Articles by Super Simple Learning

In 2005, the teachers of Knock Knock English school for children in Tokyo, Japan, were having trouble finding learning materials that were both simple and fun enough to engage their young learners. So, they started making their own. Several award-winning CDs later, Super Simple Learning materials are being used in classrooms and homes around the world to help children learn with confidence and a smile.

Say Cheese!

January 23, 2012 in Events, Teaching Tips by Super Simple Learning | 2 comments

Let's Take A Picture!

Say Cheese!

A couple of times a year, most schools have a party or an event. For us, our main events are the Spring Picnic, Halloween Party, and Christmas Party. A key feature of each party is the group picture.

Getting dozens of young children (and their even younger brothers and sisters) together for picture is a little bit like herding cats. It can be challenging. So to help out with that, we made the song Say Cheese (Let’s Take A Picture). Songs are great tools for letting students (especially students with developing language skills) know what they are supposed to do. Verbal instructions can often be hard to follow and easy to tune out. But verbal instructions paired with music immediately catches students’ attention and helps them understand what is going on.

Want to get kids into a circle? Play the Make A Circle song. Want students to get their ABC books? Play the Alphabet Song. Want students to clean up? Play the Clean Up song. And if you want students to pose for a picture, play Say Cheese! (Let’s Take A Picture).

Try introducing the song in class with smaller groups. As you sing each verse, take pictures of the students with your camera phone or a digital camera. After singing the song, show the pictures to the students. They’ll love it! You can follow up by taking more pictures, and letting the students take turns snapping the photos.  Teacher Weena from the Philippines has some nice examples of this. After singing the songs in class a few times, when it comes time for all of the students to gather at a party, they’ll know exactly what to do when they hear the song playing. Just put the song on and watch the students gather to pose.

Say Cheese! ^_^

 

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Weather Topics – The Four Seasons

January 16, 2012 in Quick Tips, Teaching Tips, Videos by Super Simple Learning | No comments

Learn the four seasons with Row Row Your Boat

Learn the four seasons with Row Row Row Your Boat

When talking about the seasons, it can help to have side by side illustrations so that kids can follow along throughout the course of a year. What marks the changes of the seasons? How are the seasons where you live?

Row Row Row Your Boat

Have you seen our video for Row Row Row Your Boat? This is a classic children’s tune, often sung in a round as on this version. The illustrations by Alberto Cerriteño, are a great for discussing a variety of topics, including the weather and seasons.

To use this video as part of a weather related lesson, first discuss the four seasons and what types of weather we experience in each. Then watch the video and have students point out what they see to indicate the changes as the squirrel and rabbit float merrily down the stream. Point out things like birds singing, new leaves, sunny weather, trees with full foliage, leaves changing colors and falling and, of course, snow.

For older or adult students, you can talk about the corresponding changes in the couple as they go through the different stages of life together. But with younger learners, it’s a great opportunity to see a year’s worth of weather in just a couple of minutes.

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Learn the Months

January 13, 2012 in Teaching Tips by Super Simple Learning | No comments

Practice months of the year with these activitiesLearn the months of the year. What comes next?

Learning the months needs lots of repetition, so be sure to practice them often. In addition to watching The Month’s Chant video, here are some activity ideas for the home or classroom.

Jump the Months

Type and print a flashcard for each month. Include a picture that represents something that happens during that month, for example a holiday, celebration or a change in the season. If possible, laminate them so they will last longer. Spread the flashcards on the floor and have students help you put them in the correct order. Next, stand in a line next to January and jump to February, March, etc. Listen to The Months Chant and jump to each month in order.
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Our Five Favorite Fingerplay Songs

January 9, 2012 in Activities, Quick Tips, Teaching Tips by Super Simple Learning | 8 comments

Put those fingers together!

Fingerplay songs are great for the classroom or at home. In fact, they are great for anytime and anywhere, because the only ‘equipment’ you need is your hands. Kids love to see their hands transformed as they perform the actions. Fingerplay activities engage the creative mind and help with fine motor skill development. And, it’s fun!

Here are five super simple fingerplay songs we think you’ll love:

5. Open Shut Them

This is a classic kids’ song that has been around for a long time. We use our version from Super Simple Songs 3 for teaching opposites. Our simplified lyrics teach opposite pairs such as open and shut, big and small, please / no, thank you, fast and slow, and loud and quiet. And you can use the classroom version to add your own combinations.

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The Months Chant

January 8, 2012 in Teaching Tips, Videos by Super Simple Learning | No comments

Practice or review the calendar with The Months Chant

The Months Chant will help you remember the months of the year!

What better way to kick off the New Year than with a brand new video? It’s a super simple chant to help kids learn the months of the year. Perfect for back to school after the holiday break or anytime that you want to practice or review the months.

The months can be a little tricky for young learners to remember. The Months Chant from Super Simple Songs 3 helps them practice the months and order with a call and response format set to an catchy beat.

When learning the months, it helps to associate each month with an activity, holiday or change in the weather. This video is based on some popular North American holidays and changes in the seasons. Here’s an explanation month-by-month: Read the rest of this entry »

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S-A-N-T-A

December 23, 2011 in Holidays, Videos by Super Simple Learning | No comments

S-A-N-T-A

Red hat, white beard...

One of our all-time favorite songs is the classic children’s folk song, B-I-N-G-O. The repetition and pattern make it easy to learn, the beat teaches intonation and rhythm, it helps kids grasp the concept of spelling, and it’s just a whole lot of fun to sing.

It’s also a great song to adapt for teaching other words and basic spelling. You can use this song to sing kids’ names. Even if the names are shorter or longer than five letters, you can adjust how you sing the spelling part so that it fits in the song.

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Classic Christmas Carols Made Simple

December 16, 2011 in Holidays by Super Simple Learning | 1 comment

♪ Decorate the Christmas tree ♪

We love traditional Christmas songs. However, young learners and emerging speakers often get frustrated and tune out when learning some Christmas classics because the songs are either too fast or too difficult. On our Christmas CD, we decided to take a few classic Christmas carols and make them simple.

Making a song simple does not mean dumbing it down. Sometimes it just means adjusting the pace so younger learners can keep up and do gestures. Sometimes it means simplifying the language to make it more comprehensible. And sometime it means actually adding more language that is meaningful and useful for young learners. As learners grow older and develop greater language and motor skills, they can “graduate” to the more traditional versions with confidence.

Jingle Bells (Learn & Sing)

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“Jingle Bells” is one of the most popular of all the Christmas songs. With sleigh rides and bells, this song is sure to be a hit. But traditional versions are often too fast for young learners. We’ve created a special version to introduce this song to them. The first part of the song is a call and response format, so that children can get to know the words slowly. The second part of the song encourages singing along at a normal speed. You’ll be amazed how quickly kids will pick up this song and you’ll all be merrily singing it in no time.

Decorate The Christmas Tree (based on “Deck The Halls”)

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“Deck the Halls” is such a beautiful melody and the song feels like Christmas. But lyrics like “boughs of holly”, “Don we now our gay apparel”, “Troll the ancient yule tide carol” go way over young learners heads. On the Super Simple version (“Decorate The Christmas Tree”), we use the same melody to introduce a whole bunch really useful vocabulary and expressions that are easy to learn with gestures. This song is full of rich holiday language and collocations: “decorate the Christmas tree”, “hang the stockings” “make a snowball” “wrap the presents” “kiss beneath the misletoe”, etc. It’s a lot of fun to act out, and the call and response format makes it easy for young learners to follow along even though there is so much language. Plus, we love singing “Fa la la la la, la la la la” ^_^.

We Wish You A Merry Christmas

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“We Wish You A Merry Christmas” is another classic with a great melody that includes lyrics that young learners often tune out from. The Super Simple ”We Wish You A Merry Christmas”, keeps the classic chorus and then makes the rest of the song into a fun and simple action verb song. Practice clapping, stomping, jumping, whispering and singing loudly.

Always remember that kids naturally love singing, and if they are expressing disinterest in singing songs you are teaching them, often it’s because the songs are not at their level. Making some small adjustments can really help!
To learn more about these songs and for more super simple Christmas ideas, visit our Christmas page ^_^ .

 

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Christmas Topics – Action Verbs

December 13, 2011 in Activities, Teaching Tips by Super Simple Learning | No comments

10 Little Elves are Sewing

10 Little Elves are Making Toys

One of the great things about teaching with songs is that they can be listened to over and over again. Kids love the repetition of hearing a favorite tune and each time, it seems, they learn a little more.

Repetition provides a great opportunity to focus on different aspects of a song to teach new vocabulary. You can listen to a song week after week in your lessons and focus on a different theme. Change your flashcards, play new games or use different gestures. Kids love mixing it up.

10 Little Elves

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“10 Little Elves” is a perfect song for this. It can be used to work on a variety of vocabulary themes. Of course, it is great for practicing or reviewing counting and numbers. But you can also use it to talk about toys (along with “What Do You Want For Christmas?” from Super Simple Songs 1 and “Santa’s On His Way” from Super Simple Songs – Christmas). How do elves make different toys? What are they making? What toys do you want?

Next you can focus on action verbs. Action verbs are fun to teach because they are so…well, active. Students love demonstrating or gesturing out the different words.
This song brings in five brand new action verbs (plus sleeping) that young learners might not have encountered yet. And while they may be familiar with the action involved, maybe they don’t have the language to describe it, making this song a fun new challenge.

10 Little Elves Charades

Use the “10 Little Elves” picture cards (sewing, painting, sawing, hammering, wrapping and sleeping) to review the actions and the matching words. Then, give each student a small piece of paper on which one of the action words is written. The students should not show the paper to each other.
Tell the students they are elves and they must find other elves from their group. When you say “Go,” the elves move around the room silently, doing the action on their piece of paper. The elves make groups according to their actions and stand together.
Put the picture cards at the front of the room so students who have trouble reading can match their word to the word on the picture card. (They can also ask the teacher for help.)
Sing “10 Little Elves” one more time, this time with each group singing and performing its verse.

Have fun!

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We Wish You a Merry Christmas

December 6, 2011 in Holidays, Resources, Videos by Super Simple Learning | 1 comment

One of the challenges of teaching traditional Christmas songs to emerging speakers is that the language in the songs does often not resonate with young children. In “We Wish You A Merry Christmas”, good tidings, kin, figgy pudding, etc. are all interesting words but not terms that young learners with small vocabularies can latch on to. Adding some simple action verbs allows young learners to interact with the song right away, and as their language develops, they can “graduate” to the traditional versions.

Check out this amazing video from Eva and her students in Slovakia.  Now this is what Christmas looks like!


Super Simple Songs – Christmas includes this version and a karaoke track so you can add your own actions to the song.

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Guest Post – Super Simple “Hacks”

December 6, 2011 in Quick Tips, Teaching Tips by Super Simple Learning | 2 comments

Tips from Bob's Frog

This post was contributed by Bob Pensak, owner of “Bob’s English” in Okazaki, Japan and author of the blog “Bob’s Frog.”

I have been singing, gesturing, and performing Super Simple Songs ever since I discovered them three years ago. Since then, I have collected small ways to make the songs even more enjoyable and funny. I call these “Super Simple Hacks”.

Skeleton Dance (Super Simple Songs – Halloween) – One of my favorite songs and a popular song with my students. Especially when done in a “Freeze Dance” style. Play the song while doing the actions. Several times during the song, pause the music. The students and teacher, “Freeze”. This in itself is hilarious. Choose the right moment to “freeze”,when your face or body is in a strange position.

Super Simple Hack 1: Take an extra long pause while “freezing” and scratch your nose.

Are you Hungry? (Super Simple Songs 1) - Does this song really need a “HACK”? So much fun! Really exaggerate eating the food, make some funny faces and puff your cheeks at the end of the song when you say “I’m full” and the kids will love you.

Super Simple Hack 2: Pretend to take imaginary french fries from each student during the french fry part of the song.

Walking in the Jungle (Super Simple Songs – Animals) – A recent song from the “Animals” CD (not the Pink Floyd CD). I’m still exploring ways to do the songs. “One step, two steps, three steps forward. One step, two steps, three steps back.” For a “children’s song” it rocks!

Super Simple Hack 3: Hide small animal cards around the room. When they hear the animal sound, have the kids go find the hidden animal card.

Seven Steps (Super Simple Songs 1) - The simplest of simple songs and a classic. There are many ways to do the movements and customize the song. Check around and invent different ways.

Super Simple hack 4: Moon walk backwards like Michael Jackson holding his hat. 1,2,3,4,5,6,7. WHOO! and shout like Michael.

Counting Bananas (Super Simple Songs 2) – The kids like it so much they want to do it twice. Singing and dancing while counting bananas to 20. At the end of the song, you eat an imaginary banana.

Super Simple Hack 5: Do the song twice. The second time instead of “eating” the banana at the end, pretend to stick it in your ear!

Give these five “hacks” a try. I hope to have more in the future. If you have some “hacks” that you would like to share, leave a comment or contact me.


Bob Pensak has been living and teaching English in Okazaki, Japan, for ten years. This April he started his own school “Bob’s English” with his wife and three year old son. He has been entertaining children with magic since he was 13 years old. Check out his blog, Bob’s Frog, for more teaching tips.

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