Babies have their own language. You’ll find a list below of 6 reduplicative baby words. You don’t need to use them yourself, but you’ll hear them, because adults use them in talking TO very young people.

1. no-no; “Don’t do that. That’s a no-no”
2. tum-tum
3. din-din
4. boo-boo
5. choo-choo
6. doo-doo

Now see if you can match them to the adult definitions below. Answers near the bottom of the page)

a. excrement
b. forbidden act
c. dinner
d. little mistake
e. stomach
f. train

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Puppets & Figurines
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Students–even adults–tend to speak freely if you give them puppets. (One reason is that although adults are afraid of making mistakes, puppets don’t care.)

Figurines work just as well. Little plastic or rubber people or animals. (Mr. Poosheesty has 3 little plastic pigs playing balalaikas, and with them students recreate “The Three Little Pigs.” The part of the wolf is played by a Michael Jackson doll).

What if you don’t have puppets or figurines?

1. Make them from paper. Students draw figures and cut them with scissors.

2. Have students bring in pictures of well-known
people from magazines; mount them on pencils and
they become the puppets.

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ACTIVITIES WITH PUPPETS
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Here are a few idea, which we hope you will adapt and change
to make fit your class.

1. Re-telling Stories

Write on the board a few famous stories that everyone in the
class knows-CRIME AND PUNISHMENT,
MOBY DICK, LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD.
Now ask students to brainstorm well-known stories until
you have a list of 15 or so.

Now, with puppets or figurines, students prepare a contemporary
2-minute summary performance of a story from the list OR any other
story they can think of.

As always, the teacher should demonstrate-hopefully with a funny
up-dated version of the story.

2. Guessing Stories

Students plan and perform 3 30-second scenes from the
famous story list. But they don’t reveal the names.
Others guess.

3. Puppet Celebrity Party

Each student will choose a celebrity for their puppet
or figurine to represent. But the names aren’t revealed to
the class. The puppet celebrities will gather for a party and
talk to each other and behave the way puppet celebrities do.
After the two-minute role play, the rest of the class will
guess who attended the party.

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“Christmas Taboo Speaking Game”
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Soros Teacher Trainer Aaron Carlson has supplied this
holiday speaking game.

Students receive small bits of paper that look like this:

NIGHT
Can’t say
Dark
Day

One student describes the top word. But he can’t
say the words below. Those words are taboo.
Other students guess. The game promotes fluency.

For the full, beautiful, formatted version of the game
–with lots of pre-made cards–just click on
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ETsinRussia/files/

It’s all there for you. You can download the whole thing
and use it immediately in class. Or adjust it to make it
easier or harder.

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BABY TALK ANSWERS
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1. no-no = b. forbidden act
2. tum-tum = e. stomach
3. din-din = c. dinner
4. boo-boo = d. little mistake
5. choo-choo = f. train
6. doo-doo = g. excrement

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IN THE NEXT ISSUE: (December 15th)
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Geography Activities!

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Copyright 2001 Kevin McCaughey & I.M. Poosheesty
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