[Kennypor]

I badly need help with this. I’m an elementary school English teacher and it’s fantastic but mainly because I know exactly what to teach my children and how and the Home Room Teacher is always there is translate any instructions for games for anything.
However, my employer has now got me working at a kindergarten and although it’s good fun it’s damn hard to find any activities to use with them.

The children are sat in chairs in a semi circle shape when I arrive with no desks or materials, which is usually the case in my elementary school but sometimes I get the kids to colour in some stuff but here they can’t do that – it depends on what the curriculum is for that month though.
So what I’ve been doing the last few weeks is starting off by getting them to stand up and kinda pretend to do things like playing football or golf and just basically shouting out one word and doing the action for it and they copy – and they love that. I then move on to the heads, shoulders, knees and toes song, which they can’t get enough of. But after that I kinda run out of things to do – I even try the most simplest of games but because the teachers there don’t translate anything it just goes to crap cos they’re too young to understand what to do properly so I need ideas for the most bog standard simplest of games ever to help them learn a tiny bit of English.
I’ve checked google and it’s all crap cos it’s just giving me games for kids to do on a computer or something – I need good simple games to do in a big empty classroom and maybe using the chairs?
Oh and I read story books to the kids too which they love (mainly pictures with a few words on each page).

[pushokalex1]

How about a game of memory or something but play it with cards that have animals, numbers, colours and other simple things (with the thing written on the card as well) that you would like them to learn and get them to say the word when they turn the card?

[Kennypor]

How about a game of memory or something but play it with cards that have animals, numbers, colours and other simple things (with the thing written on the card as well) that you would like them to learn and get them to say the word when they turn the card?

That's a good game and I often play it with my elementary kids but these kids are way too young for that - that wont do any thinking like that, they'll only play games in a whole big group + it'd be way too hard for me to explain that ... because I can't in simple enough Japanese for them.

[valensds]

Do something with animals. Kids love animals. Bring pictures, or stuffed animals, and have them say what it is along with maybe a few adjectives. It should at least keep them entertained.

Or you could give them plastic katanas, cutlasses, and eye patches and youtube the ensuing mayhem.

[SiM7W2zi]

They like mimicking you said, so with the animal theme get them to say it and pretend to be one. Like BEAR and they get all big and growl or something [yes]

[encunnibriG]

musical chairs

[SallythePearl]

They like mimicking you said, so with the animal theme get them to say it and pretend to be one. Like BEAR and they get all big and growl or something [yes]

[rofl] sorry, but that just made me rofl [rofl]

[SiM7W2zi]

[rofl] sorry, but that just made me rofl [rofl]

Poor choice of words I guess

[valensds]

I must be missing something. I don't get what's so funny about bears and children.

How about duck duck goose? That's a classic. Dunno how you could make it educational.. but screw learning.. school is for fun!

[bellson]

The quiet game?

[Karinochka]

singing is always good for kids that age. this is always good for english class:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJqlfMP-klM

sun of beetch. sheet.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDkVjsSSDbg&NR=1

[Kennypor]

I've got a **** load of songs lined up for them which come with lots of actions/gestures. I'm taking in my animal flashcards again, but this time I'm going to try and get them to play a game where two teams face each other and I show an animal to one team and they have to act it out and the other team have to guess what they're impersonating.

[Ceakicknunk]

Duck Duck goose!

[bellson]

Pictionary

[Kennypor]

Well I did the lesson and it went alright - sh!t load of High School kids there watching though and the bloody board of education came again just to add.
I got them all to impersonate the animals well in teams which was good and used up a fair amount of time and so did all the nursery rhymes n stuff.
Turns out I only needed to teach for 20 minutes then just go outside and play with the kids for the last 20 minutes - though of course I didn't work this out till afterwards (my Japanese is still very bad).
They also said I don't need to wear a shirt and tie anymore ... thank f*** - it's way too hot here at the moment for that sh!t so they said I should just wear sports clothes.

edit - thanks for all the help and input guys!