The document describes three arts and crafts activities for English language classes at different grade levels: 1) For grades 1-2, making paper bag puppets of farm and zoo animals to reinforce vocabulary while singing a song. 2) For grades 4-5, constructing rainsticks out of paper tubes after learning about musical instrument categories. 3) For preschoolers, modeling faces out of play dough to practice parts of the face vocabulary.

1. ARTS AND CRAFTS FOR KIDS
When we as teachers talk about the English class (or any other language) we have to
have in mind the great variety of activities we can do in our classrooms. It is because
we are teaching a language and it means that students have the possibility of knowing
many different topics, that is, they can learn what they want to learn. The language
learning represents the knowledge of the world, of new cultures.
If teachers want to promote a meaningful learning, they can use many different and
creative activities and techniques that help students to be engaged in learning. These
creative activities could be games, songs, poems, rhymes, tongue twisters, etc., but in
this case we are going to talk about arts and crafts in the language class.
Arts and crafts are important -specially with younger students- because they are very
active, their periods of attention are so short and they need to be exposed to different
kinds of activities according to their learning styles. This quote helps us to understand
it better “Arts and crafts in the English classroom covers a wide area from simple
activities such as cut and paste posters to more complicated projects such as making
papier mache maracas to use for the school show. I find that appropriacy, preparation
and clarity of target language usually ensure a successful activity and lots of fun in the
classroom.” (http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk /think/resources/art_craft.shtml).
What is important here is to know that using arts and crafts has to be purposeful and it
has to be connected with the rest of the activities and the things students are leaning
in the English class. Here I am going to present three crafts for children that have the
purpose of reinforcing the different topics the students learn in class, in such a way
they can do something with their hands and use it for learning purposes or just to do a
presentation with all the works done in the language class.
• CLASS 1 (PAPER BAG PUPPETS)
This class is going to be for first, second graders and the purpose is to learn vocabulary
about the animals differentiating them according to the place they belong to.
To start the teacher can play a game in which he selects a set of six animals and he
says the name of this animals to each one of the students (some students will have
repeated names of the animals). They are going to be in the center of the classroom
without chairs and desks, and when the teacher says “FIND YOU” they have to start
imitating the sounds of the animals trying to find the other classmates that have the
same animal. When they are together, the teacher asks them to say the animals they
are and he asks them some simple questions like Do you have any pets?, Do you like
dogs,…? Etc.
To continue, the teacher asks the students to re-group according to the place the
animals belong to (the house, the zoo, the farm). Here they talk about other animals
they know that belong to those places. In this moment the teacher starts to show
some flashcards with other animals and all the students participate completing the
sentence the teacher says by imitating the animal he shows: The cow goes …Moo moo.

2. After that, students are presented a video with a song called: Animals voices (Here a
segment of the song):
In my house, I have..
In my house, I have…
I have a dog. Woof, woof!
I have a cat. Meow!
On my farm, I have…
On my farm, I have…
I have a cow. Moo, moo!
I have a pig.
Oink, oink, oink, oink!
They have to listen to it and to identify the animals that are mentioned because after
the song they have to go to the board and select from the flashcards the animals they
saw in the video.
They learn the song and the teacher proposes them to create a puppet related to the
animals they learned in the class. This is a paper bag puppet and these are the
materials:
• Paper bags, scraps of construction paper, glue, scissors, markers or crayons.
optional - googly eyes, pipe cleaners for whiskers
Fold the two square edges of a paper bag under (at the dotted lines), to form the
animal's head. You now have the shape of the animal's head. And according the animal
students are doing (a raccoon, dog, cat, rabbit, bunny, mouse, pig, panda, or frog) they
have to cut ears, nose, etc. In this case for the dog they have to cut out ears, eyes, a
nose, and a tongue. Glue the tongue inside the mouth. Glue the eyes, nose, and ears to
the dog's face.

3. With those puppets students are ready to sing again the song but now using the
puppets. As they are grouped according to the animals they built (the paper bag
puppets), everybody sings the chorus but in the part where the animals are
mentioned, only the students who have them in puppets sing imitating their sounds.
This is a very simple example of the use of those paper bag puppets, but they could be
used to create a short presentation of the younger students -for all the school- singing
this song that is simple for them.

4. • CLASS 2 (RAINSTICK)
This class is going to be for fourth, fifth graders and the purpose is to learn the names
of some musical instruments trying to classify them into different categories.
To start the teacher tells the students the topic of the class and asks some questions
like: What is your favorite music? Who knows to play an instrument? To continue, he
asks them to take out the instruments they carried to the class. As they do that the
teacher sticks the name of each instrument on the board with the image (small
flashcards) to introduce the vocabulary and he also sticks new images with instruments
that are new for the students.
After that, the class discusses about the main difference among the instruments and
they conclude that they might be classified into different categories according to the
mechanism by which the instrument makes its sound. These categories are string, wind,
brass and percussion. At the same time the teacher is going to present an audio with the
sounds produced by each one of the instruments that they are seeing on the board, what
students have to do is to be attentive because they have to go to the board to classify them
into their categories. They can find common string instruments like the guitar, violin and piano.
Wind instruments like the flute and saxophone. Brass instruments like the trumpet, trombone
and drums and cymbals as percussion instruments.
Knowing the different instruments, their classification and the sounds they produce, the class
talks about the different styles of music and the instruments we can listen to for example in
rock, tropical, romantic, vallenato music etc. The teacher introduces the sentence: The drums
are played in rock music and the students using the same sentence start to talk about the rest
of the instruments.
In this moment they are ready to play a competition game in which the class is going to listen
to different instruments, the first students of each line have to go to the board and say
the name of the instrument they listened to. If they are right they receive a point for
the line and the line that gets more points is going to be the winner.
Finally and to complete this class about the musical instruments, the teacher tells the
students a story about a popular ceremonial instrument that is used to invoke the rain
spirits. They are made by people who live in the deserts of northern Chile. In Chile,
rainsticks are traditionally made from dead cactus tubes with hundreds of cactus
spines hammered into the tube. Tiny lava pebbles cascade gently through the tube,
sounding much like rain.
The teacher proposes the class to create a rainstick, the materials are:
• A paper towel tube or other long cardboard tube, aluminum foil, small dried
beans (like lentils), unpopped popcorn, dry rice, or tiny pasta. Brown paper
(from a grocery bag) or construction paper. glue, scissors, crayons or markers
Trace around the end of your tube onto a piece of brown paper (or construction
paper). Draw a bigger circle around that circle and then draw a lot of spokes between
the two circles. Cut along the spokes. Put glue on the spokes and glue the cap onto one
end of your tube. Cut a piece of aluminum foil that is about one and half times the
length of your tube and about 6 inches wide. Crunch the aluminum foil into two long,
thin, snake-like shapes.

5. Then twist each one into a spring shape. Put the aluminum foil springs into your tube.
Pour some dry beans, dry rice, or unpopped popcorn into your tube. The tube should
only be about 1/10 full. You can experiment to see how different amounts and
different types of seeds and beans change the sound. Make another cap from brown
paper (the same as the first three steps) and cap your tube
Optional: Decorate the tube by covering it with brown paper or construction paper,
and then making designs with crayons or markers (or cut-out paper or stickers).
These rainsticks could be presented as the music project of the area
of English with the rest of the instruments the students carried to
the class with their names. Even, if possible the students who know
to play an instrument can do a mini presentation too.
• CLASS 3 (PLAY DOUGH PAINTING)
This class is going to be for preschoolers and the purpose is to learn the parts of the
face.
To start the teacher teaches a song called “My face” and while they are singing the
teacher touches his eyes, ears, mouth and nose and the students do the same. They
repeat the song several times and to complement this work the teacher sticks on the
board a carton face without its parts that are stuck next to the face. The teacher asks
some students to go to the board and stick the eyes, the mouth, the nose and the ears
on the carton face.
With this face they remember the name of each part and students are ready to play a
game “Simon says”. The orders are “Simon says touch your mouth…” etc. Here the
students have a lot of fun specially when they make mistakes and touch any part of the
face without listening to the part “Simon says…” And also because some of the
students can participate giving the orders to the rest of the classmates.
To finish, the teacher does an activity showing the students different faces and in each
one of them it is missing one of the parts. It could be a competition game in which they
have to say the name of the part that is missing to get a point, or it could be an activity
done with a worksheet in which they have to draw in each face the parts that are
missing (But it is better to do it orally -the competition- to foster the students’ oral
production).
To finish the class, the teacher proposes the students to create a painting of
themselves with the parts of the face they learned in the English class, but for the
picture they will use play dough. The materials are:
• Play dough of different colors, a small board of carton or wood, one needle or
“punzón” or a stick with a defined point and varnish.
To start they spread the play dough on the board (a thin coat of one color). With the
needle the students draw their face with the parts they learned in the class (if they

6. make any mistake there are not problems, working with play dough is very easy to
erase)
With play dough of different colors they fill the drawing and when it is ready the
teacher writes with the needle the students’ name under the drawing they did in this
way: Carol’ face. Finally they have to use the varnish to harden the play dough and let
the painting dries.
This kind of exercises helps the students to link what they learn in the class with extra activities
like crafts, motivating them to participate in class. In this case for example student can do a
presentation of their paintings, showing the rest of the school all the works they are doing in
class and what they have learned.
SOURCES:
• http://www.educared.edu.pe/estudiantes/manualidades/framelink.htm?
manualidades
• http://www.enchantedlearning.com/crafts/music/rainstick/