Cinco de Mayo

I am excited to celebrate Cinco de Mayo next week on Facebook Live this Tuesday, May 5th at 6 pm with you and your family.  I wanted to go over the history of the holiday beforehand because there are often misconceptions about why it is celebrated in the United States.  The 5th of May celebrates the victory at the Battle of Puebla in Mexico against the French army in 1862.  However, this is not widely celebrated in Mexico.  The holiday became popularized in the United States through the Chicano movement in the 1960s as a way to celebrate Mexican culture.  If you are interested in learning more about the holiday and its history you can visit https://www.history.com/topics/holidays/cinco-de-mayo. 

To prepare for the Facebook Live I have included a map of North America and a coloring page of the Mexican flag so you can show your little one where Mexico is and have them color in the flag beforehand.

Since Cinco de Mayo is a celebration of Mexican culture, I wanted to use this as an opportunity to celebrate and learn about Selena Quintanilla, a Tejano singer, and Frida Kahlo, a Mexican painter. I will be reading bilingual board books from Lil Libros and they have created coloring sheets and worksheets to accompany their stories.

If you would like to decorate for Cinco de Mayo a fun activity for children who are practicing their scissor work is making papel picado. You will need either colored tissue paper or colored paper.

Paseo de Primavera Facebook Live Class and Puzzles

Thank you all who watched the Facebook Live Spanish class this week! I used the vocabulary from the Paseo de Primavera in the lesson. As promised you can download the puzzle pieces I used in the lesson from the link below.

Paseo de primavera

This week I want to encourage all of the Children´s House families to go out for a walk and see if you can find any of the following plants and creatures below. Before your walk practice identifying each picture with your child and then print out the PDF at the end to keep track of how many of each you find on your walk. I included audio so you can listen to the word and also the phrase Yo veo (I see).

Mariposa (Butterfly)

Yo veo una mariposa (I see a butterfly)

Conejo (bunny)

Yo veo un conejo (I see a bunny)

Araña (spider)

Yo veo una araña. (I see a spider)

Árbol (tree)

Yo veo un árbol. (I see a tree)

Ardilla (squirrel)

Yo veo una ardilla. (I see a squirrel)

Flor (flower)

Yo veo una flor. (I see a flower)

Hormiga (ant)

Yo veo una hormiga. (I see an ant)

Once you feel comfortable with the pronunciation of each spring time creature and plant above print the PDF below and go out for a walk and see how many you can find with your child.

Buenos días

I hope everyone is doing well! This week I tried to make the online lesson a little more interactive by having a coloring sheet to complete beforehand.

Your child can color along to the Facebook Live while my daughter colored in the coloring sheets and we introduced the vocabulary and reviewed colors

For the actual lesson, you can follow along with the following video. Encourage your children to act out the movements in the video (sleeping, waking up, putting on clothes, brushing teeth) to help reinforce the vocabulary. I hope you enjoy it.

Note: the last part of the video the audio was off but it’s worth it to see mi gato (my cat) Cricket steal the show!

Buenas Noches

Since we were unable to see all of you at Children’s House today we did a Facebook Live Class. Check out the video below to learn about getting ready for bed with Ms. Amber.

Weeks 16 and 17

¡Feliz Cumpleaños!

The past two weeks in Spanish we have been celebrating birthdays!  In addition to learning how to sing Happy Birthday in Spanish, we have been practicing expressing our age in the target language.  To reinforce the concept each child took a turn sharing their age and placing their name on a birthday cake with a candle representing their age.  You can spot these beautiful cakes in the hallway at school!

¿Cuántos años tienes tú? / How old are you.

Tengo un (1), dos (2), tres (3), cuatro (4), cinco (5), seis (6) años. / I am 1,2,3,4,5,6 years old

This was an interesting activity to see the children work through.  Although many of the older children knew how to count to 6 in Spanish, they still needed to transfer this knowledge in order to be able to use it to express their age.   Of course, it was extra challenging for our toddlers who are still learning what it means to be a certain age and how that relates to numbers!  But they all did a great job. 

 Learning about birthdays allowed us to explore some fun cultural aspects of the language as well.  We sang a traditional song that is sung during birthday parties when breaking the piñata in Mexico:

Dale, dale, dale no pierdas el tino

Porque si lo pierdes, pierdes el camino

Ya le diste uno

Ya le diste dos

Ya le diste tres y tu tiempo se acabó

We also read a book by Canticos called Las Mañanitas.  This is a beautifully fold out book based on the lyrics of another traditional Mexican birthday song.

Finally, we reviewed the colors rojo (red), azul (blue), and verde (green) using a song about a little balloon that floats aways and pops.  We first learned the song and then I sang the song using different colored balloons.  Our Primary children each chose a different color balloon and acted out the motions when I sang about their color. 

Weeks 14 and 15

Los pingüinos

We have been continuing our winter theme these past two weeks. Each week we begin by talking about the weather and describing different weather clothing items (see previous posts for songs and vocabulary).

I told a story about un muñeco de nieve triste (a sad snowman) that incorporated vocabulary we have been using throughout the year as well as vocabulary from the current theme:

• Ojos / eyes

• Nariz / nose

• Gorro / hat

• Triste / sad

• Contento or feliz / happy (I mostly use feliz with the children but you will hear contento used in the story below)

• Muñeco de nieve / snowman

• Tengo frío / I’m cold

Below is a version of the story I told by a native speaker from Spain. Listen and see if you can pick up on the words we have been using in class in his story.

We also have introduced new friends to our classes, los pingüinos (penguins). I brought in a grande (big) and a pequeño (small) penguin. One is the Papá (dad) and the other is the hijo (son). Our penguin friends are very hungry and we have been feeding them lots of fish. Feeding the penguins fish is not only a ton of fun for the children but it also gives them practice using the following concepts:

• identifying different sizes in Spanish (grande y pequeño)

• using the phrase tengo hambre (I’m hungry)

• identifying colors in this activity we are focusing on rojo (red) and amarillo (yellow)

For some movement fun, we used the song below to Bailar como pingüinos (dance like penguins). A couple of children told me they were familiar with the song too and they had a lot of fun with the dance!

For the toddler classroom, I also read the Spanish version of Grande Pequeño by Leslie Patricelli. If you are interested you can find the book on Amazon here.

Weeks 12 and 13

Hace frío y los tres osos

This week you get a little closer look at what we have been working on in classes as I created a video for the open house this week. In weeks 12 and 13 we have been continuing to describe the weather and what we wear when it is cold outside. Both weeks we read a story about Los 3 Osos (the 3 Bears). This story was a great way to practice the following phrases:

• Me gusta (I like)

• Tengo frío (I´m cold)

• Tengo sueño (I´m tired)

• Grande, mediano y pequeño (big, medium and small)

• Papá, Mamá y hijo (Dad, Mom and son)

Hace frío

Week 11

I hope you had a wonderful holiday with your friends and family!  This week in Spanish are started to talk about weather.  We sang Que tiempo hace hoy (What is the weather today) in both the Pre-primary classes and toddler classes. Through the song we practiced the expressions hace frío (it’s cold) and hace calor (it’s hot).

We focused on Hace frío to begin since it is Winter (Invierno) and it is COLD!  We sang a song about getting dressed to go outside in the winter and used the following vocabulary:

-          Gorro (hat)

-          Guantes (gloves) / mitones (mittens)

-          Bufanda (scarf)

-          Botas (boots)

-          Abrigo (coat)

Pre-primary

In the pre-primary classes we went more in depth with winter weather clothing sorting out which clothes would be worn for warm weather versus cold weather.  Once we were all dressed to play outside in the cold we built a snowman (hombre de nieve) and then made some Mexican hot chocolate with leche (milk), chocolate, and canela (cinnamon). 

Toddler

In our toddler classes we focused on the winter clothing vocabulary to gorro (hat), mitones (mittens), and botas (boots) and reviewed the vocabulary for the parts of the face: ojos (eyes), nariz (nose), and boca (mouth) to build a snowman. 

We also sang a Spanish version of the song Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star (Estrellita) and read the story Luna

I look forward to sharing the Spanish language with your children again next week!

El hombre de jengibre y los animales de la granja

Weeks 8, 9 and 10

We have been having a great December learning Spanish at Children’s House! I have the pleasure of teaching your children in December on the 5th, 12th, and 19th. Below is an overview of the fun we are having this December in Spanish class.

Pre-primary

In our pre-primary classes we have been using the story of El hombre de jengibre (The Gingerbread Man) to learn the following concepts in Spanish:

-          Reviewing the parts of the face: ojos (eyes), boca (mouth), and nariz (nose)

-          Reviewing emotions: feliz (happy), enojado (angry), and triste (sad)

-          New vocabulary : hombre (man), mujer (woman), caballo (horse), cerdo (pig), cow (vaca), zorro (fox), come (eat), corre (run)

-          Describing where people live: El hombre vive en la casa (the man lives in the house) / La vaca vive en el granero)

We are playing lots of games to practice using these words and phrases.  Last week the children enjoyed taking turns hiding the Gingerbread man as another student pretended to be the fox looking for him.  We practiced saying ¡Corre, corre pero no me atraparás! (Run, run but you will not catch me!) as the Gingerbread man and the Fox asked each friend ¿Lo tienes? (Do you have him?) until they found el hombre de jengibre and se lo comió (gobbled him up). 

This week we are playing the game ¿Dónde está mi casa? (Where is my house?) where the students will pretend to be different animals finding their homes.

Next week we will review all of the concepts we have been working on in December and practice singing Feliz Navidad. 

Toddlers

In our toddler classes we are using open-ended play-based activities to practice the following concepts:

-          Reviewing the parts of the face: ojos (eyes), boca (mouth), and nariz (nose)

-          Reviewing emotions: feliz (happy), enojado (angry), and triste (sad)

-          Reviewing colors: rojo (red), azul (blue), verde (green), amarillo (yellow), morado (purple), anaranjado (orange)

-          New vocabulary : caballo (horse), cerdo (pig), cow (vaca), pato (duck)

 Last week we continued to review the parts of the face by using La Sra. Patatas (Mrs. Potato head) by putting her face on together. We are also exploring colors in a multitude of ways. We pintar (paint) our friends different colors with scarves and we used colored desktop bells to play Cascabel (Jingle Bells). We also enjoy listening and dancing to Los Colores 1, 2, 3 Andrés.

We have been playing with our farm animal friends (see new vocabulary above) by singing about the animals and the different sounds they make. We are also learning a traditional Spanish children’s song called “La Vaca Lola”.

As always thank you for sharing your children with me each week. I truly enjoy visiting Children´s House each week and sharing these songs and games with your children.

¡Feliz Navidad!

Sra. Amber

Mi Carita

Spanish Weeks 6 and 7

This month we had two Spanish classes and we have been continuing to practice asking each other our names (¿Cómo te llamas?) and using the emotion words: feliz (happy), enojado (angry) and triste (sad) to express how we are feeling. 

In addition, we learned the parts of the face both weeks in all of the classes. 

Ojos – Eyes

Nariz – Nose

Boca – Mouth

Orejas – Ears

To reinforce the vocabulary, we have been practicing the song Mi Carita. 

Mi carita redondita  / My little round face

tiene ojos y nariz  / has eyes and a nose

también una boca / also a mouth

para cantar y reír / for singing and laughing

con mis ojos, veo todos / with my eyes, I see all

con mi nariz, hago atchis / with my nose, I go achoo

con mi boca como, como / with my mouth, I eat and eat

palomitas de maíz / popcorn

To practice our colors we have been reading the book Cocodrilo from La cuña a la luna collection.

With the toddler classes we spent both weeks reviewing and practicing colors in Spanish and we started to learn about different animals and the sounds they make in Spanish. 

Ratoncite Perez giving una moneda (coin) in exchange for el diente (tooth)

Props were printed from Mundo de Pepita

The Pre-Primary classes learned about Ratoncito Perez, a little mouse that comes to collects teeth in exchange for coins in some Spanish speaking countries including Mexico in Spain.  The children enjoyed hearing the story of Javi who has a diente flojo (loose tooth) and Ratoncito Perez comes while he is asleep.  The children then pretended to have lost a tooth and fell asleep while Ratoncito Perez visited them and left them with una moneda (coin).  We then counted the coins together to practice our numbers in Spanish.  The story was a great way to teach culture as well as introduce some new vocabulary including:

Diente – tooth

Diente flojo – loose tooth

Dormir – Sleep

Buenas noches – good night

I have really been enjoying teaching your children each week!  Have a great Thanksgiving and I look forward to seeing them again the first Thursday in December. 

La Calabaza

Spanish Weeks 4 and 5

I hope you had a fun Halloween!

These past two weeks we have reviewed our color words (rojo, amarillo, verde and marrón) as well as introduced some words to express emotions using Calabazas (pumpkins).

Feliz : Happy

Triste : Sad

Enojado : Angry

The Pre-Primary classes learned how to play I Spy in Spanish as we reviewed the colors.

Veo, veo con mi ojo (I spy with my eye)

una hoja….. (a leaf….)

The children also enjoyed reading some seasonal books. Week 4 we read a book from Lil Libros called La Catrina that teaches different emotion words in Spanish. Week 5 we read another bilingual board book by Leslie Patricelli titled Boo! / ¡Bu!

Next week we will continue learning about different body parts. We have talked a little about ojos (eyes) and boca (mouth) with our pumpkin expressions but we will expand the subject to include different foods we eat and like. I also plan to teach the Pre-Primary students about El Ratoncito Perez, the Spanish version of the Tooth Fairy.

El Arbol

Spanish weeks 1 – 3

 Yesterday we completed our third Spanish class of the school year! I have been enjoying meeting each of your children and sharing the Spanish language with them.  In the first couple of weeks we have been establishing some basic greetings such as hello (hola), what is your name (cómo te llamas) and how are you (cómo estás).  My goal is to have the classes comfortable asking each other and responding to these questions each week.  In addition to basic greetings, we have been talking about trees, apples, leaves and fall colors.  I know these have been favorite topics throughout the week in their classes and it is always great to connect what they are doing each day in their classroom to the Spanish language.   Below are some vocabulary words and phrases we have introduced. 

árbol - tree

leaf - hoja

manzana - apple

rojo - red

verde - green

amarillo - yellow

marrón - brown

¿te gusta? – Do you like?

Me gusta – I like

For the toddler class, we have read the book Yum and Yuck by Leslie Patricelli in Spanish to reinforce the concept of “me gusta” and “no me gusta”.   Her bilingual board books are simple and engaging for the younger children. 

 Practice at home

At the end of each class, we sing a fun song called Saco las manitas. Click on the link to watch the song with your child!

Talk about the picture below with your child. See if they can answer the following questions.

¿Dónde está la manzana roja? - Where is the red apple?

¿Dónde está la manzana amarilla? - Where is the yellow apple?

¿Dónde está la manzana verde? - Where is the green apple?

¿Cuántas manzanas hay? - How many apples are there?

¿Dónde está la hoja roja? - Where is the red leaf?

¿Dónde está la hoja verde? - Where is the green leaf?

¿Dónde está la hoja amarilla? - Where is the yellow leaf?

¿Dónde está la hoja marrón? - Where is the brown leaf?

¿Cuántas hojas hay? - How many leaves are there?

Hola

Dear parents and guardians,

    I am so excited to be sharing the Spanish language with your children.  I have been teaching Spanish in various capacities since 2005.  I hold a BA in Spanish Education and a MA in Spanish Literature and have shared my love of languages with students as young as toddlers through college students. 

    Each week of class I will be posting a blog about what we did in classes.  Whenever possible I will link online resources so you can practice at home.  On my website you can visit my YouTube page where I have past videos of songs and activities I have done including Spanish word of the day videos I created when my own daughter was a baby and toddler.  Below is a list of some of my favorite resources to use in classes including music, books, and online resources.  I look forward to working with you and your children this school year and if you have any questions you may email me at Amber@MyLittleLinguist.com

Gracias,

Amber Money

Música

Grupo Encanto (Cantajuegos)

-          Similar to the Wiggles but in Spain this group has tons of videos on YouTube of songs and dances in Spanish.  My favorites are Sol Solecito and El Baile de los Pajaritos (the Chicken Dance)

Lucky Diaz and the Family Jam Band

-          A bilingual musical group in the United States that has songs in both Spanish and English.  I really like their album Adelante

1 2 3 Andrés

-          Andrés sings songs in both Spanish and English that are geared to introducing children to authentic Spanish.  I also love his music because he is very thoughtful about using Latin rhythms and instruments in his music.

Libros

Lil Libros was founded by two women in the US who wanted to create authentic bilingual Spanish board books that showcase the Latin American culture and people.  These board books are great for babies and toddlers because they are sturdy and simple.

Canticos is a publisher that offers lift the flap bilingual books that teach traditional Spanish songs such as Los Pollitos (Little Chickies), Elefantitos (Little Elephants). 

Apps/websites

Mundo Lanugo is committed to sharing not only the Spanish language but Hispanic culture through fun kid friendly characters. 

MamaLingua is an app that helps parents learn basic Spanish to share with their children in meaningful ways everyday.  The best way for children to learn a language is through meaningful exposure in the context of their day to day life.  Don´t underestimate what you can share with your child through learning the language together and using it in your day to day life.

Spanish Playground is a blog that shares a wealth of online Spanish resources.  They have a plethora of songs and activities for various ages and levels grouped by different themes or language goals.