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