This week the second graders learned the vowels in Spanish. They enjoyed singing different words in order to remember the sound of the vowels, such as "aaaaa" opening their arms for a, "bebé" for e, "sí!" for i, "ocho" for o, and "cucú" for u. Everyone followed with various hand and arm movements. We also started to listen to a fun alphabet  song, we danced and sang the song while stopping when there were new letters such as ñ and ll. We look forward to next week where we are going to practice all those sounds while playing games and even knowing how we can spell in Spanish, since we'll know the alphabet!


Kindergarten enjoyed a "Magic Week" with learning about Día de los Muertos, the Mexican festivity where people remember their loved ones who passed away. This is done by celebrating and offering thanks to them. We learned what they offer to those who passed in Spanish and we saw what those traditions look like in our neighboring country of Mexico. Then we colored all the pictures of our new Día de los Muertos vocabulary. I look forward to discussing with the students what their costume will be for Halloween and we will practice what those words are in Spanish. It will be a very exciting and festive week!  

This week we got to celebrate the Hispanic Heritage Month. All across the world, Spanish speaking countries celebrate what is called Hispanidad Day, which it’s also called Fiesta Nacional de España. This is the  national day of Spain which is held annually on October 12th.  A royal decree established Día de la Hispanidad as a national holiday on November 27, 1981. It commemorates the anniversary of Christopher Columbus's first arrival in the Americas, a day also celebrated in every Spanish speaking country.
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This week second graders celebrated El día de la Hispanidad by continuing learning the names in Spanish of all the Spanish speaking countries in the world. They played different games, situating the countries on the map and practicing pronunciation of those countries.
Kindergarten learned about our new friend Ratoncito Pérez who exchanges dientes (tooth) by special coins and Mateo who loves sandwich and he just speaks Spanish as the rest of our Spanish friends.


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​In second grade we are learning Spanish speaking countries in the Spanish language, and where those are located on the map. We practice this alongside a song in order to listen to the pronunciation. They were all able to sing with greetings which go with each country. Ah! We also had new secretaries that kept us posted about the days of the calendar and weather in Spanish.
 
The kindergarten class finished coloring la Mateo’s familia worksheet. Mateo’s family is the subject of projects we are working on and we already know all the members of his family in Spanish. The class loves Mateo's family! 
 

This week the Kindergarten students were focusing on family vocabulary. This is the second week we are practicing learning names of family members through different strategies such as moving our body while we say the vocabulary. For example, when we say "árbol", our hands go up. Another way to memorize is through a vocabulary game where students have to guess where the cheese is, which is below our vocabulary cards. This helps them to remember all vocabulary since they are saying it loud. They colored in their family book as well and have fun remembering the colors  in Spanish.

In Second grade we worked on various greetings. They already learned this when they started Spanish few years ago, but it is always good to rehearse and keep practicing. We went over conversations of greetings through playing a fun game where each student had to find the person that had the same Spanish name,  asking "como te llamas", and the other person had to respond "me llamo."  Pronunciation and practice of greetings were the goals of this week.

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