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.