How to Switch From Crafts to Art in Preschool

In the preschool and primary classroom, craft are going to be involved to a greater or bottom degree. But we're linguistic communication teachers, right? What identify do these activities have in our classrooms? Are they just a chance for the teacher to take a break from 'real' teaching? In this postal service, I'll discuss why, in my view, non only do they accept a place, they are too an essential tool to aid kids learn and learn English in a more effective way. Nosotros'll also await at some practical ideas for how to teach English language through arts and crafts, focusing on pre, during and post craft procedures and the different classroom dynamics we can use.

What do we hateful by 'arts and crafts'?

I take quite a wide definition. I consider information technology to beany structured activity that involves using the hands and other tools to create an end production. This basically ways that there are steps the kid has to go through. They demand to utilize their hands to follow the steps, they'll employ tools (such as crayons or glue), and they'll take something to show for their efforts.

And so, in this way, even simple colouring or cutting and pasting activities are considered to be crafts in my classroom. While many people volition call up of more elaborate constructions every bit 'existent crafts', as an English teacher, I tend to reserve those for special occasions such as Halloween, the stop of term, or as part of an extended project. It's not that I don't think these more than elaborate crafts are valuable. I do! But in my classes, I usually plan my daily crafts to consolidate specific language points – what I call 'English language through Craft'. With more time-consuming, elaborate crafts, my linguistic communication aims are based more on classroom linguistic communication and opportunities to explore unplanned language that comes up in chat with the kids – what I call 'Craft through English'.

What are the benefits of doing arts and crafts?

General benefits of art and craft activities

Research into child development shows that children benefit in a number of ways from doing arts and crafts. Below are some of the main ones:

• bilateral coordination – Kids demand to develop the ability to use both sides of their torso to coordinate movements in an organised and controlled manner.
• fine motor coordination – Kids need to be able to use the small-scale muscles of their body, especially their hands, in order to perform more frail tasks. Using scissors, gripping crayons to color, staying within the lines, and holding a piece of paper to gum in identify are examples of tasks that require fine motor skills.
• self-regulation – Kids need to develop the ability to manage their emotions and behaviour when faced with a difficult task. While doing crafts, they will have to be able to expect their turn, cope with things not going how they wanted, exist willing to share, and resist impulsive behaviour.
• social skills – While doing arts and crafts, kids will usually demand to work with others, even if it's merely you they're working with. They develop the skills they need to care for others with respect and kindness. They might need to share materials, comment on each others' work, assistance each other with activities, wait their turn patiently, etc.
• creativity and imagination – Doing arts and crafts gives children the space to utilise their inventiveness and express themselves. This may merely manifest itself in their selection of color or where they cull to stick an object. We're non talking nigh the ability to create a masterpiece!
• motivation – About kids enjoy doing arts and crafts and it's often the part of the lesson they virtually look forward to. Being engaged in doing something they enjoy creates favourable conditions for language acquisition.

Linguistic communication learning benefits of arts and craft activities

Ok, but surely they can develop those skills in the rest of their lives, right? Why should we worry near them in the language classroom?! In my feel, crafts are really useful to teach English language. These are some of the benefits I believe craft provides for language teachers and their students:

• It caters to mixed levels and ages – Every child can participate according to their own ability without having to go on up with the rest (all of our Kids Club English crafts have differentiated variations too, then it'south easy to add some other level of claiming for more able kids).
• It provides a visual representation of learning – It'due south really motivating for kids to exist able to physically see what they have learned. It likewise provides a memory hook to the topic or story.
• It allows y'all to recycle language – Kids will enjoy coming back to their crafts for recycling linguistic communication and games. Much more heady than using impersonal materials! You can obviously recycle language when you make the crafts themselves and they can essentially create a portfolio of language they have learned for you to review at a afterward signal.
• The children tin can practice asking, suggestion, opinion and praise linguistic communication – While making the craft, they tin inquire for the things they need. You can also provide exposure to proposition, stance and praise language. They tin can even first to utilise it to talk about each others' work.
• Yous can consolidate the target language – The crafts I use often provide more opportunities for the children to hear and use the phrases and vocabulary they've heard in a story or classroom games.
• Crafts provide opportunities for individual language product – Often when teaching a grouping, it can be difficult to have i-on-one time with each student. Craft allows you to collaborate with each private and requite them more than opportunities to use English language.
• The learners can 're-live' linguistic communication they've been exposed to – If you build in tranquility moments for kids to work on their arts and crafts, at that place might be moments when the kids accept an 'ear-worm' of sorts. For case, if you've recently told a story or sung a song, the child might be replaying parts of what they've heard in their minds. Of course, you can e'er encourage a more conscious version of this past prompting them with a vocal or repeated phrases in a story or dirge.
• Crafts provide opportunities for interaction and advice with families – Children will unremarkably exist keen to bear witness their families what they have produced. This can obviously help proceed the parents informed almost the kind of language their child has been working on. You can have this further by telling the families about games or activities they tin can do with their child and their craft. I usually send a message or email to families when the children go home with their crafts. All of this helps bring English outside the classroom and creates further opportunities for language learning.

Pre-craft activities

Hither are our elevation tips for what to do before you start the craft itself:

• Be prepared – Have all your materials laid out and to hand. Make sure yous accept enough crayons, glue, scissors etc. If you can't discover things hands, and then children don't have to wait likewise long, they'll get restless and switch off.
• Create suspense –  Reveal your model of the craft in a dramatic mode. This can just mean looking within your folder and then yous meet it before the children do and using facial expression to appear really excited. Yous tin can reveal the craft bit by bit, and accept the children guess what it is – like yous do with flashcards. You could put information technology in a special identify, similar a brightly coloured mystery box. It doesn't have to be fancy but the more engaging you make information technology, the more engaged the kids volition be.
• Accept a model of the craft – It'due south important for the children to see what they are going to create. This provides motivation and also helps you review language before they start. You'd be surprised at how many kids are interested to know who made the craft. When I tell them it was me, they're very impressed and they are excited to make their own.
• Focus attention on target linguistic communication using your model – If possible, utilise structures and phrases you desire the children to larn as y'all do this.
• Play games with the craft templates before you get-go the structure phase – Yous could practise this as a simple 'Heed and point' activity (similar in many coursebooks). It helps to have cues to go along the children engaged. Endeavor doing a simple chant like 'I tin meet' or 'what is it?' 3 times before revealing the particular to bespeak to. You could as well cue them with 'fingers up' or past singing the 'one niggling finger' vocal.

During craft activities

This is an area that I've given a lot of thought to over the years. When I beginning started out teaching young learners, it seemed similar this was the stage of the lesson where the instructor took a back seat and the kids got on with it. I used to feel really guilty and wondered if information technology was only a waste of time, specially if the kids only had one to two hours of English a week. So, I started to think more most the purposes of this part of the lesson. Aye, information technology's true that including the arts and crafts was valuable for nearly of the reasons given at the kickoff of this post. However, I really wasn't taking enough advantage of opportunities to recycle andconsolidate target language or to exercise functional language such as making requests and expressing opinions.

Below are some of the activities and techniques I started incorporating into the arts and crafts stage of my lessons. Now I consider this part of my lessons to exist one of the near effective for linguistic communication learning.

Interaction direction techniques

Create a need for request linguistic communication – rather than giving the kids everything they demand, create a gap (a need for them to communicate). You tin keep crayons and other craft elements in a dissimilar area of the room or you can keep them yourself. They take to enquire you lot for the items they need. Incorporate the vocabulary you lot want them to learn into this stage. For example, if they are completing a arts and crafts that requires them to glue pictures of target language items onto a scene or into a mini-book, get them to ask you for each detail as they need it. If they are nevertheless unable to produce the language, you have the chance to tell them what it is once again.

Requite responsibility to the students – Once they are used to the idea of requesting the things they demand, you can make unlike students the monitors for those items. This doesn't but accept to exist the scissors monitor or the gum monitor. You could give each student a different part of the craft representing the target language. For case, if they are creating our daily routines lath game, one student could take 'brush my teeth', another 'go to school', some other 'play with friends' etc. In this way, the students are empowered to teach each other the language.

Include dialogue or roleplay – If yous have been working on a dialogue in class, is there a style to incorporate that into the craft stage? For example, later on reading Walking Through the Jungle with a group of iv yr olds, we completed a find and stick jungle scene craft. Together we repeated the chant from the volume which finishes with them asking what the animal is. After revealing the animal (again using the story linguistic communication), they went to search for the animal in a pile of cut-ups I'd placed on an empty table.

Another group of learners had been working on how to club in a restaurant. The craft was to brand a menu past matching and sticking cut-up pictures of the food to the written words of the dishes. In order to do this, my students worked in pairs with one student existence the waiter and the other the customer. The waiter nerveless the 'food' and 'served' it to their customer then they changed roles.

Add together in a game element – You could accept students play in pairs or groups with games they are familiar with.  For example, each grouping could take a set of mini-cards or flashcards of the target vocabulary. They could play guessing games with mime, spelling or other flashcard games. Once the grouping has guessed it, everyone in the grouping can complete that office of their craft. This would probably be besides complicated for preschool children, merely master kids can give it a become!

Dictation – We're all familiar with this one merely it doesn't have to exist tiresome and it can certainly provide useful exposure to a lot more than linguistic communication than simple vocabulary items. Information technology doesn't always have to be teacher centred either. The kids tin take control too. You might take to do a bit of supportive whispering though!

See below for variations on unlike dictation techniques.

Dictation techniques

• Giving instructions – Point to the ___; Colour the ___; Detect the ___; Bear on the ___
• Asking questions – Where's the ___? Tin can you discover the ___? Accept you got a ___? Do you accept a ___?
• Making statements – I tin can see a ___; I've got a ___; There's a ___;
• Describing the particular – It's got 4 legs; It'due south got sharp teeth; It lives in the jungle; It eats meat; It'due south a carnivore; Information technology's light-green etc.
• Recycling story / vocal language – Incorporate useful phrases from the story or song the arts and crafts is based on. Even if the craft is independent of a story or song, yous tin can have the opportunity to recycle a song y'all are learning. Some examples are: 'There was an former lady who swallowed a ___. I don't know why she swallowed a ___'; 'Walking through the jungle, what do you meet? Tin can y'all hear a racket? What could it be? I recollect it is a ___'; 'Help! Help! Who can help? A ___ goes to the duck'; 'No, no, no! That's not my mum. That's a ___'
• Retell the story – If the craft is based on a story, re-tell it and interruption at key points for the children to colour / stick or collect each target item.
• Playing 'I spy' – e.g. 'I spy with my lilliputian eye, something with (wings)'.

Considering dynamics

With young learners it'south important to consider and program the dynamics of the arts and crafts too. Retrieve about the rest of your lesson and how the arts and crafts part fits into it. Young children tin't sit yet for long periods, so is it time to permit them move around a bit? Exercise you want to comprise more individual interaction this time? Are the children ready to practise using the language as well as understanding it, or practice they need to focus more on receptive knowledge of the language at this bespeak? Children work at dissimilar paces too. Do y'all want to conduct the craft so that unlike children can get at their own pace or do you want them to complete the arts and crafts in lock-pace? What possibilities does the craft itself offer in terms of dynamics?

Having considered all the techniques above, you might, all the same, decide to requite the children free reign to complete their craft as they wish while you lot circulate and ask questions and make comments. This arroyo has its identify too! My communication would be to avoid asking besides many exam questions, such as, "What is this in English language?" Try to be specific and descriptive in your comments, rather than offering  generic praise statements. Rather than 'That'southward good', try 'I like how the bird is pond. That's funny!' or 'I similar the blue fish' or 'Yous've coloured very carefully'. The children won't sympathise every word but, combined with your torso language and the private interaction with gestures, they'll get it. If it means something to them, they might selection up on some of the linguistic communication you lot use too.

Postal service craft activities

I believe every arts and crafts serves as a useful visual record of a kid'south learning that tin help parents bring the language outside the classroom. Apart from this, there are several extension activities you can do in the form itself. What you practise with the craft subsequently the children have completed it is very dependent on the arts and crafts itself. Below are a few ideas according to different craft types.

Spinners / board games

Play the game / spin the spinner and…

• Say the name the item, east.g., 'It's a frog'.
• Say the action it does (if appropriate), due east.m, 'It swims, hops, flies' etc.
• Do an action for the item (if advisable)
• Make a sentence with the item, e.g., 'I don't like snakes'; 'A frog tin can hop'; 'A duck says 'quack'!'
• Write the name of the detail.
• Run and touch a corresponding flashcard stuck to the walls or board.
• Predict the particular then spin/roll the dice to try and country on the item, e.g., 'I desire / I'd like the frog', 'Oh no! Information technology's a lizard', 'Yes! I got information technology!'

You could make any of the above activities competitive if you wish by having the children go along score of points for good sentences etc.

Colouring pages / Notice and stick scenes / cards

• Find the differences and similarities betwixt their pictures, east.chiliad., 'My frog'due south in the river and Maria's is next to the elephant'.
• Listen and act, e.g., 'Stand if you take a pinkish monster'; 'Plough effectually if you accept 4 eyes' etc.
• Guessing games. Children tin can play whole class or in pairs or groups. Ane child chooses an detail on their moving picture. Their partner has to estimate what the detail is.

Stick puppets / Finger puppets / Masks / Headbands / Marionettes

• Human activity out a story or vocal. Use flashcards or mini-cards to complement the activeness. For example, if you had read the Monkey Puzzle story together and fabricated monkey or butterfly puppets, you could stick up flashcards of the other animals effectually the room and re-enact the story together past visiting each one.
• Adjust or invent a new story or song verse.
• Mini-dialogues. Demonstrate a dialogue you lot would like the children to deed out then allow them play with their puppets. Practise exchanging greetings and basic information, discover the boob's favourite things and likes / dislikes, find out if it can jump, swim, sing etc.
• Create a display. Make a display in the classroom and use information technology in hereafter classes to revise target language.
• Use them in classroom games. Can they make their puppets play Simon says?
• Trip the light fantastic with them. Put a twist on songs you like to do in class by doing it with the puppets or wearing masks instead.

Other arts and crafts types that you could use some of the higher up ideas with are:

• Dominoes
• Jigsaws
• Fortune Tellers
• Vocabulary fans
• Brandish murals
• Graphing dice and sheets
• Mini-books
• Bingo
• Flipbooks
• Pop-up scenes
• Storyboards
• Sequencing cut and paste sheets

Final thoughts

Craft activities practise require a chip of preparation but information technology doesn't have to be a lot. In that location are lots of uncomplicated paper-based crafts out at that place that your kids volition dear doing. Not only will they savor the feel, they can potentially learn a lot of linguistic communication from it.

From my experience, it's all about how you lot carry the activeness. Hopefully the ideas in this post, take given you a bit of inspiration for how you can exploit craft to teach English.

You lot as well might similar to have a wait at our Resources page or bank check out our Pinterest page for more than inspiration.

I'd love to hear whatsoever other ideas you have likewise! Leave your comments below.

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