Let’s review numbers!

April 9, 2008 at 12:51 am | Posted in Children's Classes, Teaching Tips: Numbers | Leave a comment
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Reviewing is a really important part about teaching and learning a language. I know in my own studies of Japanese, if I don’t review every day I lose a lot. Of course, kids are a lot smarter than me in general : ) but it is still a good idea to review often, every lesson even.

For some inspiration, here is a video of me dancing to my Numbers Blues song at a teachers meeting. My students really like this song, and a song is a great way to review!

You can check out more about the Numbers Blues here. Also, I have a free numbers song, Let’s Count.

Counting students is always a good review too! Have fun.

Another Easy Counting Game

February 7, 2008 at 12:16 pm | Posted in Teaching Tips: Numbers | Leave a comment
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I realized sometime ago that if I let my youngest students, 2-3 year olds, go too long with out using their little hands, they get really restless. So sometimes I ask them to close their eyes, and I put things around the room to pick up. I use different things, crayons, small pieces of construction paper cut out into shapes, etc.

After putting the objects around the room, I ask them to open their eyes and go pick up as many of the objects as they can. Once they have finished, I ask them to sit down and we take turns counting the objects that they collected.

Very easy, very fun and educational for the students. I always follow this kind of activity up with an easy to sing numbers song such as the Numbers Blues, or Let’s Count 1-10.

Easy Counting Game

January 30, 2008 at 10:48 am | Posted in Teaching Tips: Numbers | Leave a comment
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I often use this quick and easy numbers game: Ask the students to repeat the number of claps, jumps, or spins after you and do them. For example, say “Four jumps!” and have the students say that, and then jump four times.

For older students, I ask them to choose what they want to do, and have them ask the class. In the middle of the Numbers Blues there is a section where I say. ” One Spin, Two Jumps, Three Claps”. This is a good warm up song for this game.

Simple Numbers Game

January 8, 2008 at 1:16 pm | Posted in Children's Classes, Teaching Tips: Numbers | 1 Comment
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With my younger students, ages 2-6, I do a lot of counting objects. At Christmas time we counted little bells, these days we are counting crayons. You can really use any object around you. To make it a bit more fun, ask the students to close their eyes, and change the number of objects. For example, if you already counted 10 crayons, ask the students to close their eyes and remove the crayons so there are 5 left. Next ask the students to open their eyes, and ask how many objects. The students have a lot of fun trying to count quickly, and yelling out the number. You can do this many times in a row, and the students don’t get bored. I always follow up something like this with a song, of course. You can check out Dream English’s Let’s Count 1 to 10 here.  It’s a free download, and is great for kids from 1 to 10 years old.  

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