FunLab summer camps are back! With the lifting of COVID restrictions, we were able to reopen our yearly English summer camps in downtown Milan. For this reason, I decided that the reopening called for a little shakeup in the way that we run our activites and tried out some new stuff. Here is one of the ideas that I would like to share with you – TEACHING THE SEASONS – FunLab style.
As a result, I decided to create four different workshops dedicated to teaching each of the four seasons. Each workshop lasts around 90 minutes. We did the workshops over the course of a week but could easily be adapted and inserted into the a year long project with English as a Second Language students. As a Jolly Phonics trainer I am often asked about inserting “learning by doing” content into lessons – well try out the TEACHING THE SEASONS – FunLab style and you will learn how to do it!
Workshop Goals
Each workshop had specific didatic aims which can be roughly divided like this:
- vocabulary development – specific for the season in question which includes clothing and weather
- listening comprehension – we read them a picture book dedicated to the season being studied
- following instructions – seasonal creative project
If you follow these steps to Teaching the Seasons – FunLab style, I can guarantee that your kids will come away with stronger English skills while having fun!
Running the workshop
Vocabulary devlopement – A quick shout out to my awesome sister Jessica. She did all the artwork for the Teaching the Seasons – FunLab Style project. Click on the botton on the bottom of the post to download the graphics for the Teaching the Seasons – FunLab Style workshop.
Listening comprehension. I selected 4 books which I felt would keep the kids engaged and working on understanding the context without necessarily understanding every word of the story. A big hint: I usually read the book with the kids sitting in a circle. You really have to be a bit of a clown, pointing and acting out the story as you read it so that you keep their attention. If you have never run a book club activity, check out this post before you get started. Here are the books that we used:
Summer: Froggy goes swimming by Jonathon London.
Spring:I am a bunny by Ole Risom.
Autumn: We are going on a leaf hunt by Steve Metzger.
Winter: Pete the cat – snow daze by James Dean.
Following instructions: Now it is time for some fun. We had each child create a lap book. I purchased the blue file folders and prepared the folds in advance to avoid confusion during the first workshop. All the rest is done directly by the children. I found these great pages from Sabbiarelli
which were perfect for SEASONS OF THE YEAR lap book. If you have never used the Sabbiarelli products, take a look at this video which show how easy it is to do.
The kids painted with sand during each one of the workshops and assembled the related page. There is a word bank at the bottom of the pages provided in the vocabulary expansion package for those children who are still insecure about spelling in English. If you don’t have access to Sabbiarelli any seasonal coloring page can replace the sand art.
Creating the Seasons of the Year lapbook
We dedicated the four internal pages of the lapbook Seasons of the Year to the seasons. On each page we added the title, seasonal sand art from Sabbiarelli and the clothing/weather images. Everything (excluding the sand art) is available in our graphics download.
Watch the video to see how the final lapbook should look.
have fun
Alison
For further information about FunLab curriculum, Jolly Phonics method, Jolly Phonics training for teachers and FunLab workshop materials, please send en email to myfunlab@gmail.com
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