Wow! Our first couple of lessons with the Pre-K class was incredibly fun and working with the kids makes time fly. We started out the first by just asking them whether they knew any words in Italian or any facts about Italy, and they were excited to share words like Ciao and pizza and pasta. (Their faces really lit up when we mentioned pizza.) They were earnestly excited to learn a bit of Italian and really behaved themselves as they were listening to what were saying. Their excitement at learning something new and really made the class riveting for both us and them.
For the first lesson, we made everyone name tags that included the student's name, an Italian adjective and a picture of the adjective. We started our introductions of ourselves by asking each other, "Come ti chiami?" (What is your name?) and then responding, "Mi Chiamo..." (My name is...). We then went on to pass out the name tags by asking each child the same question, "Come ti chiami?" and asking them to respond in Italian. We then split them into three smaller groups to play introductory games with them. We asked each student to think of an action for the a
djective on their name tags so they could act out their adjective. For example, Ruth's adjective was romantica and her action was an air kiss, which she acted out beautifully! We then each acted out their actions and asked them to guess who we were. For Ruth, I would act out the air kiss and then ask the students who I was. They could very quickly guess
that I was acting out Ruth! After acting out an action each time, we would reinforce the introductions we were teaching by asking again, "Come ti chiami?" and asking the students to respond correctly. They really picked up these phrases and their adjectives so quickly that we had a lot of fun playing our introductions game! We ended our first lesson by doing our Italian introductions all again with our actions in a big group together.
For our second lesson, we worked with colors by first introducing the students to the colors using colored dots. Rosso is red, giallo is yellow, verde is green, etc. We then asked them to name some things that were each color, and showed them pictures of differently colored fruits! We then showed them uncolored fruits and asked them to name which color the fruits should have been in Italian. We ended this game by showing them incorrectly colored fruits and a
sking them to identity what colors the fruits were supposed to be. You should have seen them when we showed them purple bananas and blue strawberries! At the end of this lesson,
we gave each child a colored dot and got together in a big group and to sing a song with colors using the tune of "Old McDonald." We asked them to stand up each time they heard the color they had in the song. They really liked singing together and it was a ton of fun hearing them catch on to the song so quickly!
sking them to identity what colors the fruits were supposed to be. You should have seen them when we showed them purple bananas and blue strawberries! At the end of this lesson,
we gave each child a colored dot and got together in a big group and to sing a song with colors using the tune of "Old McDonald." We asked them to stand up each time they heard the color they had in the song. They really liked singing together and it was a ton of fun hearing them catch on to the song so quickly!These first two lessons have been pretty spectacular, and the chance to experience how quickly these kids pick up language has been both a pleasure and an awe inspiring experience. We're very excited to continue working with the Pre-K class, and we really think an experience of Italian culture and language with the kids will be a blast!
A Dopo (See you later),
Julia, Giancarlo, Lam
bellissime attivita`.
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