“Where is Thumbkin? Where is Thumbkin?” is a popular fingerplay for children. Young language learners have fun chanting or singing and moving their fingers. Fingerplays are a fun way for children to learn and remember English. Try this technique by learning a few fingerplays with the resources below. Have your young language learners watch you demonstrate the finger movements and mouth the words. Then have them try. Make it more engaging by having the children create finger puppets or use their fingers as shadow puppets. Below, find websites full of fingerplays and free finger puppet cutouts. For lesson ideas and activities, check out our webinar recording, Learning with Finger Plays.
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Recommended Web Tools
- Reading is Fundamental (RIF)– Provides details about using fingerplays to teach literacy and has videos of different teachers demonstrating a few famous ones.
- Dr. Jean– Website full of lyrics, links to videos with the gestures, and tons of information and ideas for teaching children.
- Cullen’s ABCs– Find many videos of famous fingerplays demonstrated by Cullen, who has an online site full of resources for young learners.
- Alina Celest Youtube– Watch Alina demonstrate various finger plays.
- ESL4Kids– List of fingerplays with teaching points. Doesn’t provide a visual for the gestures, but would be useful in conjunction with one of the video sites.
- Billy Bear– Find various patterns for finger puppets. You can also get students to use these characters for story time to retell a story or answer follow up questions.
- Activity Village– Find various finger puppet characters to print and cut out ranging from Minions to animals.
- Hand Shadow Puppets– Get students to learn the names of animals by using these instructions to create the shadow on a wall.
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