Kindergarten: Our Bodies

For the past 6 weeks, kindergarteners have been learning the names of our body parts in Spanish.  We have had fun singing Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes in Spanish - ask your child to sing this for you! We have also learned a new Spanish song about making music with our bodies - "Mi Cuerpo Hace Música!"

Check out the vocabulary below and see how many your child can name for you if you point to that body part! 

Head = cabeza (cah-BEH-zah)

Shoulders = hombros (OM-bros)

Knees = rodillas (row-DEE-yahs)

Feet = pies (PEE-es)

Eyes = ojos (OH-hose)

Ears = orejas (oh-DEH-has)

Mouth = boca (BOH-kah)

Nose = nariz (nah-DEES)

To go along with our study of body parts, we have played a lot with monsters!  We read the book "Go Away, Big Green Monster" in Spanish - the students loved it!  Then we also explored several other monsters and made observations in Spanish about how many of each body part they had.  We even created our own class monster in Spanish!  To finish up our mini unit, today students drew themselves as "monsters" and were able to describe their body parts in Spanish - check out your students' work in their take-home folder! 

Kindergarten: Las Hojas

We have continued our autumn theme by looking at the árboles (trees) and changing hojas (leaves) around us. To describe these, we have been continuing to practice our words for sizes and have been adding words for fall colors. The colors shown below correspond to a song we learned about the falling leaves:

 rojo

amarillo

 marrón

 anaranjado

Students should be comfortable singing the slow part in the beginning and at the end (this part uses their color words and some hand motions about falling leaves). The faster part in the middle is about raking leaves into a big mountain to jump in. Kindergarteners have enjoyed choosing leaves, naming their colors, and decorating our class tree together!

Kindergarten - Las Calabazas

To celebrate el otoño (autumn), we have been spending our time in Spanish class describing many different kind of calabazas (pumpkins). To do this, kindergarteners have been hard at work learning many adjectives, including the words for sizes and colors. Below are some photos of pumpkins (some we already looked at in class; others are new). See if your child can use a Spanish word or two to describe the pumpkins they see. Numbers count as adjectives, so you can also ask ¿Cuántas calabazas hay? and let them count them up.

We also talked about how pumpkins are feeling...with jack o'lanterns! Today we completed a small art project in which each student designed a calabaza especial and described how it is feeling. Ask your child to see it, and to describe the pumpkins feelings aloud. Feeling words can be found here for a refresher.

Kindergarten - Our first 6 weeks!

I have thoroughly enjoyed getting to know all the new smiling kindergarten faces at Baker this year!  During the first weeks of Spanish, kindergartners have been spending time practicing routines, practicing directions in Spanish, learning new games and songs, and learning each other's names.  This can be a challenge for both amigos and profe--students are learning to say their names in Spanish, while I am working on (and have just about mastered!) learning all the new names.

Here is a brief summary of some key things we have worked on during these first 6 weeks.

• As I mentioned in a previous post, kindergartners have been practicing introducing themselves by stating their names and how old they are.  You can ask your child to share our ¿Cómo te llamas tu? song that we have been singing to help us remember how to say our names.  You can also ask your child to show ¿Cuántos años tienes? by holding up 5 or 6 fingers and saying the number in Spanish.  This week, your child will be bringing home a self-portrait with two sentences that tell their name and their age.

• In addition to practicing our names and ages, kindergartners have been busy learning how to greet each other and tell how they are feeling.  They are such quick learners that now when I see them around the building, they are quick to give me a nice, confident Hola, Profe! (Hi, teacher!).  Many are also ready to tell me how they are feeling when I continue the conversation with a ¿Cómo estas? (How are you?). This is exciting progress--in just 6 weeks, our kindergartners are able to make small talk in Spanish!

• If you are interested in talking about feelings at home, you can try greeting them at home with Hola, ¿Cómo estas? (Hello, how are you?). They should be able to give you one of three different responses:

We often practice these by giving a thumbs up or thumbs down while saying the word to reinforce what they mean.  Give it a try!

Follow Profe on Twitter!

You can see weekly tweets for Spanish classes in Kindergarten and 3rd grade on my Twitter account -

@profe_vergara

¡Bienvenidos! Welcome!

Welcome to my blog about Elementary Spanish at Baker! My goal is to use this space to share what we have been working on in Spanish class and to post links to websites and materials for enrichment at home. I'll include lots of links from Spanish vocabulary to Google translate, where you can see definitions of words as well as hear pronunciations, if you are not a Spanish speaker yourself.

In all grades, we start the year getting to know each other. This is standard September stuff--we just do it in Spanish. A few things that all students have been working on:

* Saying hello and goodbye

* Telling our names and ages

* Telling how we feel

* Telling the weather and the date

For grades 3, this is a quick review before we move on to other things; for the younger students we practice these things throughout September, gradually increasing vocabulary and students' level of conversation with each other as they move up through the grades. We also practice following rules and directions in Spanish, which is important for getting us off to a good start together for the year.

Our most important directions in Spanish are shown below, with a graphic as a reminder of the definition. Can your child tell you what each means, and why it is important?

mira

escucha

Kindergarten: ¡Hola, clase!

As I mentioned in a previous post, kindergarteners have been busy this September learning to greet each other and tell how they are feeling. They are such quick learners that now when I see them in the hallway, they are quick to wave and give me a nice, confident ¡Hola, profe! (Hi, teacher!). Many are also ready to tell me how they are feeling when I continue the conversation with ¿Cómo estás? (How are you?). This is exciting progress--in just one month, our kindergarten students are able to make small talk in Spanish! 

If you are interested in talking about feelings in Spanish at home, you can try greeting them after school with ¡Hola! ¿Cómo estás? (click the link to see the translation and/or hear how it is pronounced at Google Translate). They should be able to give you one of three different responses:

We often practice these by giving a thumbs up or down while saying the word to reinforce what they mean. Give it a try!