Hablan Espanol Y ASL Eating and Drinking Week 1

This week was our first official week of Spanish and ASL class.  We are doing a 7 week study on eating and drinking.  I co-teach this with a really good friend of mine and are currently offering it only to our playgroup (www.meeup.com/littleadventuresgroup) but if all goes well it may grow in a year or two when we have most of the kinks figured out.  We are using the curriculum from Little Pim and following their suggestion to pick one DVD and complete it sequentially. The DVD is titled eating and drinking and has 7 five minute sections.  Our class is working on one section each week.  We're also using the curriculum from Signing Time and picking the appropriate vocabulary from the whole curriculum to match the Little Pim vocabulary for each day.  We've had great turn out so far with about 5-9 families participating each day, we hold it 2 days a week and families can come either day, or both.

 We start each day with 2 songs.  One is a welcome song in Spanish and the other is the Signing Time welcome song.  Then we proceed with about 20 minutes of interactive direct instruction led by myself (Miss Amanda) or my co-teacher (Miss Katrina).  This interactive direct instruction includes reading stories, using the Panda or Frog hand puppets and stuffed animals to introduce vocabulary words, and watching the appropriate curriculum video for the day.

 Once we've made it through introducing all the vocabulary there are a number of activities set up throughout the room for families to follow their kids to and play as they see fit.  It involves reading books and playing different forms of vocabulary based games, such as "?Donde esta mi bolsa?" which is a form of hide and seek with different objects.  We also have some flash card games such as the one that C and T are playing below where there are 3 "doors" and one person hides a card under a door while the other has his eyes closed, and then asks, "?Donde esta el agua?" and the other person has to find it.

 We've tried to create activities that parents can go home and play with their kids with the printables that we've supplied from the week.  I wish I could share those printables with online readers, but unfortunately they aren't my creation.  You can buy all the things we're using from the Little Pim and Signing Time websites if you like.  Miss Katrina is a certified Signing Time instructor and has purchased their printables for classes, but you can purchase the regular flash cards if you like.

Since we're working on eating and drinking we're having snack each day as one of the activities.  This week we learned: milk, water, apple and banana.  I'm quite encouraged by how well the class has gone so far and the amount of participation we're receiving.  I should point out that neither Miss Katrina or I are fluent in either Spanish or ASL, we're learning right along side our kids.  !Feliz lectura!