Mis Perritos

I've mentioned it before but I love how the Calico Spanish introduces a new number, color, and animal with each chapter. Rather than presenting them all at once and then not seeing them again for awhile my kiddos get a new word each chapter and then we review the ones we've learned before. And because there is just one animal I can find great authentic resources dedicated to just that animal.

My first graders in this chapter are working on el perro and the color rojo. Naturally this brought to mind Clifford but most of those books are above their level so instead we wrote a descriptions of Clifford.  My students could use the words rojo, negro, grande, no pequeno, and tengo hambre. I helped out by writing them in complete sentences and then we read them together.

Then we read the book Perritos by Sandra Boynton. I love her books for class! The language is easy and perfect for novice learners and the pictures are cute and funny. The students got really into this one as each perro barks a little differently (it also got really loud!)

The second book we read was Corre, Perro, Corre by P.D. Eastman. This book came with my Calico Spanish curriculum and it is AMAZING. There is so much good vocabulary and it's easy to understand. As I read I ask students to find things in the pictures for me. We practice arriba and abajo with our bodies and we answer if we like the dog's hat or not each time. 

I also showed the students these cute pictures I found on Facebook. They know the verbs nadar and saltar so we could describe the pictures fairly well. We also talked about the colors of the dogs and counted them.

Finally we made these cute perro headbands and went outside to play Corran, perro, corran (also known as red light, green light.)  Basically we acted out three of the pages from the book - a great extension activity to do at the end of the year when the weather is nice and the students are squirrely. You can find the animal cut-outs here. 

Coming soon - a collection of all the animal resources I have used. In the meantime checkout my Pinterest board.