of course, i also didn't have a room i could send her to until she could come out with a smile on her face.
but then one day i decided to ask her if she wanted to go sit in the corner until she could stop crying. she said no. so i said that i wanted to see her happy face.
she gave me that same "fuck you" smile that i used to give my own mother. it made me so happy.
and now it works every time.
Tags: esl preschool, creative punishment

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easy "sea" crafts

this month, we've got a "sea creature" theme going on at the school and we've done a few crafts to go along with it. i think i've mentioned before that one thing that's easy for the kids but looks a little more polished is to have the kids just paint on something, and then the teacher cuts it out into the desired shape.
anyway, i did that with two things...first i just let them at it with many different colors of paints and when they dried, i cut them into little fish and drew cartoony faces on them. then another day we used dark green paint sponge-stamped onto light green paper and i cut that into seaweed shapes.
but the really great thing we made was squid. the children had to glue a triangle shaped paper onto a square shaped paper. then put a little face (using googly eyes, and foam shapes--circle for the nose and oval for the mouth). then after it dried i hung little ribbons along the bottom for its "legs". this was a great exercise for them because we could review shapes and face parts. we also went through each step one at a time and didn't move on to the next one until everyone was finished. they came out really great and all of the parents were commenting on them. this is the first time that anyone has commented on any of my craft ideas, so i was pretty psyched.
Tags: esl preschool, preschool crafts, crafts for kids

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super simple songs

devon,over at super simple songs sent me two of their cds to try out in my classes. he's in luck because in addition to my own regular 2 year old preschool class, i've also started teaching the daily music class for 2-4 year olds.
these cds are great. they're a mix of simplified well known songs and originals that are easy as well. i'm currently using 3 of the well known songs--"walking walking", "the wheels on the bus", and "hokey pokey". i like the originals as well, but with the added stress of starting to teach the music class this month, i just didn't have the time to learn the songs well enough.
i think "hokey pokey" is perhaps the best example of how great these cds are. teaching the hokey pokey to kids this young is always fairly difficult. there's the whole "left hand/right hand" thing. kids have a hard time understanding this idea (i'm no expert, but i think at this age level it might even be difficult for native speakers.). but what's great about this version is that instead of using the right hand/left hand terminology, they use "one hand" and "two hands". it makes it really easy for the kids to understand. the music teacher before me would sometimes do the hokey pokey using a more traditional version and it was never a big hit with the kids. but now they are always telling me "i wanna do the hokey pokey". we'll also be using this version at our upcoming picnic.
so check out the website and the cds.
Tags: esl preschool, kids songs, esl songs, simple songs

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sometimes they teach me...

(sorry i haven't updated in so long. my husband and i have recently discovered the $1.00 video rental store. this has greatly affected my blog writing....)
yesterday i was "horribly mean teacher". recently miona has been goofing off during lessons. she sometimes gets better with "corner" threats, but yesterday she was influencing maya and they were goofing off together. i said, "maya, if you don't stop i'm going to move you to another spot on the carpet." she kept it up and i finally said "maya! elephant!" (meaning that she should go sit on the elephant on the carpet, which was far away from where she was.). she almost cried and i just couldn't force her to do it so i asked if she was going to be a good girl. and she said yes.
then tadashi kept playing with this towel. i said "tadashi, if you don't stop playing with your towel, i'm going to take it away from you." he kept playing and i took it. he immediately started crying and i felt bad cuz maya looked like she wanted to cry too (like she was thinking "why is shannon so mean today?"). so i gave it back fairly quickly.
the problem here was that i wasn't giving them warnings in language that they understood. maya did not understand that i was going to make her move seats. tadashi did not understand that i was going to take his towel away. so this made it all the more shocking when i actually did it.
i realized later in the day that i should have phrased my warnings in more of a question. for example, i should have said "maya, elephant??" and then she would have understood more when i told her to go sit on elephant.
well, lesson learned.

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