TEFL – DÜD DÜD

TEFL

ESL Review: Mideer / Andreu Toys Geometry & Animal Puzzle

Gepost op 11 juli 2020 door Emine

One of the puzzles my girls absolutely love are the animal puzzles I got from Andreu Toys. They love making the little puzzles although it’s sometimes requires a bit of hand/eye coordination to get them to line up correctly. Next to that it is great for their language development and I also used them in my lessons to do just that. Under the picture gallery I will explain some games that I do with them. This puzzle was rather cheap as well so that also helps a lot.

So obviously you have your basic animal naming. Naming colors and shapes is also an option and I would definitely advise it.

You could do a matching of the shapes with the animals. This is a great way to use the shape name. Take out the shape in the middle and see where it fits or match it with the small animals.

You can do big and small / sorting by size and you could make it mommy/daddy and baby since there is a small example with every puzzle.

You can also flip the puzzle or the example upside down and let them match the puzzle with the animal with just looking at the shape of the animal.

The small animals you could also use in a who is missing game. Put all the animals on the table, name them, let the kids close their eyes and remove 1 and later 2 or even 3 animals. Let them name the missing animals. When you remove more than 1 animal you can first count and see how many are missing. That’s a nice way to integrate subtractions.

There are many more options and of course you can implement this kind of puzzles for other subjects if you know how to make them yourself.

Disclaimer: The reviewed product wasn’t subject to any sponsorship. I purchased itmyself. I do am open to sponsorship, but will always mention it when I received a product to review.

Brands, Craft material, Development, Fine Motor Skills, homeschooling, Little Brain, TEFL, Toys

Review : Little Brain Paint Sticks

Gepost op 10 juni 20207 juni 2020 door Emine

I love doing crafts, but let’s face it painting often creates a mess. In my lessons that’s why I almost never use paints and at home while homeschooling well how bad as it sounds…. With 2 kids… a 2 year old and a 4 year old letting them paint is a big struggle. Whether is is in the classroom or at home water cups always spills everywhere, pictures need to dry, not to mention clothes that get wet and painted on. I found a great solution…. Little Brain Paint Sticks.

With the paint sticks there is no need of water and the pictures don’t need to dry. It washes off easily from clothes and the colors are nice and very bright. They also come in a nice metal edition and since we love glitters those are perfect for my girls. They also last a long time and don’t dry out.

My kids definitely are big fans. You can color with them but also use them as a stamp as we did on the turtle that you can see below. You can experiment with mixing colors and without any mess. Believe me my kids love to color next to the paper or on themselves and it cleaned up nicely and easily. According to the website you can also use it on windows, but we didn’t try that (yet).

I know that as a TEFL teacher you often don’t have any input in the materials purchased or used, but it might be worth it to try and convince your management to ask the parents to provide these to use in the classroom or to ask your management if they can provide a few sets. I prefer this over pencils, markers and crayons to be honest.

Disclaimer: The reviewed product wasn’t subject to any sponsorship. I purchased it myself. I do am open to sponsorship, but will always mention it when I received a product to review.

Development, homeschooling, Math, playset, Pretend play, TEFL, Toys, wood

TEFL Review: wooden pizza

Gepost op 6 juni 20207 juni 2020 door Emine

One of my favorite toys to use in classroom and in drama lessons is this pizza. Also at home in homeschooling lessons it is a very popular toy/tool. Pizza… so that’s a lesson on food? Yes, but also a drama lesson, a math’s lesson counting and but also fraction and all of that are at the same time ….. yes English lessons. I also think it is very important that kids learn mathematical terms in English at a young age.

As you can see this pizza comes with some condiments. I identified them as salami, mushroom, tomato, spices, pineapple and cheese. With the kids I love to order a piece of pizza with 3 condiments or with just one. I first show how to order food and then they can mimic it. It always lead to fun lessons.

This pizza is also great to teach fractions and show them visually 1/3rd = 2/6th for example, but at the same way you ordered pizza before you can now order pizza in fraction half a pizza, 1/3rd, 5/6th,…. Even struggling students will love this way of practicing.

For the lower grades you can also practice your basic math skills. We have 6 pieces of pizza and we eat 3 pieces. How many pieces are left? I baked 2 pieces of pizza and you baked 3 pieces. How many pieces do we have? Once they get it with pizza, you practice it with the add and subtract while still showing the pizza pieces and eventually you can leave the pizza away. You will see it will go very smooth.

Now I like wooden toys to use in class because they are sustainable, but you could also make your own paper or cardboard pizza’s and laminate them so you can reuse them.

Disclaimer: The reviewed product wasn’t subject to any sponsorship. I purchased it myself. I do am open to sponsorship, but will always mention it when I received a product to review.

Development, Fine Motor Skills, TEFL, Toys, wood

TEFL Review: Wooden beehive picking toy

Gepost op 22 mei 20207 juni 2020 door Emine

This game is very well liked by my kids. It is great to use in a one on one lesson or for home schooling. The concept is fairly easy place the bees in the right place in the beehive. You have to be a bit inventive to use it in class but it is doable. I’m really happy with the quality after almost a year my daughter finally managed to pull of the wings of 1 of the bees. She loved fiddling with it and tried a really long time to get them off.

This game of course is used for really young learners. You can add it to an animal or bug theme. It is great in one on one lessons. It is also great to use with toddlers because it is great to develop their fine motor skills. In class I use it either in one on one or on learning stations or to present the subject bugs/bees/beehive.

How to use it? Well as I said the main purpose is to place the bees in the right place in the beehive. You can ‘make mistakes’ so the children can practice true or false/correct or incorrect. The children obviously can practice their colors by saying which color bee is that is placed incorrect. Another classroom favorite is which bee is missing. The children sit around the table, eyes closed, I remove one or more bees and the children need to tell me which bees are missing. It is also a great way to make students start to combine words. Instead of just saying red, they must say red bee.

However I also use it to do math all in the purpose of CLIL teaching, I do it more with first and second grade students. How many bees are there? We have put 2 bees away. How many more do we need to place? Or the missing bees game but with how many are missing.

And how about using it for learning prepositions of place. Which lets face it is sometimes hard to make them remember. In, next to, on, between,… You can all demonstrate and practice them with the placement of the bees.

For a very simple toy there sure are a lot of options. It all depends on your imagination. I’m planning to start to record video’s on how to use these different toys.

Disclaimer: The reviewed product wasn’t subject to any sponsorship. I purchased it myself. I do am open to sponsorship, but will always mention it when I received a product to review.

TEFL

Welcome to my new blog

Gepost op 20 april 202022 april 2020 door Emine

Welcome to my new blog. This blog is all about testing materials to use in language lessons. I’m planning on using different toys and show how they are compatible with my lessons.

The lessons I’m teaching apply to young learners. I will do 3 types of video’s and blogposts:

Lessons designed for young learners mainly in English but also Dutch and French lessons will be created.
Testing of materials and show how to use them in language learning.
Showing cool STEM experiments that can be used to teach English or other languages

Why this blog?

The original idea was to have video’s to inspire other teacher on how to use materials, but I’ve made a separate blog for that. This one will be filled with pictures and video’s for kids, ready materials etc… So this is more child oriented where as my teacher teach the teacher site gives more of an how to… approach. I won’t keep it English only cause while teaching my children Dutch, English and Turkish I’ve noticed a big lack of Dutch and Turkish materials. For English I know there is a lot out there, but mainly a lot of animated video’s where a lot is going on. While that will work with most children there also are children that easily get overstimulated and who really need plain video’s. Which is exactly what I want to make.

I hope you will enjoy this blog. I’m full of ideas and I can’t wait to share them.

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