Augustus and his Smile

This week in the Children's English Hour we spent time exploring feelings: happy, sad, and angry. We practiced the song "If You're Happy and You Know It!" with super silly motions - not just clapping your hands! When we sang about being sad we had to pat our heads, and if we were angry we stomped our feet. The kids made up other motions we could do if we were feeling a certain way, so we came up with some great (and sometimes silly) vocabulary! Our story time book for this week was Augustus and His Smile by Catherine Rayner, a lovely book about a rambunctious, curious tiger who searched far and wide for his own missing smile. Because feelings are strongly associated with emotions, the kids were able to paint their own colorful portraits of Augustus the tiger with watercolors!

Musical accompaniment for our creative project: Some playful, early pieces from Thelonious Monk

Vocabulary: happy, sad, angry, smile, frown, watercolors, all the colors of the rainbow, paint brush, cup of water, tiger, clap your hands, stomp your feet, pat your head, jazz, piano

Olivia!

This week we focused on dressing up. What better way than with Olivia! The children found the book very funny, and easy to understand with Ian Falconer's incredible illustrations. Most found Olivia's sand castle building skills the funniest.

For our creative project we made Olivia paper dolls. The children cut out the Olivia shaped dolls and then "dressed them up" with red tissue paper and red markers. Ball gowns were a popular option, as well as bathing suits, and even lederhosen. 

And of course, we listened to Maria Callas during the project.

With a Baaaah Baaaah Here and a Baaah Baaah There...

It was a wild and wooly week at the Children's Art Workshop, continuing our focus on farm animals- mainly sheep!

With A Moo Moo Here and a Moo Moo There!

Never have I heard a song sung so loud. Because most children in Germany are familiar with Old MacDonald, this is a super easy song to learn in English, and a great tool for building animal vocabulary. We always sing it a few times and the last time around I simply point to the animals in the book First 100 Words and the children gleefully belt out the song! And, did you know that Old MacDonald also has tigers, penguins and elephants on his farm? 

After singing lots of our favorite songs in English, we created cow masks!

The animal oriented hour ended with a fun parachute exercise, monkeys jumping on the bed, and lots of mooing!

Hand Print Rainbow Banners

Crafting our hand print rainbow banners was great fun!

Once our handprints were dry, we were ready to cut them out.

Parents helped by drawing a line around each handprint.

Here's volunteer Leonie asking the kids, "Which color ribbon do you want?" The kids had to answer, "I want red, please." Or yellow or blue!

Malina knows all her colors in English already!

Madita knows just where she's going to hang up her banner!

Leonie gets to hang Torben's handprint rainbow banner up in the workshop!

Chameleons & Rainbows

We started off the August-October round of the Children's Art Workshop with color! 

After singing our favorite songs, like the Energy Song and the Friendship Song, we read  Leo Lionni's "A Color of His Own", the story of a chameleon looking for his true self. On his journey of self discovery the chameleon changes color a lot - and the kids helped by shouting out which color the chameleon had changed on each page. Then we went to the creative table to create art that would help us remember the colors of the rainbow in English.

This was a two part project. The first week was messy fun mixing the colors of the rainbow and making hand prints of each. Of course, we had fun remembering that "red and yellow make orange" and that "blue and red make purple". For musical accompaniment we enjoyed Claude Bolling's Suite for Flute and Jazz Piano.

Katja - Yannik's mama - is inspired!


Children's Art Workshop Numer One Helper Leonie likes to make Magic Bubbles for the kids!

We carefully put our beautiful hand prints on the drying rack to dry and then enjoyed Magic Bubbles to a new wonderful bubble song - Pure Imagination by Lori Carsillo is the most beautiful interpretation of the classic by Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newly! (If you are interested in some beautiful sleepy-time music for children, please support Lori's amazing work and purchase her wonderful Lullabies for Little Dreamers.)

We finished up with a new song, Tall & Small, Count and Move, and our new goodbye song about cars and trains and boats and planes. Our stamp of the day was a train: 

"What is it?"

"It's a train!"

"What color is it?"

"It's blue!"

"Is it a red train?"

"No, it isn't. It's a blue train!"

Summer English - Week 4

This week, Rebecca joined us for The Children's English Hour! To celebrate the last week of our summer series, we explored caterpillars, butterflies and lots of food...

...beginning with Eric Carle's The Hungry Caterpillar!  Rebecca even created a wonderful song for the event describing how a caterpillar creates a cocoon and then emerges as a beautiful butterfly. We also sang the Friendship Song, The energy Song, and Bubble Pop - one of our all-time favorites about how various sea creatures move about in the water. 

Then it was time for some creativity, to help strengthen our vocabulary. This weeks project was to make brightly colored butterflies! 

We finished up with our summertime parachute song about Summertime bugs - a ladybug, a butterfly, a caterpillar, a bee, a dragonfly, and several flowers - that dance and fly on the parachute, and our stamp dialogue, which was about a green sun!

This week's creative project was accompanied by Yo Yo Ma playing Bach's Cello Suites - perfect butterfly music!

Englisch für Kinder!

The English Nursery ⎮ Eltern & Baby Englisch

Mit englischen Lullabies, Nursery Rhymes, Fingerspiele und Kinderbüchern machen Sie mit Ihrem Sprössling den ersten Schritten in Zweisprachigkeit.

Donnerstags ❉ 21. August bis 09. Oktober ❉ 10:00-10:45 ❉ 64,00

The Children's English Hour ⎮ Frühenglisch für Vorschulkinder

Kinder von zwei bis sechs Jahren und ihre Eltern treffen sich einmal pro Woche, um in die englische Sprache einzutauchen: mit ausgewählten englischen Kinderbüchern, kleinen Bastel-Projekten, Musik, Singen und Spielen mit sprachorientiertem Spielzeug lernen Kinder die englische Sprache zu lieben!

Dienstags ❉ 19. August bis 07. Oktober ❉ 10:00-10:45 ❉ 72,00 Euro

Donnerstags ❉ 21. August bis 09. Oktober ❉ 15:00-15:45 ❉ 72,00 Euro

Donnerstags ❉ 21. August bis 09. Oktober ❉ 16:15-17:00 ❉ 72,00 Euro

The Children's English Hour II ⎮ Englisch für Kinder von 5 bis 8

Mittwochs ❉ 20. August bis 08. Oktober ❉ 16:00-17:00 ❉ 96,00 Euro

Rebecca's Playhouse ⎮ Das Kreative Englischerlebnis für Kinder von 9 bis 12

Rebecca's Playhouse bietet Kindern im Alter von 9 bis 12 Jahren die Möglichkeit, viele spannende Erfahrungen zu machen und gleichzeitig spielend Englisch zu lernen.

Freitags ❉ 22. August bis 10. Oktober ❉ 16:00-17:30 ❉ €132,00 inklusive Materialkosten

Summer English Week 3 - Brown Bears and Goldfish

Eric Carle's Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See is one of my favorite books to read with children. It's all about animals and colors, and a few strangely colored animals! Have you ever seen a blue horse? Or a purple cat? No? It's easy - just use your imagination!

We sang Bubble Pop! which is an interactive song all about sea creatures, as well as the Energy Song and Open, Shut Them.


I know everyone has seen a goldfish, so we made some out of bright orange red and yellow handprints!





As always, the children were encouraged to write their names on their artwork, or at least their first initial!


The results were wonderful!




We finished up with our counting march with rhythmic instruments and a goldfish stamp:


"What is it?"
"It's a goldfish."
"What color is it?"
"It's orange. It's an orange goldfish."

"May I have another one please?"
"Yes, you may!"

This week's vocabulary: bear, goldfish, cat, horse, wolf, sheep, children, teacher, jellyfish, octopus, fish, whale, crab, dolphin, blue, yellow, red, green, purple, orange, march, loud, quiet, numbers one to twenty, tambourine, wash board, cymbals, block, bells, float, roll, swim, snap, jump and wiggle!

Musical Accompaniment: Claude Bolling's Suite for Flute and Jazz Piano