🎄Christmas🎄Decorations 🎄 Lunch Hour Live plus Question and Answer with Jennifer Tarle

Hey everyone, it's Jennifer. Let me update my audio here. I'm going to turn on my microphone. Okay, I hope everyone can hear me. Welcome, welcome. Happy week before Christmas. If you celebrate and if you don't, let's just learn a little bit about the holiday today. So my name is Jennifer Tarl and I am your friendly pronunciation teacher that comes every week into your homes on Tuesdays for a homophone lesson, a two-per-Tuesday, and on Fridays for a question of the week. Most Saturdays and Sundays I have a short lesson and I also post those randomly throughout the week. So welcome. All right, I see that we have a lot of you waiting in the room. So awesome. And I don't know what happened, but I had this scheduled for noon. I'm not sure if there was something wrong with the time zone. So it is always noon eastern time for my live classes. So again, I apologize for that. So if you can all hear me, please drop in the chat where you are listening from. I'm going to check on my end to make sure that you can all see me. All right, there's always a little bit of a lag so it's really hard for me to tell. Okay, it looks like we're live. Okay, perfect. All right, for today I thought we would do something that is a little bit fun, a little bit different. A lot of my students that I'm working with currently are from countries in Asia where Christmas is not celebrated as a traditional holiday. It's sort of been imported in more recent years. So a lot of my students have had questions and I thought, what a fun topic but Christmas decoration. So Christmas is one of my favorite holidays. I absolutely love the holiday. I just think it's so much fun. I love all of the traditions, all of the warmth and getting together with family. In fact, this weekend I had a neighborhood party and then I had a family event where we made Christmas bread together, which is a tradition in my family. Okay, so let me go ahead. We're going to jump right in. If you have questions, please go ahead and put them in the chat. And I'm going to share my screen here. Okay. All right, so let's start with my Christmas tree. I have a little video for you here because I think it's very dynamic. So this is my Christmas tree. Daytime, so the lights are a little bit harder to see. I love the tree topper. That is an ode to my mother-in-law who always had a tree topper like this. So it reminds my husband of family and when he was growing up. And my tree is sort of an eclectic mix. Eclectic is a really great word that means it is a lot of everything. And most of my ornaments are memorable to me in some way. Thank you so much out and about. And I'm sorry if my times were all messed up. It looks like you were asking before when my class was going to start. I'll definitely double check so that we're not late next week. Next week is going to be fun. I have a few guest stars from my family and we are going to be sampling traditional Christmas cookies in my family. So be here for that. That would be awesome. So again, my Christmas tree is a little more of a tree that holds memories. So you can see many, many different things and I have some close-ups for you. So let me switch out and open up some more pictures so you can see these. Okay. Hi, Peter. Welcome. All right. All right. So here are some decorations that I have. Let's start with number one here. And I know you can see the other ones that are going to be coming up. Let me just hide that. Okay, perfect. So this is a handmade ornament, not an ornament, sort of a handmade decoration that my daughter Claire made when she was little. And this is a reindeer. So Santa comes on his sleigh and his sleigh is pulled by a tiny reindeer that is the legend. And this is made out of toilet paper roll centers. So that is a popular craft material in the U.S. in schools. You basically recycle the center of the toilet paper and you make things. So this is made out of popsicle sticks and the toilet paper roll, of course, googly eyes. That's a really great vocabulary word, googly eyes, the eyes that move. And a little pom-pom nose. So I think this is probably Rudolph, who is the head reindeer who guides Santa's sleigh when there is bad weather and fog because his nose lights up. I love this. This is very fragile, very difficult to pack away, but I love it. And yes, out and about just made a very good comment. This is very different from your language videos. Yes, it is. And the reason that I'm doing this is the more that I'm teaching, I'm realizing that oftentimes my students, their language is fantastic, but the confusion with the language comes in when there is a cultural event or some historical event that they are not aware of. And so this is my way of sort of showing people who maybe don't celebrate this holiday, what Christmas is like in the U.S. So then if you're speaking with someone and they're making a reference to something, you will understand what they are talking about. Of course, if you have any questions on pronunciation of anything or vocabulary, definitely let me know and I will definitely answer those. Okay. So that is my first decoration, which is Rudolph. Okay. So next we have another beautiful reindeer. This was my mother-in-law's. I absolutely love her. She is made out of wood. Someone handmade this and there are one, two, three, four pieces that go together. So her legs come off, you put those on and then her antlers come off and you put those on and attach those when you're going to display her. Again, I should be calling this he. Clearly it's Rudolph with the red nose. I love that this reindeer also has a little bow on so that he is ready for a party, a little dressed up for the holidays. Okay. So if you had to choose number one, the toilet paper reindeer or number two, the wooden reindeer, do you have a preference? So again, number one, toilet paper and number two, wooden. I cannot choose because I think that they are both so amazing. Okay. We got to vote for number one. Shout out to my husband. That's who that is in the chat. I appreciate it. Okay. Let's move on to some more holiday decor. So I'm also posting a lot of my longer form live classes to the podcast channel near you, whichever one you prefer. So if you are listening to this, you can always head over to YouTube to see all of the pictures of everything that I'm showing. Okay. We are going to move on to Grandma Itty. That is my dad's mom. Her name is Irene. They call her Itty. I'm not quite sure why, but Grandma Irene loved to crochet. And some of my favorite Christmas pieces are from Grandma Itty. So we're just going to go through all of those. These are all crocheted. Number one, I probably have 100 of these snowflakes. She just loved to crochet. She made all of these beautiful snowflakes and then she would starch them. So they have, they're hard and then you can lay them on things or hang them up on a piece of string to hang them on your tree. So she made snowflakes. She also made me possibly one of my favorite Christmas ornaments, this beautiful hot air balloon. So she crocheted around a traditional Christmas bulb and made a little basket and then put a little bird in the basket. So I think this is just absolutely beautiful. And then last, excuse me, but certainly not least, she made me so many gorgeous angels. I have some bigger ones and some smaller ones, but she made many different angels and I have them all over my house at the holiday. So again, Grandma Itty crocheted. She made me some snowflakes and a hot air balloon and many angels. Okay. So if you have a favorite out of those, I would love to know, do you like Grandma's snowflake, hot air balloon, and angels? I love them all, but I think, like I said, the hot air balloon is my favorite. Oh, and Pete, I just see Peter just voted for the reindeer. He liked the wooden reindeer better. Okay. Does anyone have any questions? I can stop here and answer anybody's questions if you have any. Okay. Moving right along. All right. Speaking of, a lot of times children in the U.S. will make presents at school for their families and then they will bring it home. So this is a Christmas ornament, which is a favorite in my family. Can you guess who that is on that Christmas ornament? Go ahead and put that in the chat. If you have a guess of who that beautiful girl is. Okay. I see no one has a guess. That little girl is me. It is Jennifer in first grade in Sister Asumka's class. So I went to a Catholic school and we made Christmas ornaments every year for our family. And this is an egg that we hollowed out and put our school picture in and then put a little bit glitter on. My mom saved this for all of these years and gave it to me. And I absolutely love it. I just think it's so special. Speaking of more handmade items, my daughter Claire made this when she was very little. I will say the daycare made this. So when she was in daycare, the daycare providers put her little hand in green paint and made a little wreath with a poem in the middle. I love this. I hang this up every year inside of a shimmery green wreath. I just think it is so sweet and just so many fun memories. This year, Claire is a lot older and this is crooked. Let me see if I can fix this. And Claire is very creative and she made me this really cute Starbucks type drink. I don't really drink these types of drinks from Starbucks, but I do love a good Starbucks coffee. And Claire made this for me and I just think it's great. That is a small shot glass. Yes, it is. And that is Play-Doh on top with some sprinkles and she cut up a straw. And I just think this is just so cute. She's so creative. Claire. I also have decorations on my tree that are not necessarily traditional Christmas ornaments, but I have made them Christmas ornaments. So this is from a student that I worked with when I taught in Nanjing, China. This is from one of my students. It's just so gorgeous and has very long red strings on the bottom. If anybody knows what this is, they can't remember. It's a type of gourd, I think. So there's dried seeds in there. And when you shake it, you can hear them, but this was handmade. It's just so beautiful. I've had this for many years and I just love getting this out every year and just reminiscing and thinking about all of the amazing people that I've met over the years. This is another decoration that I was given from a student. Again, not traditionally a Christmas ornament, but I made it one because I want to display a lot of these things in my home and it's hard to kind of keep everything out. So I just bring these out at Christmas and enjoy them and think about all of those memories. Getting down to it, don't have many more, but this is from my grandmother. It's a little wind chime. I don't use it as a wind chime. I hang it on my Christmas tree, of course, because it's Christmas themed. But I do love that when you walk by and you get a little bit of air on that, they sort of tinkle and make a little bit of noise. I also, every year, make a Christmas ornament from a picture. This is very common in the US. There are different websites and companies that you send them a picture and they make you a Christmas ornament. I love this one. This is my little girl, Peppa, the dog, and my other little girl, Claire. Peppa was just a baby in this picture. I think she was maybe, I don't know, six months old or something. And Claire was just thrilled because we had just gotten Peppa and Claire had always wanted a dog. Last three, let's start with these Christmas trees. So these are new this year. I just thought this was fun. I received this Christmas tree. It is called a prismatic Christmas tree as a gift and I just think it's so much fun. The lights move and twinkle and change colors. And this silver tree reminds me of the tree that one of my family members had. It used to be very chic and just the height of elegance to have a silver tree like in the sixties and seventies. So this is a throwback to that. And my last two, last but certainly not least, my aunt Shirley had a ceramic shop. Ceramics used to be very, very popular in the U.S. She would go and get together with people and craft and paint things. So this is from my mom. My mom made this. It is a Christmas house that lights up and the little windows have little types of like glass in them. And I just think it's so sweet with Santa coming down the chimney. My all-time fave. This is from aunt Shirley. Just stunning. I love this Christmas tree. I love all the light. I love the flocking with snow on it. I love the cute little sparkly snowman that goes with it. Just absolutely love, love all of it. Okay. So that's all that I have with all of my Christmas items again. So I have the reindeer with the toilet paper, the wooden reindeer, crocheted star. Oh, I forgot about this one. This is old. This is from my grandmother, Madeline. And this was an ornament that you could place over lights, the old style lights when they were really, really hot. And then the heat from the light would make this spin around. Now I have this in the sun in the afternoon. And when the sun is warm, it will make this spin. Love that. I have the crocheted hot air balloon and the crocheted angel, the Christmas ornament of me. Oh, and I forgot these two. These are made out of noodles. I love anything that is a craft made from something as an ornament. And these are pasta. So you have the like rigatoni noodle and then the little shell noodle and then a little teeny tiny noodles on top. Those are super cute. The wreath from Claire, my Christmas trees, Christmas house, Christmas ornament that I made. So just so many fun memories. So I would love to hear if any of you have a favorite Christmas decoration that you would like to share or one of the Christmas decorations that I have. If you have any questions or comments, please let me know. And I'm also going to open this up to any just general questions about pronunciation or anything that you may have. So go ahead and put those in the chat. While I am waiting for those, I just want to give a little public service announcement. I do have practice books. If you are interested for all of the sounds in American English, you can find those on my website, www.carlspeech.com under product. And I also teach one to one classes. All of those are listed on my website. You can message me for details. I also work with many different companies and corporations. So if you are in charge of your HR department and you want to offer classes like mine as a benefit, please contact me. I would love to work with you to get that set up for your employees. I know that pronunciation and clear speaking and the ability to clearly get your thoughts out. If that's in giving a presentation or if it's just having a video call, there are so many things that I work on, voice, sounds, presentation, even higher level language with a lot of my students. I am happy to talk about those options. Okay. I don't think anyone has any more questions. Thank you all so much for being here. Some of you commented that this is very different than my traditional classes. You are correct. I'm trying something different. Let me know. I would love to know if you liked it. I would also love to know if you didn't like that. All of that information is very welcome because I'm trying to expand my offerings for all of you out there so that you get what you need and you can become clear and confident and effective communicator. So thank you all for being here. Next week, I will be here at noon, U.S. Eastern time to talk about all things Christmas, cookies, and to answer all of your pronunciation questions. So thanks for being here, everyone. Have a great day.