Thursday, April 9, 2009

Juego del Jueves: Érase una vez

This game might be better for kids that can speak more Spanish. This game is mostly for my oldest daughter who I call Princesa on this blog. We decided to make-up our own story. Princesa loves telling stories. Her daddy and her sometimes play this game of taking turns to make-up a story. So I decided to try it in Spanish.

Juego del Jueves: Érase Una Vez...

I started the story with saying-
Erase una vez... una princesa que le gustaba jugar con su perrito.
Un dia estaban jugando y de repente...
Next it was her turn to continue the story and we alternated until the story was finished. She loved it! She loves imagining stories. I found it to be pretty funny the things she came up with and how she used phrasing from stories we have read in the past.
*Ways to make this more fun could be passing around a microphone or a wand to the person telling the story at the moment. If your child has a hard time thinking of different ideas for the story. Take a bunch of random objects around the house (a cup, food, stuffed animals, little toy cars, etc) and put them in a bag. When it is their turn to tell the story, they can draw an object out of the bag and they have to include that object in the story they are telling.
Something that might help with this activity is to read a bunch of stories beforehand. We have a lot of fairy tales we enjoy. Below are links to some versions we like that are affordable or might be at your library. They are pretty advanced stories, but after reading them many time, my older daughter understands them well.
***I have edited this adding on the stories that were suggested in the wonderful comments! Check out the comments and the links I provide-

Does any one know of a good fairy tale story book in Spanish that has simpler language? Sometimes with the advanced stories, I change the more difficult words into simpler language. But I have been searching for some time now and I can't seem to find any simpler fairy tales!

7 comments:

Tricia said...

The children's tv show "Salsa" is an immersion show used to teach kids Spanish. Almost all of the episodes are available to watch online, and they are based on fairy tales. The transcripts are available for download, too. The website is www.bpg.org/salsa. Choose "episodes" on the left sidebar, and then select a fairy tale. Each fairy tale has five or six episodes centering on it, with the first one usually being closest to the original story. Once you're on the page for a particular episode, you can see the link to the transcript, as well as a little "watch" button at the top of the screen. (Unfortunately, the Goldilocks and the 3 Bears episode 1 isn't available to watch online for some reason.)

Also, I know that at school I have a little book that is written in VERY basic Spanish and has three fairy tales in it. I can't think of the name or author right now, but if I can manage to remember after the long weekend, I'll post next week with the info.

Tricia said...

I just remembered that Ana Lomba has a couple of simple Spanish fairy tales. I haven't browsed through them; I've just seen them on Amazon. I would imagine that they're well done, though--we love her cd Hop, Skip, and Sing Spanish.

diane said...

Barbara at Sing, Dance, Laugh and Eat Quiche (or Tacos!) has some cute classic fairy tales published in the form of plays, perfect for beginners. I have another book I use, too, but I have to check the publisher & if it's still in print. I think it's called "Once Upon a Time" and includes 3 simplified stories. Maybe it's the one Tricia is thinking of! It's by an educational publisher.

BTW, I love your new look!

Laura said...

This is a great game for this kids. I have been searching for varous stories to help them along. They both like to watch "El Chavo" and are struggling to understanding some of the Sayings. But its helped them a lot. Most of the spanish reading we have done is Bible stories. Time for a change :) Thanks for the suggestions and links

rdmami said...

What a great idea! I'm going to try this at home with the girls, and it's another great way to practice vocabulary in Spanish. Here are some books I know of that may be of interest:
Caperucita Roja, El Patito Feo, and Los Tres Cerditos, all by Scholastic, Inc.

Tricia said...

I found it! And it probably is the same as Diane's. As she said, it's called "Habia una vez: Once Upon a Time" and it's by Dorothy Sword Bishop. It looks like it's available on Amazon, and they even have the "look inside" feature for it, so you can check it out and see if it would be the level of difficulty you're looking for.

Tati said...

Thank you so much Tricia, Diane, and RdMami for all your wonderful suggestions of simpler fairy tales. I'm excited to use these and I think my almost 3 year old will really enjoy it more too!