Pinocchio,puppets and football rap!

I have just been looking for video clips about the different mascots there have been for the European Football Championships since 1980. I am delighted that the first mascot was Pinocchio. A great starting point for primary foreign language learning, puppetry and active learning......

First design your own Pinocchio puppets with movable heads, arms and legs .Simply cut out with the children these different body parts and attach to the torso of the body with paper fasteners/ split pins. Now each child has a Pinocchio puppet. As the puppet was the mascot for the Italian Euros ask the children to design a football strip for the ,mascot in the Italian colours. Okay so now you are ready for the puppet shows!

Teacher as puppeteer with target language commands and body parts

• Ask the children to follow your commands and move parts of the body as you call out phrases and at the same time model the actions
• Now just call out the actions without modelling the actual action
• Now create a Simon says but make it a "Pinocchio says" with the commands and the actions
• Ask the children to make this a table game ,taking it in turns to call out 3 or 4 commands in a game of "Pinocchio says.."

Pinocchio puppet rap

• Ask the children to work in groups of four .
• All the children need to first look up the four verbs they are going to need to explain the actions needed to score a goal ( e.g to  run, to kick, to shoot, to score)
•  Each member of the group is in charge of one verb , their own puppet and action to demonstrate the verb and creating a command of the verb , which the group will have found as an infinitive.
• Ask the groups to put together a sequence of spoken commands and puppet actions to demonstrate scoring the goal .
• You could extend the activity by asking the group top wpork together to add adverbs and nouns so that each utterance consists  for example of "kick the ball with the leg quickly" 
• Now ask the group to make this spoken sequence in to a repeated sequence with a rhythm or beat so the group begins to create a rap and puppet show .
• Ask the children to perform their raps to the class