The beginning of the week was great – I finally had some free time to meet my friends and talk about their amazing trip to Mexico. We had some lemonade on a terrace by the sea in the city centre. It’s great to live in Helsinki, to be able to enjoy such wonderful places just…
If You’re Happy and You Know it Use Spoon Puppets!
Feelings and emotions is one of my favourite themes to teach. Apart from all the great resources you can find on Pinterest, there are also a lot of fun songs. If you have younger learners, then Super Simple Learning has the perfect resources for you. Apart from wonderful worksheets and drawing prompts, they have three…
Popcorn Pizza and What Is It Good For?
When I moved in my new apartment I bought my furniture from IKEA. Now I have tons of empty cardboard boxes that I don’t know what to do with. The lampshade came in two boxes, one of which looked like a pizza box, and it had a cardboard circle inside. Then I remembered that my…
The Parents’ Folder
A lot of parents have asked me what they could do to encourage their children to learn/speak English at home. Of course, the answer is learning through play, because games, songs, pretend play, and hands-on activities will always engage children more than worksheets, coloring pages, or repeating words. The former are means of promoting meaningful…
Peepers – Why Are They So Useful?
I have written a couple of blog posts about using puppets for storytelling, but I only briefly mentioned peepers. I think they deserve a bit more attention, because they are so versatile and can be transformed into anything you want. Let’s say that you want to teach kids about family members – you can decorate…
What I Have in My Teaching Suitcase
I have recently attended a webinar presented by author and storyteller Mary Jo Huff. The theme of the webinar was storytelling and teaching literacy with the help of puppets. The next day I met Stella, one of my teacher friends, and talked about the webinar. A recurrent idea that I’ve stumbled across was this “teaching suitcase”….