Exciting news from Papaloizos Publications

Papaloizos Publications and Greek 123 are working on a new online tutor ! The online tutor contains hours of interactive content. Each lesson includes animated video, spoken vocabulary, speech recognition, comparative pronunciation and testing for writing, listening and speaking. It's fun and engaging with 43 lessons, 6 quizzes and a final exam.

You can try Papaloizos' online tutor by clicking here.

Letter matching activity

I created these alphabet matching cards last summer for my kindergarten class. They have become very popular during centers. It is great listening to little 5 year olds talk in Greek about the pictures. It is even better watching them identify the lower case letter that matches the capital letter on the card.

To make them last, I printed them out on card stock paper and laminated them. The clothespins were purchased at the local discount store. If you use these at home or in your class, I would love your feedback!

ΤΟ ΚΡΥΦΟ ΣΧΟΛΕΙΟ

This is one of my favorite projects for Greek Independence Day. I was lucky enough to find a great coloring page of a small church from Potamitis Publishing a few years ago, and incorporated the famous painting το Κρυφό Σχολείο by the Greek artist, Nikolaos Gyzis. I explain the painting to my students and teach them the song φεγγαράκι μου λαμπρό, then we create this project. My students really like the fact that they each get a small copy of the painting in their projects and they enjoy drawing the stars and moon on the black construction paper. In doing all of this, they are able to visualize that boys went to school secretly at night, and were in many cases taught by the clergy.

Awards and certificates

from the blog Στο τελευταίο θρανίο της Πάτρας

Take a look at the blog Στο τελευταίο θρανίο της Πάτρας for cute certificates in Greek to print out and give your students.

Greek Alphabet Banner

Image from the etsy handmade shop of Play to Learn

In my Greek classes, we usually spend the first half of the year learning the alphabet and letter sounds. Come January, its time to read,and to accomplish this, we review our letters and letter sounds constantly. I created this banner for my classes for a couple of reasons. First, I have marked all the vowels red and the consonants blue. The children are taught that the vowels are red because they like to have big voices. Secondly, word association. Each letter has a word and an image that is in view during class if they need help. At the start of each class, after we do weather and calendar, we review our alphabet. A student is invited to come to the front of the class with a pointer and lead us in our lettter reveiw. You can find my banner here

Our Word Wall

It's an exciting time in Kindergarten!! We have reviewed all the letters of the alphabet and we are beginning to read words and sentences. The photo above is of our classroom word wall, where we put words that we know how to read. We review these words every session and include them in our word journals.

In this class, we follow the curriculum set out by Papaloizos Publishing for Kindergarten, so most of the words included in this area are from the chapters we have completed so far.

Resources from the National Book Center of Greece

I know I say it all the time, but I am a big fan of Evgenios Trivizas! Every time I introduce his books to my students they are always so excited and really have a good time listening. Today in one of my Kindergarten classes, we began reading the book ΠΟΙΟΣ ΕΚΑΝΕ ΠΙΠΙ ΣΤΟ ΜΙΣΙΣΙΠΗ and we had so much fun listening for rhyming words in Greek.

If you would like to listen and follow along to one of Trivizas' books on-line for free take a look at The National Book Center of Greece's children's site mikrosanagnostis.gr. They have a number of books that children can listen to. A new book is added weekly, so make it one of your favorites and and introduce your child to the wonderful world of Greek authors and children's literature.

Happy reading!