We use Super Simple Songs in all of our classes and it’s a joy to see kids singing them, but we don’t often get to see the kids really get into the songs at home.  The parents of our students often share stories of even the shyest kids in class really letting loose when they listen to the songs at home.

It’s something to remember when teaching young learners.  The classroom can be quite intimidating.  In addition to being in foreign environment, younger children are still learning to be comfortable playing with other kids.  It’s very natural for young learners to be reserved in class, but VERY talkative and active at home.  Young learners LOVE to imitate their teachers at home, so be aware that even the quiet kid who never says anything in class IS listening and most likely re-living your lessons over and over again at home.

Here’s a fun video of Dylan in Belgium enjoying Walking Walking at home uploaded by his Mom, Sarah.  I love it when he plays the trumpet at the beginning!

-Devon

One of our favorite channels on youTube is The Daily English Show. Sarah does an amazing job of producing high quality shows for adult English learners daily. We’re very happy she shared her thought on Super Simple Songs in the latest episode (#758).

It’s good to be cake.

After a long day of classes, I went home yesterday and began reading some of my favorite blogs. I was moved when I came across this post at the Autism Games blog about a bit of a tough day a Speech Pathologist had with a young autistic boy.

[excerpt]
When it was time for Ethan to go home, he was still visibly upset, though no longer crying. I started singing a goodbye song from Super Simple Songs Three (#19). I held his hand and sang as we walked down the hallway. Ethan loves music. For one of the few times that session, he looked right at me and said with sheer relief, You’re cake. His mom said that that was a good thing, but she didn’t need to tell me that. Little Ethan was telling me, You found something that made me feel better.

We’ve been so thrilled to get positive feedback about Super Simple Songs from parents and teachers of children with Autism. We created the songs on Super Simple Songs 1 for our young English students in Japan. We soon learned that parents of native-English speaking toddlers also enjoyed the CDs. That was a bonus.

Then we started to hear from teachers and parents that the simplicity of the lyrics, the pace of the music, and the ease with which the songs could be taught through gesture made them very attractive to autistic children. That was amazing to us. We’ve kept that in mind on our following CDs, and I really believe that our focus on keeping things super simple has made the songs better for ESL/EFL students, students with special needs, and very young native English speakers. Although each of those groups have unique characteristics, they are all emerging speakers who struggle to communicate. They can all take comfort in music when it is simple enough for them to follow along with. They all rely very much on physical cues to compensate for linguistic challenges.

So, we’ll continue to keep things super simple for young learners, and when we do a song that is a little more challenging, we’ll continue to include a slowed-down “Learn It” version of the song.

And I’ve added a new complement to my lexicon. If I ever tell you, “You’re cake,” it’s a good thing. It’s a very good thing.

– Devon

You might have noticed something new on the front page at supersimplesongs.com. We’re now selling Super Simple Songs in Korea with the help of our friend, Sujeong Lee. Sujeong is an extremely talented and dedicated teacher and teacher-trainer, with a passion for language education through the arts. She is the founder and Director of the Arts in Education, International Center (A.I.E) and MILK English (Moving, Imagining, Laughing Kids).

We’ve been in contact and have shared ideas with Sujeong since soon after starting our youTube channel about a year and a half ago. And last November we got to spend some time with Sujeong when she visited Tokyo as a featured presenter at the International Association of Performing Language annual conference.

We are thrilled that Sujeong will be representing Super Simple Songs in Korea!

Added 6 new weather flashcards for sunny, rainy, cloudy, snowy, windy and stormy. Four of these go great with How’s the Weather? from Super Simple Songs Two.

Our January topic at Knock Knock English is Clothing and Weather. Hope to get some clothing cards up soon!

Troy

Added new shapes flashcards to the site today. They’re a little silly–my students have been having a lot of fun with them. I also updated the Shape Song #1 and Shape Song #2 pages with the cards, and some activity suggestions. Our holiday lessons mostly focus on “toys” vocabulary. But we also add shapes to the month’s topic because there are so many shapes that can be found in toys. ball-circle, kite-triangle, video game-rectangle, book-square, etc.

Hope everyone is having fun with their holiday classes, parties, etc.!

Troy

Welcome to the Super Simple Songs official blog. We all have our own blogs here at Super Simple Songs but this blog is specifically for Super Simple Songs related news, website updates, events, etc. Check the blog or subscribe to the feed to keep updated on new flashcards, worksheets, free songs, etc added to the site or any upcoming Super Simple Songs related events.Feel free to leave comments or suggestions for activities and we’ll happily add them to the activities pages.

Thanks!

Troy