This is a guest post written by our friend, Lisa Yannucci. Her website, Mama Lisa’s World, is one of our favorites and is the internet’s go-to site for children’s songs and rhymes from around the world. Parents and teachers often write me asking for suggestions about activities they can perform with kids to stimulate their… Read more »
Weekend Reading: Music’s Effect On Learning
Plato said, “I would teach children music, physics, and philosophy; but most importantly music, for the patterns in music and all the arts are the keys to learning.” Scientists seem to agree. Scientists have discovered much about how music affects the brain and where in the brain all of this is happening. The research is… Read more »
Felt Boards in the Young Learners Classroom
This is a guest post from our good friend, Bob Pensak, owner of the English language school, Bob’s English, in Okazaki, Japan. “Felt boards” are an exciting, fun way to tell a story by combining music, movement, and visuals. Felt boards can be purchased or made very easily. Go a hardware or art supply store… Read more »
Weekend Reading: Raising Bilingual Children
We recently posted a fascinating article about how bilinguals switch between languages on our Facebook page. Parents often ask us for advice on raising their children bilingually. Parents want to do it and educators want to help. Christina Bosemark wrote a series of 6 articles about raising bilingual children, giving loads of insight, advice, and… Read more »
How music changed my teaching life
This is a guest post from our Good Friend, Patrick Jackson, author of Potato Pals, Stars, and Everybody Up, all published by Oxford University Press. Before I went to Japan and started to teach kids, I ran a late night café in Dublin. While there are some similarities between customers in a restaurant and… Read more »
Card Games: Playing Concentration with Very Young Learners
Card game time! Yay! But wait: which one? And how to play with very young learners (preschool-aged and younger)? Let’s start with Concentration, also known as Memory. It’s that game where a whole bunch of cards are face down, and players turn over cards 2 at a time to try to find matches. It’s a… Read more »
Tips for using songs and music in small classes
Many of us have learned the advantages in using songs to teach large classes. Large classes can be amazingly fun, right? In a large class, students benefit from the crowd effect, and the energetic ones pull the whole class into the excitement. Nearly everyone sings. Quieter students either temporarily join in or hide behind the… Read more »
5 MORE Simple Tips for Reading to Children
We just had a post on 5 Simple Reading Tips, and we received some great comments on that post. We weren’t finished! Here are 5 more tips for you to try. 1) Have a familiar story time routine. A routine is useful for helping students settle down for story time. When students are used to a… Read more »
5 Simple Tips for Reading to Children
Many factors go into making a children’s book a hit in your home or classroom. The story, the pictures, and the characters are all important. Your role in reading the book is an important factor as well. Here are 5 Simple Reading Tips you can try when reading picture books to children. 1) Create interest… Read more »
Our Favorite Animal Books (And a Contest!)
Update: A big thanks to everyone who shared their favorite animal-themed books! We assigned a number to each comment and used random.org to generate two random numbers. The numbers were 7 and 27. This means the winning commenters were “Gracenawati” and “Magdalena_B”! Please contact us through our website to let us know where we should… Read more »
