New Primary ESL Teacher

I have taught for many years, but have only just taken on the job of an ESL teacher in an Australian school. I have attended 2 short courses. I have noticed that resources are very limited at my school. Has anyone suggestio ns for great resources of any kind- any wonderful advice? Many of my new students tend to be 4 year olds, and the younger sector of the school. At the moment I am also having trouble understanding the parents. A Thai mother handed me a book and said "the king" in English-I didn't know whether it was for me or the class or the unit-she was obviously upset by my hesitance-the book was in 2 languages, but was written by the King of Thailand-how should I have reacted?
One of the little girls-a delightful Polish child, who loves music and sings beautifully in English-cannot speak English-any ideas for simple catchy educational songs on a CD? I'd love some help!
valian

[Tdol]

If you open these pages, you should get some help. I searched our links for 'primary'and 'young', so there will be a few irrelevant sites as well, but quite a few might be of use.
http://www.usingenglish.com/cgi-bin/...gi?query=young
http://www.usingenglish.com/cgi-bin/...?query=primary

[Teaching English Games]

If you have internet access and a printer you can access loads of free flash cards and with these using games you can run entire lessons - particularly with beginners to lower intermediate.

I have taught mostly with no course book (although I'm not against them at all), exclusively using games just with a few picture cards. I'm not a big fan of making zillions of photocopies anyway!

Even if you don't have picture cards you can have your students make some as long as you at least have pencil and paper.

To make your life easy it's good if you follow a course book anyway, to save you worrying about which language to teach, but you teach the language in that course book with games, and not using the book itself - it's just your guide.

Kind regards,
Shelley
Receive free games and ideas to make teaching children more fun on: www.teachingenglishgames.com