Leaf printing

Posted on 29/07/2015 by languageisheartosay

 

Here are my tags decorated with leaf prints in lesson 3. I made some prints into birds and others into bugs as suggested.

Good vocabulary possibilities:

Birds: talk again about how we know they are birds – refer back to Crazy Birds. What do birds always have? How can you tell some of my pictures are not birds?

Adjectives about the leaves: colour names; pointed; hard; soft; shiny; prickly; hairy; smelly.

Common patterns (stripes, spots, zigzags); orientation expressions e.g. this way, that way, paint side down, the other way up.

Verbs: the earlier post gave some verbs (what birds can do). Other verbs for this project might include: choose (leaves and colours), cut out, paint, tie, draw… It is always a good idea to reinforce verbs by using the word as you do the action. Lots of repeats may be necessary.

Homonyms – words that have two distinct meanings – we have lots and children are very confused by them but may only indicate this confusion by a strange response to your instruction/comment: orange; tie; leaves (on a tree, walking out and in subtraction sums); punch (the hole punch); bark (on the trees you pick the leaves from and bark like the Picasso dog); tag (the game, the label); yarn (string, a story – for older children)…   (Don’t introduce words that are outside the likely vocabulary of young children.) Carla’s joke contains another: Q: What did the trees wear to the pool party?  A: Their trunks! (Children will often laugh because they have been told a joke is coming but if you ask what is funny the answer will be irrelevant e.g. here they might say trees can’t swim or they don’t wear clothes.)

This resource is about homonyms etc. for children of a suitable age http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=6049438

Expressions we use which are confusing e.g. ‘look like’ (when you decide what the leaf print will be). Children know ‘like’ as in ‘I like chocolate’ but we use the word ‘like’ in other ways: it looks like rain; he looks like his brother; what does this leaf print look like? The two sentences: ‘What does it like?’ (as in what food does a bird like) versus ‘What is it like?’ (as in look like) – I think the children ignore the words before ‘like’ and focus on the end of the sentence so they don’t pick up the different meanings quickly.

The tools you used – refer to Lynn’s list and talk about your things.

If you watched the video together, talk about what Lynn did: what did she get out ready, how did she begin, what came next, and so on. Before you start on yours, list the actions again as you point at your fingers in turn:

  1. we get everything ready etc. etc.

When you’ve made yours, ask the child to report on how the job was done – praise any attempt at a sequenced list of actions in the correct order.  Again, point at your fingers to jog the memory of the list. If some of the actions are correct but in an impossible order, try and introduce the idea of ‘coming first’, ‘and then’, ‘that was the last thing’… like a story.

Two tips: if your child hates to have paint on his fingers, you can use a roller to apply the paint to the leaf and try an old pair of tweezers to pick it up. Then to press on it to transfer the paint use a piece of the plastic tissue you put between slices in the freezer: you can see through it and it doesn’t stick to acrylic etc. Wonderful stuff!

Click on the button to join up – it’s free…

 

TITLES OF ALL POSTS 

This entry was posted in Child language, Competence level, ESL / EFL / EAL, Helping children understand, Helping language skills at home, Promoting language development, Speech & Language Pathology, Speech & Language Therapy, Teaching and tagged , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.