Years,nouns and the Queen's time line.

90 is quite an age! Our primary language learners are fascinated by number patterns in the target language so I found this picture and thought about how the children in primary languages could work with numbers and celebrate the Queen's officlal birthday too .

First let's create a simple number time line. 

• Give out to the children the nouns associated with roles in a family that Queen has had throughout her lifetime and ask them to order the nouns in an order that shows how during a lifetime someone is born, grows up and then grows older. I would suggest that you give the children the target language nouns and phrases for:  daughter, baby , toddler, sister, teenager, wife, Queen, mother , grandmother, great grandmother,ninety years old .
• Ask the children first of all to investigate the meaning of the nouns ,using their reading skills - so cognates, semi-cognates, sensible guesses, checking in a bilingual dictionary.
• Now give out the important dates as years written as target language words ( e.g two thousand and sixteen- written of course in the target languge- would match the phrase ninety years old)  
• Can the children order the years in a sensible order for a time line and then can they match the nouns and key phrases you gave them in the target language, decribing roles the Queen has had in her family, and can they match these to the important years for the Queen?
• Ask the children to think of ways to display the milestones they have sorted for the Queen's life.Ask the children to think of creative ways to share this jinformation that would be associated with birthdays - so perhaps a set of flags or bunting with the key years, family roles and a symbol on each flag or a series of candles with the year written along the candle and the key noun in the flame etc.