Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Los Monstruos Spanish Class


I'm teaching a Spanish preschool class for my daughter.  I have been teaching greetings, animals and body parts.  She gets so excited about it.  It has been a lot of fun.  She helps decide what games to play, books to read and what crafts to do.  This last week, we had the theme of los monstruos to review parts of the body (especially the face).

Each class starts with Buenos Dias by Jose Luis Orozco.  Then, I ask each child their name and they respond with "Me llamo..."  We also reviewed all the animals we have learned by playing a simple animal bingo game.

We reviewed the "Cabeza, Hombros, Rodillas y Pies"song.  I had them repeat the middle part "Ojos, orejas, boca and nariz" by singing that part like 8 times!  Each time we sang it differently.  They had to jump for each body part as they pointed, close their eyes, whisper, go on tippy toes, etc.

Next, I cute out a simple flannel board monster that went with some lyrics I made up to the tune of "Soy una Pizza" by Charlotte Diamond.  If you don't know the song, you can find it here.  I love how the children repeat each phrase in the song. Here are the lyrics that I made to go along with monsters:

Soy un monstruo
Con 4 ojos
2 orejas
y una boca
2 narices
y mucho pelo
Soy un monstruo
y grito "roar"

I passed out one part of the face to each student and they put it up when we sang that part.

Then, we read "Fuera de Aqui, Horroroso monstruo verde" (Go Away, Big Green Monster).  This one is an easy one to translate if you know Spanish.  I found a great printable here that I printed and sorted (it took a little while to put in order) for each child to take home.  You don't even need the book to use the printable.  The kids love saying, "Fuera de aqui....ojos"

I also found a great video that I showed to the kids.  The words are all in English, so I just muted the sound and said what it should be in Spanish.  The kids again enjoyed telling the different facial features to go away
 and watch that part disappear.


We finished by making monsters out of play dough.  I was happy that a couple of the kids remembered and said many of the parts of the face in Spanish as they were making theirs.

This is a 10 week class and I wish I could post every class here, but I have to focus on teaching my kiddos. I hope this is useful to someone!


14 comments:

medina family said...

So you glad you are teaching those classes again and sharing with us. That is definitely your gift. What great ideas. Hopefully, I'll find the time to try them out with my own kiddos. Thank you!

Jennifer Brunk said...

There is a great set of sequencing cards to go with that book on MakingLearnngFun. I have used it with my preschool Spanish classes too. So fun!
Here is the link for the cards - http://www.makinglearningfun.com/themepages/BigGreenMonsterSequenceCards.htm

Elaine said...

Love your monster ideas. Have you read Harry Y el Terrible Quiensabeque? It goes well with the whole monster theme.

malpolon said...

Hello,

I recommend two pages with fun rhymes ideal for learning Spanish:

http://blogcantajuegos.blogspot.com.es/
http://clasinfatil.blogspot.com.es/

Greetings

yogamama said...

I'm a mom trying to raise my 2 yr old bilingual. I've started a link up on my blog about teaching kids culture and language.  I would love for you to link up activities like this that teach your child about other languages and cultures.  Link up at http://toddlefast.blogspot.com/search/label/Say%20It%20Two%20Ways%20Thursdays.

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Robin said...

Nice post. That's the age to learn foreign languages. I'm going to Spain in a month, haven't spoken Spanish in 25 years and I need to brush up my Spanish quickly. Wish my parents had enrolled me in a Spanish class when I was a kid :-)

J. Mitchell said...

Your idea of using the monster is a very good one. I'm just beginning to learn Spanish myself at the moment using an online course. My 9 year old son walked in on me the other day during one of my lessons curious as to why I was talking out loud at my computer. To my surprise he immediately recognised the language as Spanish even though the only Spanish he has ever been exposed to would have been on the popular cartoons 'Dora The Explorer' and 'Go Diego'. When a new language is presented to kids in a fun way it really is amazing just how much they will retain!
Joe.

Ray Bonetti said...

That's what happens when you make learning a foreign language fun - it works! I would have thought getting kids to watch their favorite cartoons in Spanish has to be a very good method.

Angie Therese said...

Love this song/activity. I used it with my Spanish play school group, ages 3-6. I had drawn the shape of a monster's head on my son's whiteboard easel, and had the kids come up when the body part they were holding was called. Then I had them all come up and draw "mucho pelo" with a dry erase marker--they loved that! One thing I added was to have the kids make monsters with paper plates for heads, googly craft eyes and some foam shape cutouts to make ears, noses, etc. I then pasted the lyrics of "Soy un monstruo" on the back of each head, with blank spots left for the numbers of eyes, ears, etc. Then they (with help of their parents, also in the class) filled in the number that they chose for their monster. I've posted a link to the pizza song on our class weblog, so parents can hypothetically go home and practice singing the monster song based on the monster that the kids created. It was lots of fun and they all seemed to enjoy it. Thanks so much for sharing!

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Yves said...

Great materials! Thanks a lot!

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