Alphabet Soup!

As technology and the internet become more readily available, why not take advantage of the fun resources for your children online!?

One we would like to highlight today is the "Alphabet Soup" game on the Sesame Street website! This game is perfect for the beginner readers. Words are spelt out but are missing one letter. You just have to insert one letter!

Click the Picture Below:

As always, with any internet activity, please keep a close watch over your child. With ads and random pop-ups, anything can accidentally clicked on. I would advise disabling pop-ups, if your internet browser doesn't already have that setting in place AND setting up parental settings that restrict certain websites. Google has some resources you can check out it too (especially if you plan on leaving your young child unattended for any period of time while he or she is playing online). http://www.google.com/goodtoknow/familysafety/

Happy Friday everyone!

Write Your Own Folk Tale.

After reading an article about African folktales, we thought it'd be a fun activity for your little one to write a folktale of their own.

African folktales are cultural stories that have been passsed down from generation to generation filled with experiences, animals, environment, and more. Folktales tend to explain events people couldn't understand, or the reasons why animals act and look the way they do. For example, ask your child what he or she thinks about why the moon rises or how the zebra got his stripes. Be creative and work together!


What you will need:

• Construction paper
• Scissors
• Glue
• Markers, crayons, or paints
• Lined paper
• Pencil or pen
• Yarn or pipe cleaners

Step 1: Do a thought jogger with your child to help them come up with creative animals to use.  Be sure to discuss the parts of the story with your child too.


Step 2: Have your child practice by writing down the details of the story one line at a time neatly. Have them draw a picture to match what they describe.

Step 3:Have your creative genius make a final copy and bind it together with pipe cleaners or colorful yarn!

Step 4: Have fun!

We hope you and your family enjoy this activity and we hope you have a great weekend!

Guest Blog: Great Internet Resources

Vince Scalise, 

ESOL Instructor

Students working on their language skills today have wonderful free resources available to them. In our age of technology there are numerous web sites, YouTube videos and blogs for language learners. As an ESL instructor working with multi-level students I have found the Internet invaluable.

Most of my lessons I pull from different sites, but I will always tweak them a little. I go to Google Images to add pictures whenever possible, and I have found that extremely helpful for our ESL students. I also send out some cyber lessons every Monday to my students. These are mostly from YouTube but also from a few web sites I like, which correspond with the class lessons for the week.

I would like to share a few of these sites with you.

http://www.youtube.com/ - type in the lesson you are interested in. I recommend adding some music videos with the lyrics. This is a fun way to practice diction.

http://www.engvid.com/ - One of my favorite sites, this is from a language school, their instructors are great.

http://www.youtube.com/user/JenniferESL - An ESL instructor has posted her lessons on YouTube

http://www.cambridge.org/us/esl/venturesadulted/venturesarcade/index.html

http://www.englishclub.com/ - check out their idioms

http://esl.about.com/

http://www.uic.edu/depts/tie/coolsites.htm - this list from University of Illinois in Chicago has numerous sites.

These are just the tip of the iceberg. I encourage everyone to explore the web for helpful lessons. It is a free source of great information. And these sites are not just for ESL students, any topic can be found. I even found some of the old “Schoolhouse Rocks” videos, which I used in my citizenship class. If anyone would like to be added to my distant learner e-mail group please email me at yanks78915@aol.com.

It's all in the eyes.

When you think of reading to your children, your class or a young child, you usually think to point out the pictures, the colors, and all the pretty things on the pages. Now all of that is wonderful, but what about the actual text of the book? Isn't that what we want them to eventually understand so they can be successful readers? Well, a recent study shows that pre-school children who are read to and have help focusing on the text of the books are better readers as they grow up. In part of the study, they watched children's eye movements to see where they were focusing on and usually it was on the teacher or the picture, but not the text! They gave a few tips on to how to get children to begin focusing on the text so they could familiarize themselves with the letters and full words.

Try it yourself! See if your child is focusing on the words by simply watching their eyes when you read to them. Perhaps their only focusing on the pictures or looking at you? Of course its difficult to get a young child to focus but there are some great ways to make it happen! For instance you could use "matching cards" made out of pieces of paper or flash cards with the words and letters on them from the book you are about to read. Then, after you read a few sentences ask the child to match the letter or card in their hand with the word or letter on the page. You could also ask the child to find the first word on the page, or the last word on the page. This matching game will have their reading skills soar and they will be independent readers before your very eyes!

I hope you enjoyed learning something new today and be sure to share it with others. Have a Happy Friday everyone!