Arts and Crafts

"Arts and Crafts" sessions have got many benefits for our students, for instance, promote cross-curricular knowledge, involve variety and fun, give a sense of achievement in creating something new and promote teamwork and co-operative learning.


In this section, teachers had the opportunity to learn  many useful verbs, phrases and nouns for doing arts and crafts in their classes. Moreover, teachers rolled their sleeves up, and made a stained glass window with a black card template and some tissue paper. Perhaps inspired by Hove Cathedral?? Thank you teacher Janet for this fantastic activity!!!


What do you need?


- Black card template with a dragonfly.
- Tissue paper.
- A straw.
- Scissors.
- Glue.
- Cello tape.

Instructions:
1. Take your template and choose the tissue papers you like.

 

2. Then, tear off pieces of the tissue papers you have chosen and stick them on the back of the template. The way you place the pieces of paper is up to you!

3. Finally, attach the straw to the bottom corner of the template using a piece of cello tape.

Poems, rhymes and chants

How do we say words? Indeed, English is a non very intuitive language as far as saying words is concerned. Forget spelling and a have a look at the following poem:

Source: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/12/14/87/121487db49a9fe60920257ca550a2fb8.jpg


Cords are a good tool for arty and crafty works, for example, to make fashionable bracelets. The difficulty of the task can be adapted depending on the level of the students. 1st graders can start with a simple plait, for example. Manipulating cords is also an excellent activity for fine psychomotricity:

Source: http://pulserasdehilo.net/tag/trenzado/

Poems, rhymes and tongue twisters

Poems, rhymes and tongue twisters are great resources for teachers. Students can memorize vocabulary, learn grammatical aspects without realizing it and also practise intonation and pronunciation. It was an amazing lesson in which teachers were able to learn more about English literature and act some funny tongue twisters and action songs:

What about making a proper cup with proper clay for Father's Day? Have a look at this one. I am sure 6th graders would love to do it. You can colour it or not. Easy and funny!!

Source: http://createartwithme.com/my-classroom/middle-school-art/

Phonetics: Rhythm and Stress

During this course, we had some lessons focusing on Phonetics too. It is well known that English stress and rhythm are not easy tasks for Spanish speakers. We had our chance with the song "Brighton in the Rain", by Jonathan Dykes and Robert Campbell. This a very popular song which is very often used to practise the Present Perfect tense, but we did our best to say it with a proper English intonation.


https://englishvillage.eu/2013/05/17/brighton-in-the-rain-lve-never-been-to-athens-present-perfect-experience/

It would be lovely to make an umbrella for a rainy day. Let's try this activity with 5th or 6th grade students;

Here’s what you need:

• shaving cream
• food coloring
• baking sheet
• butter knife
• card stock paper
• scissors
• glue
• black paper
• umbrella template

It’s super simple to create this swirled look. To start, spray shaving cream onto a baking sheet. Then drop food coloring around the sheet. Swirl around using a butter knife (or something similar).

Next, place a piece of card stock paper on top of the shaving cream and press down until the whole paper is coated. Then pull it off the shaving cream and let it sit for a few minutes.
After about 30 minutes, the paper will be dry and ready to make into an umbrella!


You can make the umbrella however you’d like. You can use an umbrella template (click here). Print the umbrella template, cut it out, and trace it onto the shaving cream paper. After tracing, cut out the umbrella and glue it onto a black piece of paper. Cut out raindrops from the blue shaving cream paper. You do not need to use a template with the raindrops.

Source: https://teachingmama.org/rainy-day-umbrella-craft/