Oh, no! Poor Joe!

There's a great scene in the movie Dave (Kevin Kline, Sigourney Weaver, if you've never seen it, there are your weekend plans; you're welcome) when Kevin Kline and Sigourney Weaver are visiting a homeless shelter. The kids are playing a game called Oh No Poor Joe. All the kids chant oh, no! Poor Joe! He has no...
and then the facilitator shows them a picture of a body outline missing one part. The kids identify the part all together. This is also a spectacular language learning tool. I can see a lot of purposes for it (including simple identification of body parts), but I've been using it for genitives.




I have been showing my kids pictures like this one:

There are four total, each with varying amounts of hair, ears, eyes, et ita porro. I first have the class name the person. Then I ask one kid whether the face has satis, nimis an non satis oculorum (enough, too many, or not enough eyes). I then ask the class quis stat cum ___________ and quis censet _________ toto caelo errare. We hash out a debate about each thing. When we have determined the numerical accuracy of each facial feature (and you'd be shocked at how many classes think the above face has too much hair!), and sometimes tell stories (there's one face with no nose, and it's been determined that his amasia smells terrible, and therefore he has satis nasorum, because they're a good match like that) about them, we play oh no poor joe.

They all shout, sing-song, eheu! miser __________ (this particular face is named Flyswatter)! habet nimis/non satis/satis _____________!

I gesture satis, non satis or nimis based on gestures the class has previously determined so they know how to finish the sentence, and I point at the feature in question either on the paper or on my face. It's utterly uncomplicated, and they find it hilarious. We've so far spent two full days on this, and they're getting the concept pretty solidly, plus having a ridiculous amount of fun yelling eheu! miser icecube/squirtle/charles junior/flyswatter/bulbasaur/quintus/cyclops!

They then also have a relationship with these faces, so I can pull them back out and use them in all manner of other exercises.