Ideas/materials to teach English as a third language

Mayken,

I would pick a weekly topic and build activities around it; e.g: the weather, school, the Christmas season, Halloween, etc. Then, select a song around it, maybe with a video on Youtube to make it more fun and easier to understand (she can infer from the images). Breakdown the lyrics and learn a little bit of it maybe. Get activity sheets from educational websites such as Twinkl.co.uk or the like.

I used to have an amazing student helping my eldest improve her English at the beginning of this year. And I remember once I asked her to help my daughter with the sentence construction for questions. She selected a trailer from Toy Story where the toys asked "What is it?" "Is it a..." and so on. She then did activities such as a Disney princess version of the "Guess who" game and a "What time is it?" activity. It really helped my daughter and she had a great time. I loved how the student had structured her class with loads of different activities around that difficult topic.

Or maybe get some stickers and get her to design her own vocabulary flashcards on the given topic. And then play with the cards asking her to make simple sentences: e.g: it is sunny, I like the rain...

Have you thought about looking at summer activity books in the ml that are designed to introduce children to English? (kill 2 birds with 1 stone... )

Hope these ideas can help.

At my daughter’s school, they use a book called “Playtime”. Maybe you could look at that? There are songs and so on associated with it. I’m not sure how clear it would be to a non-certified teacher though.

Otherwise, songs seem to be a really effective way of teaching languages at that age!

One question: does Mr Bean have words? It seems like an odd choice for a language class!

Mayken, since your time (and probably, energy ) for this third language is naturally limited, I would suggest simply reading aloud to her regularly and freely making use of the illustrations for further language exposure and use. I don't know how many good picture books you have in English, and how you can access more, but if you focus on this first, establishing a routine of reading aloud as the bedrock of your efforts, then you can expand on the stories and themes, as you're able, with the many good ideas that have already been suggested. If you try to do too much, too soon--particularly given your time constraints--it may feel kind of overwhelming and unpleasant. And the truth is, I expect you'd make happy progress by "merely" putting your initial focus on getting and reading appealing books. (Since she's now reading in her other languages, I bet she'll soon start reading her favorite books in English, too, which can also add to her progress even when you're not present.)

Thanks everyone for your ideas! We've just come back from vacation, and my plan is to prepare things before schools starts in three weeks.

Meanwhile, we're going to London on a weekend trip and I want to make sure my daughter gets to most of it. We already have a few kids books on London.

(That aside, the main reason we're going is to see Les Misérables, and I'm VERY excited.)

Last night we watched the second half of the second Harry Potter movie, and afterwards I suggested we could watch a favourite scene or two in English. My daughter loves the howler scene, and when we watched it, new first-year student and obsessive Harry Potter fan Colin Creevey comes up, snaps a photo of Harry and introduces himself:
Colin: "Hi Harry! I'm Colin Creevey. I'm in Gryffindor too!"
Harry: "Hi Colin. Nice to meet you."

So yes, it's definitely "learning English with Harry Potter" for us. 😀

Also, my daughter refuses to attend any other wizarding school, so I told her she has 3 years to learn English before she gets her Hogwarts letter when she's 11.

Have you seen the Usborne First 1000 words in English? We have the Arabic one and love it. I made a word/picture wall for my kids. It now has English, Arabic, Mandarin and French. My kids love it.

I cheat by picking a book that has an audio book or a YouTube reading online. My kids can listen to it read to them every day after we read it together. Then I let them choose a passage to copy and draw about.