Wednesday and Thursday morning I spend at Rybičky, my church's family center where mothers come with their children during their maternity holiday (2-3 years in the Czech Republic). Every morning Monday-Thursday has various activities: exercises for the children with their moms, crafts, Bible study, English lessons. I have an English conversation class with the moms on Wednesday and teach English to the kids on Thursday. Mirka, one of the directors, generally plans the kid's lesson around a specific theme, and then she and I refine it and I execute it as a native English speaker. So far this year we've learned colors, farm animals, and some Christmas words. This is what our lesson looks like:
We start with a hello song
and lots of kids. Usually by the end of the lesson half of them have left. :) Normal is 10-12 kids,
ages 2ish to 5ish.
Then we learn new words. With every month's theme, we have a song. This month was farm animals and our song was about animals and the (English) sounds they make, along with movements. (The pig on the farm goes "oink, oink, oink"... to the tune of The Wheels on the Bus. And yes, Czech animals make different sounds!)
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| matching stuffed animals with the word |
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| everyone gets an animal to "be" throughout this lesson |
One month was colors. We pick up lots of flowers and bottle caps of various colors off the floor. :)
And then we play lots more games and sing lots of songs. London Bridge...
Row, row, row your boat
Walking, running, jumping song
Mirka is really good at connecting all the activities - they will involve colors or our animals or whatever we're learning! Activities like Row, Row, Row your Boat we sing because we need to "go" somewhere - maybe to find our lost animals on the farm, or because it was raining and we joined Noah on the ark. Later the sun came out and we practiced the colors of the rainbow.
At the end of every lesson we have an activity that we do to remember our lesson, and put it in our notebook for the year
And then every week we sing good-bye to Jan. We sing hello and good-bye to lots of people and animals throughout our lessons. :)
Sometimes I help with other events at Rybičky. This was a bonfire at the beginning of fall where we had various games and activities for children.
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| collecting caps of 1 color |
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| making pictures with colored bottle caps |
Last week Mikulaš came (he's kind of like Santa, but he comes on Dec. 5, usually with an angel and a devil) and gave out treats (nuts and oranges) to every child.
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| Mikulaš hid treats under these that the children (or mothers) made |
I never thought I'd be teaching pre-schoolers. Honestly, I never thought I'd want to. Though lessons take a LOT of energy and are sometimes chaotic, they can be really fun. The kids are so excited when they remember the English words, and when I see them outside of Rybičky, they are starting to remember me and exclaim, "You teach English!"
