Claudie's Class 4/9

Hi! This week in class we pretended to visit the Harvard Sackler Museum to prepare for our actual visit in a few weeks. As always we began with Giro Giro Tondo and then the kids closed there eyes as we pretended the class room turned into an art museum! One of our teachers pretended to be the guard at the museum and he taught us what we could and couldn't do in a museum. Another one of our teachers spoke only in italian and the kids responded very well to this and were able to respond to her in italian as well. I spoke in a mix of italian and english to explain the games and activities. We began with a review of the family members by singing our song about the family...

Siamo una famiglia, tutti qua.

Abraccia la mamma, un bacio a papà.

Il fratello gioca calcio, la sorella balla.

Andiamo da nonno e da nonna!

We were so impressed at how well the kids remembered the song from the previous lesson. We told them we would sing it once to remind them but a lot of them joined in without the reminder! However since we were in a museum we had to speak softly (parlare piano)! Next we looked at a painting we found in our pretend museum of Max

To review colors and numbers we asked the students questions like 'what color is Max's suit?' (che color'è il vestito di Max?) and 'how many eyes does Max have?' (Max ha quanti occhi?). The kids did a wonderful job remembering their colors and numbers in italian!! Next to learn expressions we sang the song 'If you're happy and you know it...' except instead of using the english emotions we substituted the italian word in. We used...

Felice- happy

Triste- sad

Serio- serious

Then we asked how Max looked and felt. Then we sang the song 'head, shoulders, knees, and toes' in italian to learn some parts of the body. The museum guard told us it was okay to play if we did it calmly! The song goes...

Testa, spalle, ginocchia, piedi, ginocchia, piedi

Testa, spalle, ginocchia, piedi, ginocchia, peidi

Occhi, orecchi, bocca, e naso

Testa, spalle, ginocchia, piedi, ginocchia, peidi

After learning this song we learned some action verbs that go along with the parts of the body we just learned. To do this we played Simon Says except the museum guard was close by telling us which actions we could and could not do in the museum! We learned...

Sedersi- to sit

Correre- to run

Urlare- to scream

Parlare piano- to speak softly

Toccare- to touch

Guardare- to look at

Next we asked the students if they knew who made the painting of Max. One students go it exactly right- Max did! It is a self portrait (un autoritratto). The students then made their own autoritratti that we will bring to the real museum when we go! While the kids were walking around we talked to each child individually asking them questions about numbers and colors and they did a good job responding in italian. Finally, we came back into a large group and closed our eyes to leave our pretend museum. Back in the classroom we played Giro Giro Tondo before saying ciao! We can't wait for next week!

A presto,

Brennan, Alex, Nick, and Alex