demons out! luck in!

In Japan, Setsubun is celebrated on the 3rd of February. It’s a celebration of the division of seasons but it usually refers to the spring division. Spring setsubun is around the same time as the Lunar New Year and in the past it was thought of as a new year celebration. The practice of cleansing the evils of the past year and scaring off the evils of the coming year is still done today, especially with school children. Beans are thrown (mamemaki) to symbolize this.

Usually they are thrown at a person wearing an “oni” (demon) mask. At school, often a staff member will wear a mask and visit each of the rooms and the children will throw beans at them.

At Knock Knock English, we have our own version of Setsubun we do in class every year leading up to the holiday. Ed Emberley’s “Go Away Big Green Monster” works great for this. We tried beans once but it was all a bit too messy! So, in recent years we’ve settled on these cute little fluffy pompom balls.

They’re great to review some counting, colors, etc before you begin the activity.

The kids throw the pompoms at the monster in the book after the second half when he is slowly disappearing. In real Setsubun activities, “Oni wa soto! Fuku wa uchi!” is shouted. It means something like, “demons out! luck in!” We opt for “Go Away Monster” and it works great. Then we leave the room and come back in with a real Oni mask.

It’s nice to see little light bulbs go off as the students make the connection between this fun English activity and the traditional Setsubun activities they do in kindergarten/school.

If you’re not in Japan, celebrate Setsubun anyway! It’s a fun introduction to Japanese culture for young children. Or a great way to get over the fear of monsters under the bed! A quick google search on “Setsubun” will get you all the information you need.

So Happy Setsubun everyone. May your new year be full of luck…not demons!

cleanup madness takes over the world…

Dyson vacum cleaner – $500

Roomba robot vacum cleaner – $700

Maid service – $400/month

Super Simple Songs – $17.50

hmmmm……….

Thanks to Onchankids for sharing!!

musical colors

If you have a small class, here’s a quick and easy game you can play instead of musical chairs. It’s great if you don’t have chairs in your classroom or don’t want to go through the fuss of getting them out and putting them away.

I also use this sometimes when the class is a bit rowdy and I need the students to sit. Assign them a color and that’s their color for the rest of whatever activity you’re doing. (Works well for story time with an active class).

Cut six (or how ever many students you have in your classes) big circles of different colors laminated with large A3 laminate and tape them all together in a line.

It stores easily and can be pulled out for an quick and easy game of musical chairs (colors). Play some music, the students walk around the mat, and when you stop the music the students sit on any color. You can then ask the students (or have them ask each other) what color they’re sitting on.

Now, fold up one color, leaving 5. Play the music again. Repeat!

(Depending on how you fold it, you’ll get many color combinations so that you can use different colors each time if you want).

Some variations include placing vocabulary cards on the whiteboard with colors next to them and encourage the students to figure out which vocab card corresponds to the color they are sitting on. For students who are reading, you could write the colors next to the vocab cards, or write colors next to words:

i.e.

red – sunny
blue – cloudy
green – rainy
yellow – snowy
etc.

For younger children, its sometimes difficult for them to understand the concept of being “out” so you might want to just play the game without folding up colors and just play with the vocabulary or talk about colors.

You can also have the children who are “out” assist you in folding up colors, playing and stopping the music, or switching cards around on the whiteboard.

When it’s down to one color, I usually put some other object a few feet from the last color and the remaining two students have to walk around both. This avoids them stepping all over the last spot in attempt to be the winner.

It’s also very portable so if you’re out traveling to different schools, you can easily put it in your backpack and take it with you. If you have two or more, they make a great way to organize large classes into lines for relay race games. They also work well for team games. For example, if you had 20 students and 4 color mats, you could divide the class up into 4 teams and play musical chairs. When everyone sits down, you call out a color, and of the four students sitting on that color, the first one to call out the corresponding vocab/phrase, gets a point for the team.

a little video i really like