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Sonrisas Spanish School Curriculum
I most likely won't be blogging on a daily basis about our experiences with this curriculum, but I wanted to share with you an art or shall I say ... drawing activity that we did yesterday.
Calendar and Circle Time
The second day using Sonrisas Spanish School Curriculum went well again. Alyssa gets SO excited when she sees me place the Sonrisas CD in the player. She grabs the sombrero and maracas and gets herself ready to dance. Alyssa also danced with Ana (the girl puppet). We focused on the recommended songs in the manual for the first lesson. Alyssa's favorite song was track #4 "Cabeza, hombros, piernas, pies." Don't forget to listen to their sample songs. We played several songs over and over again because she LOVES dancing and singing. She is also trying to memorize or learn the words to the songs. The tunes are very catchy! We played the same "Me llamo" game and made it a bit sillier using the puppet who was causing a whole lotta trouble. Alyssa was laughing so hard at the puppet. She already knew the appropriate response to the Lesson 1 question. We decided not to choose Spanish names this year. I think we will save that activity for next year when we repeat the curriculum.
Ideas and Suggestions
1.) You could use different size balls and different colored balls to play the game using the appropriate Spanish terms (pequeno, grande, azul, rojo, etc.) before throwing and asking the name game question. Please remember that I haven't figured out how to type with accent marks.
Story Time
We read the story again and I asked her a few comprehension questions in addition to questions about the pictures in Spanish. It was a bit hard for her to understand some of the questions, so I really had to simplify how I asked them. At times I needed to respond or answer for her in Spanish. We also read the book I told you about the other day A mi manera just for fun.
Art Time
This art activity is not part of the Sonrisas Spanish School curriculum - this is one of my own ideas using other available resources. I wanted a game that reviewed the facial features in Spanish. I remembered a game we owned and hadn't played in awhile. Alyssa and I use to play the game Pick and Draw all the time. However, I wanted to do another art activity so I decided to put a twist on this game. I used my photo blocks and Spanish body part Education Cube inserts cards to create a new game. Education Cubes is a member only subscription website, but it is well worth the price I paid for it. I added in a stack of cards for ears that I had drawn. At first, I used a colored dot die that was already prepared from a previous math lesson, but then I remembered that there were Spanish color word card inserts too. I used the ones with the color words typed in the actual color. Next time we will use the black and white inserts since Alyssa already knows her colors in Spanish too. I printed and cut the color word set and Alyssa played the game again. We extended the activity by naming and labeling the character she had drawn in Spanish. One of the characters was named after her and the other after her grandfather. This was so much fun and I am sure we will play the game again to review color and facial terms in Spanish.
On another note, the Pick and Draw game cards are in English - you could replace the top card and make Spanish cards to avoid translation. I wanted to assess Alyssa's knowledge so as she rolled the Spanish body part die she was responsible for figuring out which card to flip over. She knew what all of the words meant in English and it was almost like it was second nature to her. The pictures at the bottom are using Education Cube inserts for both of the dice.
P.S. I love the picture where she is pointing to her ears and saying las orejas.
Click here to read about our experience with the first lesson using the Sonrisas Spanish curriculum.
Please feel free to comment and let me know what you think.
I will be linking this activity on the Education Cubes Show and tell carnival.
I will also link this activity on the blogs Preschool Corner and 1+1+1=1.
Thanks a bunch,
Tracey M.
