Once Gatitos

Tati acknowledged that I help her sometimes, but she is the one who does all the posting. I haven't posted any of my ideas in ages. Well, she reminded me of an idea. Everyone teaches children to count to ten in Spanish. But learning the next five numbers is more difficult. So I made up a little song to teach the numbers from once to veinte. I have the first numbers on my visual but I only sing the last half. Sing to the tune of "Ten Little Indians."

Once, doce, trece gatitos,
Catorce, quince, dieciséis gatitos,
Diecisiete, dieciocho, diecinueve gatitos,
Veinte gatitos son.

Then we sing it backward. This is more difficult. I always point to the numbers as we sing. This helps them learn the numbers with the words.

Veinte, diecinueve, dieciocho gatitos,
dieciciete, dieciséis, quince gatitos,
Catorce, trece, doce gatitos,
Once gatitos son.

I have another song I use to teach the numbers to 100. I will try to get Tati to post the music so you can hear the tune. The words go:

Diez y veinte son treinta.
treinta y diez son cuarenta.
Cuarenta y diez son cincuenta.
cincuenta y diez son sesenta.
Sesenta y diez son setenta.
Setenta y diez son ochenta.
Ochenta y diez son noventa.
Noventa y diez son cientos.

I usually teach older children so we also do a lot of fun counting activities. We get in a circle and count by twos going around the circle. Then we time it with a stopwatch to see if we can beat our time. Then we do the odd numbers. The other day we did odd numbers backwards from 99 to 1. That was tricky. You can count by sevens, whatever. Timing with a stopwatch makes it more exciting and competitive.

Numbers is a great time to teach them how to ask how much something costs. We do this after we have studied "school" vocabulary so I use the following pages to ask them "¿Cuánto cuesta el lápiz?" I also have some musical instruments because so many of them are cognates. I want to get into the larger numbers.