marbles

There are many different types of counters that are useful for teaching children how to count. The most effective counter set I’ve ever used is a simple bag of marbles. A bag of marbles and a few paper cups is enough to get any class excited about counting.

Pass out some empty paper cups. Count together as you give each child their marbles (3-5 for very young learners upwards of 20 for older students). Toss and count marbles into cups. Hold them up high, count and drop them into the cups. Pass one marble at a time down a line by pouring it into and out of each cup until it reaches one student’s cup or your cup. Then, count how many marbles were passed along to that cup.

Pour cups of counted marbles into another cup to practice simple additions. Pass those along 10 at a time, then 20 Add to the cup by 5s or 10s and pass them down the line, making the goal not to spill the cup of marbles as it gets fuller.

For an older class, try passing one marble at a time around the circle BUT don’t wait for each marble to make it around to the final cup before starting the next. Start the next marble off immediately. The students are then hearing two or three numbers being shouted simultaneously and must keep track of their own counting at the same time. (This was super fun activity for a class of 2nd graders I had today-they caught onto the challenge right away and went with it).

If your marbles have distinctive colors, sort them by color, then count the number of each color.

If you have marbles of different size, sort by size, then count the number of each size.

warm up (and down)

Saw a Japanese kindergarten teacher doing this once and have used it ever since.  (If you don’t have a piano you can just sing up a scale)
Get all the kids crunched down in a ball, start at the low end of the piano and in octaves go up the scale (sing, up up up up up if u want) have the kids gradually stretch up as the music goes up, then shout "down" and suddenly glissando down the piano, at which point the kids all fall to the ground. 
The opposite is to start arms stretched up standing on toes, and go down the piano, and suddenly shout up, and the kids jump up.  For ESL classes its a good exercise in opposites, replace up and down with tall/short, big/small, high/low,  or animal names, or anything you can think of that might fit. 
Play with it, ham it up.  They’ll love it.  Gets them stretching, moving, and listening.

the neverending finger play

One of the best finger plays I’ve seen is one that is popular here in Japanese kindergartens…
It is based on rock (fist) paper (flat hand) scissors (middle and index finger extended like scissors)
The Japanese version goes like this…(to the tune of Frere Jacques)

rock scissors paper
rock scissors paper
what shall we make?
what shall we make?
right hand (rock paper or scissors)
left hand (rock paper or scissors)
……….

our English version that will be on Super Simple Songs Two….
rock scissors paper, rock scissors paper, 123, play with me, right hand =====, left hand =====,  Look its a ======!

the idea is making things using combinations of rock, scissors and paper gestures

here are some to get you started.
paper + paper = wrap you thumbs around each other and you have a BUTTERFLY
paper + paper = hold hands on either side of your head, and roar like a LION
paper + paper = extend arms out and fly like a BIRD or an AIRPLANE
paper + scissors = paper on top of the scissors and rock the top hand back and forth like a SEESAW
scissors + scissors = make chopping claw gestures like a CRAB
scissors + rock = put the rock on top of the scissors to make an ICE CREAM cone
scissors + rock = put scissors under the rock like the antennae of a SNAIL
rock + rock = pretend to place fists on a steering wheel and drive a CAR
rock + rock = fists out like riding a BICYCLE (don’t forget to ring the bell with your thumb)

The list is endless, be creative and also let the students try and come up with their own.

Check on the Knock Knock English website sometime in April/May for more ideas after Super Simple Songs Two is released.

if you’re happy….

If You’re Happy and You Know It….most versions go something like "clap your hands", "stomp your feet", "shout hooray", and the odd version ends with "do all three" (the fun part)
One activity I like is one that builds on this a bit.  I usually introduce it by trying the above version first.  Then, I have the students come up with some actions we can do.  Go around the class adding action ofter action–the sillier the better.  If a student can’t can come up with something, and are standing fidgeting and mumbling, "I don’t know", make that their chosen action and they"ll get a huge kick out of it. 
When you come to the final version and can take no more, speed it up, then speed it up again.

guess!

There are plenty of activities involving some sort of guessing that work well with young kids.
One I never really thought to try until today was, a ‘guess the page I am reading’ game.
We use a series from Oxford University Press called, Potato Pals so I opened up to random pages in one of the readers, pretending to be reading (to myself) the phrase on that page.  Then, I had the students each guess which page I was reading, i.e. which phrase. Next I had the students take turns being the "reader".  It ended up being a fun, child-centered activity.   

If you’ve ever tried a guessing game that involves students handling more than one card at a time, you know it has potential for disaster and at best is a big time-consumer.  In this case, because you are using the pages from the reader, they have no problem choosing their phrase. 

name that tune

To mix things up a bit today, I started off my class by having the kids hum our usual hello song.  They thought it was hilarious and really enjoyed it.  So, I went with it and ended up playing a kid’s version of "name that tune."   I hummed some of our usual class songs to see if they could come up with the words/and or title.  Then I had the students try.  It ended up being a great activity that got the kids trying to recall language and song lyrics and sing and speak them in a different setting, i.e without the CD playing.