Dear Parents,
A few weeks ago we had a wonderful Italian lesson with Liz's pre-K class! We split the class into two groups and did two fun activities to teach the kids some new words in Italian.
Stories
In one group, we read the kids a book called "The Girl in the Castle Inside the Museum." This is an easy-to-read child
ren's book by Kate Bernheimer, and it is beautifully illustrated by Nicoletta Ceccoli (an Italian, no less!). As you can see, not all great Italian art is hundreds of years old.The book tells the story of a young girl who lives inside a castle which is inside a museum - the girl enjoys the company of museum visitors during the day but gets very lonely at night after the museum closes. We used the book to introduce select Italian vocabulary (such as "castello," meaning castle), as well as to have the children start thinking about what it means to visit a museum and admire beautiful art. In light of our upcoming class trip to the Harvard Sackler Art Museum, we thought this would be a great warm-up exercise for the kids!
Games
In our other group, we focused on Italian vocabulary for various types of fruit. After an initial lesson, we reinforced the new words by playing the familiar children's game "hot potato." But don't worry, we taught the kids more than just the word "potato." The class learned the Italian words for many different types of fruit (such as "mela," which means "apple"). We played the "hot potato" game with various toy fruits - instead of saying "stop," the teacher would call out an Italian fruit ("mela!") and whichever children were holding apples would have to get up and do a funny dance for the rest of the group. The kids had a great time - they're as good at dancing "the funky chicken" as they are at learning Italian!
Overall, a wonderful time was had by children and teachers alike, and we can't wait to come back next week. Feel free to ask
your own children which Italian words they remember at home! (But don't blame us if they start dancing "the funky chicken.")Julia, Giancarlo and Lam
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