12.12.2011 & 13.12.2011 Partes del cuerpo

More body parts practice is on the agenda for today. In addition to reviewing our heads, shoulders knees and toes, the kids will search their goody bags to show me the body parts I ask them to find. If time permits we will do a pin the body part on the boy activity.

Head—cabeza (kah-bay-zah)

Shoulders—hombros (ohm-bros)

Knees—rodillas (rroh-dee-yas)

Feet—pies (pee-yes)

Eyes—ojos (oh-hos)

Ears—orejas (o-ray-has)

Mouth—boca (boh-kah)

Nose—nariz (nah-reez)

5.12.2011 & 6.12.2011

Feliz Navidad! Please practice "Feliz Navidad" by Jose Feliciano with your child at home to help him or her prepare for the upcoming Christmas program. It should be lots of fun. If time permits, we'll do a quick activity to practice the body parts that we know. Hasta luego.

14.11.2011 & 15.11.2011

This week we started 2 completely unrelated themes: a Christmas song and body parts. After a couple of attempts at different songs, we are going to go with "Feliz Navidad" by Jose Feliciano this year at this point with the rapidly approaching Christmas program.

Feliz Navidad
Feliz Navidad
Feliz Navidad
Feliz Navidad
Prospero año y felicidad

Feliz Navidad (Merry Christmas)
Feliz Navidad (Merry Christmas)
Feliz Navidad (Merry Christmas)
Prospero año y felicidad (A prosperous year and happiness)

I wanna wish you a Merry Christmas
I wanna wish you a Merry Christmas
I wanna wish you a Merry Christmas from the bottom of my heart

Next, our body parts song:

Cabeza y hombros
(Heads and shoulders based upon the heads, shoulders, knees and toes)

Cabeza y hombros, rodillas y pies, rodillas y pies,
Cabeza y hombros, rodillas y pies, rodillas y pies,
Ojos, orejas, boca y nariz,
Cabeza y hombros, rodillas y pies, rodillas y pies.

Head, shoulders, knees and feet, knees and feet
Head, shoulders, knees and feet, knees and feet
Eyes, ears, mouth and nose,
Head, shoulders, knees and feet, knees and feet

*They say feet instead of toes because toes is just too long to fit into the song.

We will continue to work on the Christmas song through the Christmas program. Thanks and have a nice week.

7.11.2011

This post is for Ms. Suzie and Ms. Rhonda's classes that I will see on Monday the 7th. Because I will not meet with my Tuesday classes, I will not begin anything new this week and will most likely do some review activities with commands and colors and songs. Perhaps we'll see if the students can sing "Feliz cumpleaños a tí" to Sra. Plower who is one year older today.

31.10.2011 & 1.11.2011

Hola a todos! Hello everyone! This will be my first post summarizing an actual lesson. First, let me say that I not only have various age levels from 3s to Kindergarten, but I also have a set of students that began Spanish in late September, so I will try to format my posts as 3s-Kindergarten and then Señora Starla's class. I will make my posts before class and add/edit to them to more if necessary to more accurately to reflect what we accomplished in class.

3s-Kindergarten: We will sing our colors song and play a colors memory game with color cards. Individual students try to make a match with the cards in the center of the rug. We all have to say the color when a card is turned over. We will be wrapping up the official "study" of colors and moving on to some new material most likely following the Election Day holiday. Of course, we will continue to use our color words for the remainder of the year.

Señora Starla's class will sing the song of the month, "Buenos Días" and also play a memory game using cards with images that the students are familiar with: buenos días, hola, Sra. Freya etc. Señora Starla's class will be moving on to colors following the Election Day holiday.

Los colores...colors

Throughout the month of October the focus has been on learning our colors so that we may apply them to other things for the remainder of the year. Ask your kids what they are learning in Spanish and, if possible, take a few minutes to talk about the colors and greetings we are learning. It really can make a difference in their ability to retain material from week to week. Check out some great Spanish flash cards on chillola.com.

Regarding pronunciation, I count on your children to let you know how our words are pronounced, but you may use the option of visiting www.wordreference.com or google translate where you can hear an audio file of the word’s pronunciation.

Colors song (tune of “Are You Sleeping?”)

"Red is rojo, green is verde,

Blue azul, negro black,

Yellow amarillo,

Purple is morado,

Gray is gris, brown, marrón.”

Additional colors:

Anaranjado—orange

Rosado—pink

Blanco—white

An interesting thing to note is that many Spanish words vary from country to country or region to region. Some Spanish speakers may use the word violeta for purple, rosa for pink, café for brown or naranja for orange and they are all correct. This is one of the aspects of the Spanish language that I find intriguing and challenging at the same time.