During this summer term Portland House preschool children have been learning a second language in a fun and inspiring way with their Spanish teacher Amy. She has introduced ‘Spanish’ to the children through storytelling, music, dance, sensory experiences and a variety of educational activities.
These are some of the exciting topics we have be learning about:
Topic: Pets
Today was another beautiful summer’s day so we had our Spanish session in the woodland area. We loved talking about our pets and saying the names of them in Spanish as we bounced squishy props on the parachute. We loved walking like a duck today and the animal noises we made were super-duper! We listened really well to the story of the ‘Oso Pardo’ and even remembered some of the animals we had learnt today. We got a teeny tiny sticker that said ‘fántastico’ and lots of us were able to say thank you in Spanish without any help.
Topic: Family We started with our welcome song ‘Buenos días’ as usual and we are making such good progress with learning all the words for it – soon we will be able to sing it all by ourselves! We had to guess the topic of today’s session by looking at the 5 squishy toys each with a drawing of a different person on them and thinking about how they were connected. We found the words for mummy, daddy and baby super easy but the words in Spanish for brother and sister (‘hermano’ and ‘hermana’) are both very tricky but we tried our very best. We loved playing the game of ‘What’s missing?’ and ‘cucu’ with the scarves was so much fun!
Topic: Father’s Day We learnt some new words that we can use for lots of different celebrations including Father’s Day. We learnt how to say teddy bear, chocolate, kiss and hugs and I bet you can guess which of them was our favourite! We played pass the parcel and practised saying the word when it was our turn to pick one of the pictures– everybody joined in and helped us if we got stuck which was really friendly and kind. We loved singing a new actions and statues song – we got to jump up and down and do lots of silly dance moves J Our sticker today was in the shape of the Spanish flag – the colours are rojo and amarillo and it even said ‘estupendo’ on the sticker which means great!
Topic: Let’s get dressed Today we had our Spanish lesson in the woodland area as part of The Environment day. We started off with lots of singing and learnt new words for describing our clothes. We played with some squishy props with pictures of the clothes on them and had a super time putting them on the large colourful parachute and making them jump up and down slowly as we repeated the word and then fast, fast, fast! We loved joining in with today’s story all about a little Lingotot deciding what clothes they should wear today – we definitely know how to say ‘no, no, no’ in Spanish now.
Topic: Colours This week we learnt lots of new words for different colours and had a go at saying the colours in funny voices and sometimes very loud! We enjoyed playing with coloured scarves to practise the new words – we put them on our heads and made each other jump! We counted to 3 in Spanish and then shouted ‘cucu’ and pulled the scarves off our heads! We listened and joined in with this week’s story that used colours and introduced us to some animals – we loved the story ‘Brown Bear’ and making the sounds of the animals was lots of fun. We showed our beautiful manners by saying ‘gracias’ when Señora Gumbrell gave us our stickers too.
Topic: Summer Even though the weather was a bit miserable outside today, we cheered everyone up as this week’s half term topic was summer. First we rowed our boats slow and then ‘rápido rápido’ before we learnt how to say sun, ice lolly, swimming pool and swimming costume all in Spanish. We then played pass the parcel with some pictures of the words and took it in turn to pick one and say it in Spanish – with a little help from the rest of the group of course! We loved walking like a duck and swimming like a fish for today’s walking song and some of us even got to play with the instruments! We all worked super hard today and had lots of fun
Topic: My Body The weather was beautiful for our session this week so we had our Spanish lesson at the top of the treehouse! We revised last week’s words about the face and lots of us remembered them which is ‘fantástico.’ We moved on to learning the words for different parts of our body to help us with today’s new song which was ‘Cabeza, hombros, piernas, pies’ and we had a lot of fun. We made lots of noise with the maracas and bells and sang along to the ‘Music Man’ before we got our Spanish stickers to take home.
Topic: My Face We started our session with our welcome song and loved learning a new song all about a little lark bird. We pointed to different parts of our face and said what it was in Spanish - ‘boca’ (mouth) was definitely a favourite! We had a Boogie Woogie and then settled down to help the Big Bad Wolf blow down two of the Little Pigs houses. To finish, we had some lovely twinkly star actions for ‘Brilla, brilla.’
