"App-lays" and "Grap-ays" - Welcome to Children's English class

This week marked the beginning of a new vocabulary unit in my section of Children's English. My little students (ages 5-9) are currently learning the names of different foods (fruits, vegetables, etc.) in class. Today, in order to add a little spice to the potentially monotonous review of vocabulary words, I decided to take my kids down to the nearest tienda to purchase the ingredients for a fruit salad. Each student had his or her own note card with a picture of a piece of fruit and a number on it, and they were required to retrieve that fruit for the salad. The kicker: they had to ask me for the fruit in English, before I would translate and ask the woman who works the tienda in Spanish.

Picking out fruit at the tienda

Trying not to go crazy with kids pushing each other to be first in line, yelling, etc...

The kids were super excited when they found out we'd be taking a trip during class... even if it was only a few blocks down the street. :) Thankfully, I had the help of Krysta to keep their rambunctiousness down while we took turns asking the tienda woman for our ingredients. After we finished buying everything, we walked (ok, so the boys raced... typical) back to the library and began making our fruit salad.

Krysta getting the kids to line up and stop shouting (thank goodness she helps out on Wednesdays...)

We let them peel and cut the bananas, oranges and strawberries (with butter knives, of course!)... while Krysta and I worked on the pineapple, apples, kiwis and mangoes. By the time we finished cutting and eating, we had 9 extremely sticky, but happy kids... and a huge mess. But it was well worth it.

My sticky, but happy, English class

Here's a short video of the kids during the eating process... we asked them what they thought of the fruit salad, to which they replied (in unison), "RICAAAAA!" or "DELICIOUSSSS!" We also asked what fruits were in the salad... they answered in their super cute accented English (i.e. "app-lay," "grap-ay," etc.). This is just a small taste of what we get to experience every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. :)

Hasta la proxima vez,
Sarah

PS. Here's the view from the roof of the library at sunset... pretty sweet, yeah?