Nursery rhymes at the Natural History Museum

Nursery rhymes can be useful for developing a cross curricular approach too!!
Last week, while visiting the Natural History Museum, I found a new version of Itsy Bitsy (or Eensy Weensy) Spider in which the kids can learn to appreciate their beneficial role within a house environment.

Here you have the original version of the song (one of them)




And here the Natural History Museum's cover.

In case you cannot read it properly, here is the whole lyrics:

Insy-winsy spider didn't climb up the spout

She fell into the sink, now she can't climb out

If a thougtful person were to set this spider free

She would catch more household pests -and eat them eagerly.

Idioms and proverbs

A really good thing to do with your class, specially with the higher levels, is to show them some idioms, their translation to your own language and a brief explanation of why those idioms have that meaning. In my opinion, that helps to fade out the idea that languages admit direct translation out of context. The people from unadocenade.com have made a nice compilation of them in the following link.

Some hilarious examples of the opposite, such as the expression "from lost to the river" (and many others that you can find in the homonym book series), might be helpful (if used right) to create awareness on the uselessness of out-of-context-direct-translations.

I'll publish soon a few good examples. For now you can have thought on this translation that I found in a restaurant menu (I swear I'm not making it up): Pulpo/polbo a feira = Octopus on a party.
Would you actually know what are you ordering if you were an English speaker?
Would you order it at all if you don't know what is it?