I Want My Dinner

I Want My Dinner is a book by Tony Ross that is perfect for teaching 'please' and 'thank you'.

Age: 4-6 years

Vocabulary: please thank you, king, queen, prince (the book says general but prince makes more sense), princess.

Phrases: "Say please!" "I want my dinner" "I want the toilet" (I changed it from potty so that the children can learn a more useful phrase) and "I want my teddy."


Procedure:

Tell the story, asking the children to repeat the spoken words after you in the voices for the different characters. Bang your fists on your knees as the princess demands different things, adding the word please in a polite tone of voice, with your hands in a praying gesture. For the beastie, use a deep voice but the same intonation. I use some L1 when presenting the story the first time, to see if they know what word the beastie has forgotten to say once he gets his dinner back.

Extension: Use the key hole card to hide the pictures and elicit the people on the page.

Draw a castle and the children must add the prince, princess, king and queen.

Children can complete a picture of the princess with her teddy, dinner and potty. You could trace/copy some of the pictures in the book with dotted lines and let children finish them.

Make a paper crown and decorate.

source

This video by super simple songs also teaches please and thank you very nicely. You can easily incorporate big and small into the story too (the small princess and the big beastie).