Week 1 BDLC

Welcome to the Spanish with Katie blog! I am so happy that your children can participate in my preschool Spanish classes. I hope that you'll be able to share the joy of learning a foreign language along with your child. This is a great age for language acquisition!

During our first week at the BDLC, we started out by learning our hello or hola song. We'll be starting all of our classes by singing the hola song,
Aquí estamos juntos which is a song to learn everyone's name and then we'll use our Spanish calendar to learn the day of the week, date and weather conditions. The two opening songs are below:

Hola, ¿cómo estás? x3
¿Cómo estás hoy día?
Muy bien gracias x3
Muy bien hoy día

This song is to the tune of Skip to my Lou and means:

Hello, how are you?
How are you, today?
Very fine, thank you
Very fine, today

Aquí estamos juntos, juntos, juntos

Aquí estamos juntos, sentados en el piso

Hay __________ y _____________ y ____________ y _______________

Aquí estamos juntos sentados en el piso

Sung to the tune of The More we Get Together and means:

Here we are together, together, together
Here we are together, sitting on the floor
There's ___________ & _____________ & ______________ & _____________
Here we are together, sitting on the floor


At this point of course, I don't expect students to be able to respond to the question,

¿como estás?, but they definitely will soon! We are also learning about other emotions: contento/a, enojado/a, triste, tiene miedo and cansado/a through the song, "Si tú estás contento," If you're happy and you know it.

si tú estás contento, apláudalas fuerte (x2)

si tú estás contento en tu cara se verá

si tú estás contento apláudalas fuerte.

enojado--- grite

triste—llore

tiene miedo—temble

cansado-- duerma

If you're happy, clap your hands loudly (x2)
If you're happy, your face will show it
If you're happy, clap your hands loudly.
angry-- shout
sad-- cry
scared-- tremble
tired-- sleep

In the middle of class, I like to get all the students standing up and active. One of my favorite songs to use for this segment of the class is:

Mi cuerpo, mi cuerpo

Hace musica

Mi cuerpo, mi cuerpo

Hace musica

Las manos hacen (clap, clap, clap)

Los pies hacen (stomp, stomp, stomp)

La boca dice (la, la la)

Mi cuerpo hace cha, cha, cha (students dance)

My body, my body
Makes music
My body, my body
Makes music
My hands go (clap, clap, clap)
My feet go (stomp, stomp, stomp)
My mouth says (la, la, la)
My body goes cha, cha, cha (students dance)

Finally, we end each class with a feltboard story. So far, we've done two stories: "Los tres cerditos," The Three Little Pigs and "Los tres chivitos," The Three Billy Goats Gruff. During both stories, we reinforce the emotions vocabulary (especially contento/a, enojado/a and tiene miedo.) In the Three Little Pigs, we talk about bueno/a (good) and malo/a (bad) when referring to the different materials the houses are made of. In the Three Billy Goats Gruff, we focus on sizes: grande (big), mediano (medium) and chiquito (small) when referring to the goats. We also reinforce bueno/a and malo/a when talking about the quality of the grass on each side of the river.

I know it seems like a lot of material, but we will continue to review and reinforce everything that we've learned so far. Your children will soon begin to acquire Spanish! Please don't hesitate to contact me if you should have any questions.