Easter

Spring Idioms

Posted by on Apr 16, 2014 0 Comments

“Is spring coming?” he said.
“What is it like?”…
“It is the sun shining on the rain and the rain falling on the sunshine…”
~ Francis Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden

The flowers are blooming and the birds are singing—spring is in the air! Your students are probably excited about playing outside again and looking forward to the Easter long weekend. Grab their attention with our Spring/Easter Idioms poster!

Students usually love learning idioms because they’re funny, but they can have trouble remembering them because they’re not literal. Using visuals such as this poster can help! Hang the poster in your class (along with our other idioms posters listed below, if you wish) so that students can see the idioms every day. You can also try some of the activities suggested below that will help students remember these idioms.

Download the printable Spring Idioms poster (PDF)
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Easter Colors: An Eggcellent Easter Activity

Posted by on Apr 16, 2014 0 Comments

Do you use Pinterest for inspiration when you’re looking for crafts to do in the classroom? Pinterest is full of holiday craft ideas, and with a little creativity, you can easily find ideas that can be combined with language learning.

Last weekend I went hunting on Pinterest to find ideas on painting eggs with nail polish. One of my daughter’s favorite games right now is “Name the Nail Polish”. We gather all of our bottles of nail polish and put them in her glittery treasure box. She pulls the bottles out one by one and we take turns coming up with fun names for the colors. Twinkle Twilight…Party Perfect…Salmon Suede…Confetti… Sometimes we play this game out loud together, and other times we write the words down and compare the color names. We’ve played this game with up to four people (boys included), and it works best when we have lots of different colors (at Auntie K’s). Sometimes we even vote on the color names to see which ones we like best. When we’re done, we look at the bottom of the bottles to see what the real names are.

I was delighted that my “nail polish Easter eggs” search on Pinterest brought up so many ideas for coloring eggs. There were ideas for painting real eggs as well as plastic eggs. I was skeptical that nail polish and water would work well on plastic eggs, but was excited to find out that it actually worked when I tested it out!

This particular idea, “You’ve Been Egged” would make a great classroom activity or weekend project. You could “egg” another classroom at your school, or invite your students to “egg a neighbor” over the Easter weekend. Here is a handout you can give your students if you want them to do this activity at home. *

You will need: (more…)