Quick Ideas for Very Young Learners

Quick Ideas for Very Young Learners Submitted by: Simon Goodwin

Here are some ideas from Simon Goodwin who teaches very young learners in Japan. Some of his students are not even 2 years old yet!

1. Fishing: cut out some fish (or other animals/target vocabulary e.g. fruit) and make fishing rods with sticks, string and magnets. Put a paper clip on the fish and let the kids catch them. Good for practicing colours, numbers (how many do you have?), ready steady go, here you are/thank you, etc. For higher levels you can even request that they catch certain objects.

2. Musical statues: everyone has to jump / run / sleep / drink / eat / etc until the music stops and then they have to freeze. Teaching them to stop comes in handy for classroom management later! I'm teaching them animals at the moment so we do this game "in character".

3. ABC-silent song: a good test of whether they have learned the letters or just the song. Get them to arrange the alphabet cards and then sing the song. Turn over one card each. Sing the song again, but when you get to a card which has been turned over, you must clap e.g. a b c d e f clap h i j clap l m clap clap.


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