Magazines! I picked up the Fort Worth Texas magazine - Best of 2011! Full of glossy ads for familiar things that I can easily talk about. Then I got the Texas Monthly because cowgirls! Texas! Then I got two Everyday with Rachael Ray because my contact suggested typical recipes, and Rachael Ray is a pretty big pop culture thing. Also I just love these magazines. Haters to the left. I think I'll be able to get some good talkin' out of all of them!
Mad Libs! I tried to pick some good American culture themed ones out... I hope the French think these are as funny as we do... It will at least be a good refresher on grammar as far as nouns, verbs, adjectives vs adverbs. And a vocabulary builder! So we've got a graduation one, a monster one (Halloween!), a political one, and a general Mad Lib one. This is good you see, because it gets the kids engaged and in a fun way. Lord that sounds lame. Anyway that's the theory.
Books! Two grammar books. "Painless Spelling", because English spelling is notoriously difficult for non-native English speakers... and even some anglophones, let's be real. This book is designed to be fun and easy to use, and has lots of short exercises in it. Another Barron book - the dictionary of common American clichés. It's kind of good to know these things, you know? Like slang, these come up a lot in conversation, and this reference book has loooads of common ones with short, clear explanations. Then, more in the recipes department with "Cooking Texas Style," which has loads of chuck wagon style recipes, Tex-Mex, and game meats. Plus beans, lots of beans. I may copy a few and ask the kids to decipher them for an exercise, or maybe if I get a good class... potluck!
So that's what I've got so far! I'm thinking of bringing some games too, like Apples to Apples and Scattergories. I've heard people get good results with those two especially.
What's in your suitcase so far?!
