Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes (Knees & Toes)!

Lesson Number One: Success!

Using a mixture of activities from choral drilling (everybody repeating words together... nothing to do with electric drills), to drawing, to miming and games, we taught our young charges the English names for numerous parts of the body yesterday afternoon. Some of the children already knew some of the words, but for others it was all new. Either way, there were new words in there for everybody, and of course a good chance for us to correct their pronunciation.

The trickiest part of the lesson was probably persuading the wanabee artists of the class to concentrate more on labelling their pictures rather than sketching a masterpiece (although I had to admit their artwork was pretty impressive)! At the end of the afternoon we couldn´t let the children go without ending on a high, so we launched into a (perhaps slightly out-of-tune) rendition of that old classic: Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes. It had to be done! The kids seemed to enjoy joining in anyway, and with a repeat rendition every now and then it should hopefully help them to remember at least some of what we taught them.

After we returned home from class, the local area seemed to erupt into various celebrations, mainly accompanied by running comentaries on loud speakers... 6th January is an important day here, celebrating the visit of the Three Kings to newborn Jesus. Brightly coloured processions had paraded through the streets during the day, sweets thrown to gathered crowds, and in the evening the festivities continued. We are currently considering starting a campaign to introduce this custom in England: what a great way to postpone the January and February blues?!