Just been out for coffee and have bought this origami flower from the charity box on the coffee shop counter.Brilliant idea for back to school and strating language learning again for the year or also for European Day of Languages.

Take a look at the flower head below and the ideas it made me think about!This is where the activity starts!

Each child needs a printed small map of the target language country- as this is what the flower head is created from and a green straw or a stick covered in coloured paper.

I have a found a tutorial step by step guide to making the flowers here

Craftus Paper Flower Bouquet

Below is my ideas for the language classroom,using these origami flowers on European Day of Languages.

Make a class bouquet of flowers for European Day of Languages.

First take a look at a map of Europe
Identify countries and languages spoken.
Practise greetings in different target languages
Give each child a square piece of paper map print out of Europe.Ask the children to write five favourite target language greetings in or next to the country where the target language greeting is used.
Create the folded flowers .
Now you have a class bouquet of greetings from European countries!
You could do something very similar with a map of the world or a map of a continent e.g Africa where lots of European languages are spoken.

(I think that we could use this idea just as effectively at the start of the year , as an opportunity with UKS2 to look at a map of the target language country. We could then ask the children to write on the reverse of the map as many words/ or a selection of their favourite words that they can remember from last year's language learning.The children can make their flowers and take them home to give to a parent or carer and to announce that they are learning a language again this year on school!)

This is my first blog post on the World Cup, which I hope will begin to support network teachers to develop activities to celebrate the World cup and to consider all the languages that will be heard at the global event.

The resources I refer to are all on JLN website.
You can take a look at the world cup resources we have created or sourced.

First let's celebrate the way the players and the fans will greet each other in all the various languages they speak.
Show your children this clip of 30 different ways to say hello from around the World

Now you can play "Catch a greeting!"

1. Ask the children to recall as many different ways of greeting each other both in their own home language , school language and in other languages they have seen on the video clip

2. Practise the greetings they suggest.Practise the sound of the greeting. Ask the children to think of the shape of the greeting both as a sound they hear (is it wavy/sharp/spiky etc) and as written word.Ask the children to draw the greetings as sound shapes and then as the written shape in the air.

3. Show the children some new greetings they haven't mentioned from the video clip.Look at the greeting word and the language it comes from and then practise the sound of the greeting on the sound slides that accompany each greeting.

5. Give out small card versions of greetings from the video clip - one per child. Locate and listen to the greetings if necessary on the video clip

6. Ask the children to practise their specific greeting. Does it help them to draw the sound of the greeting or the shape of the word in the air?

7. Ask the children to move around the room greeting each other and each time they greet someone they should swap greeting cards and therefore also the greeting word they have to say. Children should have the chance to say all the greetings.

Bring the children back together and each child a blank A4 piece of plain paper. Ask the children to investigate the flag of each of the country of the greeting card they are holding and to create a “Greetings “card to put on a class display.They should make sure that they spell their greeting accurately and make it an integral part of their flag.

Why not share this song "Hello to all the children around the world " with your class as they create their flags for the display?

A bouquet of greetings for European Day of Languages!

World Cup Catch a Greeting Game KS1 and LKS2