Teaching young learners

I would like to point out that nowadays teachers face a real challenge when teaching kids because everything has changed! Society has changed, Values have changed! Rules have changed! And technology has changed! So we have to be up to that challenge and live up to it. This is linked to some makings I believe teachers who teach young learners should have:
1- a kid´s heart and a grown up´s mind
2-Set up limits, know his/her stuff and also know his/her students´world
3-Be patient and strong
4-Be nice and demanding
5-Be understanding and flexible
6-Be ready to play and enjoy
7-Be ready to have fun
8-Listen to what students say and make it part of his/her teaching
9- Be on the alert
10-Believe in a world of fantasy
11-Be sensible and teach memorable and meaningful items.
12-Common sense should be his/her motto and this is related to the use of material, mainly books.
Books are one of the best resources, we, teachers, can count on but I do believe we should expand on the book and we should not stick to it as if it were a must to teach every single item of the book. Books are wonderful and a must but we should squeeze those books as much as we can. We should integrate the items presented in those books and we should adapt this material taking into account our young learners´likes, dislikes, reality, etc. Sometimes I have the feeling that some students sound as isolated units of a book. We should teach them how to speak at a stretch or how to listen to English but bearing in mind other factors.
This kind of task demands a lot of work because we have to be on the alert and be able to adapt and change at the moment what we had already planned:
We should create our own syllabus. To sum up, we should use books as a tool and not as a means to an end… Sometimes we follow the book to the t and I feel that communication is not being accomplished. It´s just an exercise. I believe in building up communication through those isolated items that are presented in different units of a book.
Ice breakers, stories, a video, a song can also be important parts in a class in addition to a book. For example:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_97GF1Okmig
(Lazy town mine) Ideal song to teach possessive pronouns

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xr8vUTm64h0
(Lady bugs Sesame street) Ideal song to teach numbers.

Finally, with any of these videos we can integrate lots of grammar ítems. In the following video there is a follow up included.

Main teaching point: Present continuous and expressions.

1- Watch the video and listen to the song. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3x4HvXTyGQ

2- How does this guy feel? Think of five adjectives to describe him
3- If he were twittering what would he say he is doing right now?
4- Who is he waiting for?
5- Does he like yellow lemon trees? What about you?

Teaching is a wonderful miracle!