Enunciate those important plosives, please, publishers!

Thursday is singing day - Jim's class in the afternoon really enjoys belting out a tune, even with almost no practice. Very quick ears and have a knack of coping with lyrics - the artwork in Everybody Up lends itself to this nicely.

For once I will be picky with Everybody Up as a text though, as I realised (the way the children copied) the audio is weak on something I think should be over emphasised - 'more oomph' was something I got laughed at for saying during my CELTA course way back when - that DON'T needs extra weight to convey the negative meaning of the utterance, and that the /t/ sound on the end of it is vital...instead there's a pretty lame "I donelai ........" which is meaningless. It might be construed as elegant ellision, but the message is hidden & therefore counter productive. OUP, you can do better on this one!

You can hear my guys putting a bit more gusto into their final plosives!

We ended up with a class invasion, as the next class arrived early and wanted to see what the fun was all about; we were missing our gate keeper Yukari downstairs (our son Ceilidh is unwell again). I was delighted the younger ones trumped their older mates in a game of I Spy - they started at the age of 2.5 with Luna and have been absorbing vocabulary voraciously ever since! No harm in letting students know that the competition is catching up quickly :)