Winter English Festival...Snowmen

6th Grade

 

 Before Christmas I was given a week to do "whatever I wanted" with the kids. This sounds like a lot of freedom, but in reality it was one 40 minute class with each class during the week that I did not have to use the book....

I wanted to do something different that the kids did not know about and since it was around Christmas, I wanted to do something that was Christmas/ winter related. I ended up deciding that I would tell the kids the story of "Frosty the Snowman" and have them listen to book/ song/ movie. 

I started the beginning of the week having the kids listen to a you tube recording of the original book being read, but after a few classes it was obvious that the kids weren't really understanding as much as I wanted them to. So, for the rest of the week, I told them the story using smaller words and sentences and even drawing pictures on the board! I was a real life story teller! How fun!?

Obviously, I am an artsy person, and when I am given the choice, I will always want to do something art related with the kids, so I decided that there would also be 2 different art snowman that the kids would make. The first one with the 6th graders would be Q-tip snowmen. 

My school has zero budget, and what little money we had was spent months ago on candy, so I had to get creative! I found a few colors of colored paper, and bought some Q-tips myself from the local Daiso (dollar store). The kids were asked to bring their own white poster paint. 

 I started out the lesson, by telling them the story of "Frosty the Snowman", making sure to explain how famous this snowman is. I explained that is America our snowman always have 3 parts, a bottom, middle, and head. In Korea, the snowmen here only have 2 parts...

After the story telling took place, I explained the art activity. While they were working of their snowmen and being creative, I played multiple versions of "Frosty the Snowmen". Some were sung with words on the screen, but I even had a version with Jackson 5 singing. Also thrown in the mix was a part of the kids movie that gets played every year. 

I think that the kids enjoyed this activity. I KNOW it was better than doing English in book! For some of the classes that are really good at doing their work, I let them listen to English Christmas songs off of youtube. The one that they requested was Mariah Carey, "All I want for Christmas", which I thought was kind of cute and luckily the only Mariah Carey song that has a video suitable for Korean children to watch. ahah

It was a crazy week rushing from class to class with different art supplies and keeping the kids on task when they knew that they were so close to winter vacation! I'm pretty sure that is tough for teachers all over the World! I know that my mom always had trouble with controlling the excitement and lack of motivation to do school work before vacation...

 

I do have a favorite class. This is them, 6-7. They are the class that listens and are wonderful! They know they are my favorite and want to keep that status, so sometimes I get an applause when I walk through the door. Last time after giving them candy I got numerous, "Marie Teacher, you are so beautiful!" Gosh, how do you not love em' when they tell you that! ahaha!