My elementary students are busy learning the songs of Martin’s Day. Next week they will be parading into the pre-k & kindergarten classrooms, carrying their beautiful clay lanterns and singing the songs.
To help learn the songs, here are links to two YouTube videos:
I am so excited for our Lantern Parade this year! It will be our second year parading the 1st – 4th-graders into the four pre-k/kindergarten classrooms. This year, the elementary school students made the most beautiful lanterns out of clay!
They started with a slab of clay. They rolled it out and cut a base. Then they drew designs of moons and suns and cut out stars.
Then we helped them roll the slab and attach it to the base:
They were fired in the kiln. Then the children painted them with glaze, and they were fired a second time. Meanwhile, the children strung beads onto wire, which we then attached to make handles. I’m so amazed by how beautifully they turned out!
Aren’t they spectacular?! They are on display at school until our parade on November 12th!
I recently posted my Halloween Bingo game to play in German. Actually, you could use the Bingo Cards in any language as long as you know the words for all of the images!
But I forgot to explain how we were going to play it! So here are THE RULES:
Before we began, I used the word posters to review the vocab.
Then I used the little cards to “draw” the image. I also rolled a die to see in which column (Spalte) they had to look for the image. Obviously there are only 5 columns. So if I rolled a 6, they could cover the images anywhere on the board. (The boards have each image two times – 12 images for 24 squares.)
My 3rd & 4th grades had a blast playing!
I also had non-candy prizes for them. I had found some German pencils at Teacher’s Discovery. They say “Mach Fehler. So lernst du.” I thought that was a fun phrase! You can get them here (12 for $3.95).
My 1st and 2nd graders are so squirrely! It is hard to get through a Story Listening lesson. So I have decided to try to keep the stories short (still rich with content) and sing songs for the second part of our class.
I came across the song “Grün, grün, grün” again recently. It’s such a great song for colors. But at the same time, I find some of the verses to be a bit cumbersome. I mean, “Schornsteinfeger”?! That’s something of a tongue-twister!
Then I found some super cute Halloween kids clipart and thought that would work really well for adapting the song. It would be even better if the kids’ costumes were truly monochromatic, but I think it’s close enough 😉
Of course, I made some word posters to help teach the song. There is a set with the color words and a set without them – your choice!
I came up with the following characters:
Check them out:
You can download them all for FREE here: Grün, grün, grün Plakate GitA
Just take the original song and change the lyrics:
Grün, grün, grün sind alle meine Kleider
Grün, grün, grün ist alles, was ich habe
Darum liebe ich alles, was grün ist
Weil mein Schatz ein Jäger ist
I’d love to hear from you! How are you using these materials? And how did it go??
Earlier this week, I wrote this post with materials to help teach the song, “Mein Hut, der hat drei Ecken.”
My club kids had SO much fun with this silly song! They are my oldest group (4th & 5th graders), so they caught on to the vocab very quickly. Having the pages with the text and the words replaced by pictures helped us all through the repetitions of the song.
We still got the motions mixed up and sang words where they didn’t belong! There were a lot of giggles 🙂 But I always say that you remember things better when you are having fun with them!
I know we will sing the song again next week. I think we might take the final page – the one with the most images – and practice just the words that are left before we tackle the song again.
Go back to the original post to download all the materials for FREE 🙂
I remember learning the song “Mein Hut, der hat drei Ecken” in school. It’s a simple, silly song, but it definitely sticks.
My boys love, it, too. Especially this extra silly version from Die 30 Besten Spiel- und Bewegungslieder:
I’ve been wanting to teach it, using this version. So today I finally came up with a way to do it! I have the text written out 6 times. Each time that a word is replaced by a sound, I use a picture instead of the word. I also have word posters for each of the words that get left out: mein, Hut, drei, Ecken, & nicht.
I’ll start by introducing the 5 words with the images. Then go over the entire song text. When we’re ready to sing the whole thing, I’ll start with page 1 (all words, no sounds). Then move on to page 2 when the word Hut is replaced. Keep flipping to the next page as more words are replaced by sounds. Until finally you go back to the original with all the words.
Of course, if you watch the video, you can also see how to use movements to replace the words.
You can download the PDF for FREE here: Mein Hut Songtext GitA
Last year I made up some Halloween Bingo cards, but I forgot to post them! I never actually had a chance to use them, either. Maybe this year?!
There is a whole set of materials:
Here is a sample of some of the word posters:
And here is what the small cards with words look like:
Now the only thing I have left to do is figure out what I’m using for Bingo chips! It would be fun to have something Halloween related. I’m just not sure what that would be….
