Sweet life: Butterflies, strawberries, elephants

Good evening! Today I introduced the letter

ف   "f"

There are so many fun words that begin with this letter! 
Farawala (strawberry):  فراولة 
 Feel (elephant): فيل
 Farasha (butterfly): فراشة
 Fondoq (hotel)
Farkha (chicken, but this is not colloquial  Arabic, rather the dialect version of "dajaj")
 etc. 
Many of the kids I teach Arabic is their second language so introducing several words a day is pointless and it is difficult for them to remember. I usually aim to introduce about 2-3 words per Sunday. If this were an everyday school, I would only introduce one word per day. Remember, repetition is key. Repeat the letter and words several times and have the students repeat the words several times (3-5 times). I also have my students write down the new letter on project of the day. 

Today I introduced three new words: farawla, feel and farasha. However, farasha (butterfly) was the main activity.I wanted to bring in fresh strawberries for the kids to eat -- but it was a crazy week. So I had they make little strawberries with puff balls (see below). I drew a photo of an elephant on the board and also showed our class puppet -- an elephant! He is now referred to as Mr. Feel instead of Mr. Elephant (Mr. elephant usually helps out with morning exercises). 

One student told me today after we completed the projects: you are the best teacher ever because you make us do fun things when we learn them! Totally made my day. Hands- on activities, sunday school teachers, is SO important for little kids.

So here are our pretty butterflies. 

Supplies:

popsicle sticks, pipe cleaners, stickers, glue, scissors,  markers googly eyes ,  tissue paper & puff balls (for the strawberry)

My masterpiece

And the students' awesome work:

Oh look! The Farasha is eating a Farawla! Notice the elephant (feel) in the back that I drew- no ears (Hi Amirah & Tony)!

That one cool student who  decided to put the eye on the wings

The other awesome student who made a cyclops butterfly

Have a beautifulfly day!

What other fun letters begin with the letter Fah? 

Rudolph the Red Nosed Ghazala?

It has been a very very very long week with midterms, papers and a hectic work week. I am not on Spring Break! Yay! I just want to thank Amirah and Miran on Twitter for helping me last night to brainstorm ideas for today's lesson plans! Follow them, they're awesome! When students are learning a second or third language, throwing many vocabulary words at them is useless. One new word per day is practical and also reviewing the words you have taken the days before. But since Sunday Schools taken place only once a week, I try to do 1-3 words but focus on one word. Today the students learned the word: Ghamad (close; i.e., close your eyes), Ghaba (forest), and Ghazala (Gazelle, or for simplicity sake, deer).

So I had the students "ghammad" their "Ein" (eyes, which we took last week) imagine they were walking in a forest (ghaba) and they see beautiful animals and come across a ghazala. And I kept going on and on until I told them to open their eyes. I then introduced the letter

غ

 (Ghein)

I had them say it a couple of times and had someone explain to me and the classroom how this letter was different from the letter we took last week (Ein) because of the dot. I passed out paper lunch bags and they all wrote the letter ghein several times. They think of it as a backwards 3 with a dot on the top (hey whatever works, right?).

And this was the activity:

Supplies: (plus popsicle sticks and contraction paper)

This is how mine turned out:

My ghazala got hungry last night and started eating the supplies. :(

The kids' masterpiece:

It was a long day.Let's just say I'm glad the week is over and so it today. What are other words that start with the letter "ghein" that children might enjoy learning about?