Sentence and Calligram Suitcases for the Summer holidays

Take a look at this wonderful Summertime calligram based on a sun hat!It's from the wonderful  site www.ac.-nancy-metz.fr. This activity works in any language - you just need to create your own calligram example of the sun hat in the other languages before starting the activities .

We are getting very Summery in our schools at the moment and are beginning to look for calm and sunshine filled activities to take us through to the end of the year.This calligram has made me think of how we can fill our sentence suitcases ready for the Summer holidays

In Year 5 we pack our beach bags for the beach project so the children know words in target languages for sunglasses,flip flops,sun hats,swimming costumes, sun cream, beach ball. We have also practised earlier in the year clothes items  so again we can recall items of clothing for a sunny Summer holiday .

I have added a grammar focus too but if your children are not yet competent with grammar identification of nouns, adjectives and verbs , you could limit the grammar colour coding or omit this altogether. A lot of our Year 5 children can do this or can identify some nouns,adjectives and verbs though.

Step One 

Let's make our holiday list of suitcase nouns. What do we need to pack?

Step Two 

Let's add an adjective to describe each item 

Step Three

Let's take a closer look at the calligram above and colour it in! How?

Each colour should represent a different component of the hat:

• Red for the indefinite article
• Green for any adjectives
• Blue for the nouns
• Yellow for the verbs

Step Four

Let's zoom in on the reason for packing the item by looking for this information written in the example sun hat calligram.

"pour nous cacher du soleil! 

Let's create reasons for the items we are packing.Why are we packing......? (The first two items below follow a similar pattern and use the same phrase as the sun hat - so that's easy,Can the children help you to identify a pattern and create the reasons why we are taking our flip flops , beach ball and swimming costume? :

• sunglasses
• sun cream
• flip flops
• beach ball
• swimming costume

You could reduce the challenge here and et the children match items with reasons,which have been written already on cards (or even add a symbol too to help with comprehension of the reason)

Step Five

Now all we need to do is pack those sentence/calligram suitcases.

• Create card folder suitcases with the children or create a large display suitcase for all the written work the children produce.
• Ask the children to write clear sentences  about each of the items above or to select two or three of the items they really want to take with them.
• Now ask them to colour code their sentences too and add summer time colour to their suitcase sentence packing.
• Can they now create their own calligrams of the items following the example of the hat above... and don't forget the summertime colour too!

They can now pack their own calligram suitcases! Maybe they can add an item of their own (e.g a book, a CD, a camera ....)