Week 1: Getting to know each other (3 de septiembre)

1. Each day we begin with a hello song. For September, our song is "Buenos días, mis amigos." We sing this one time as it is written, then replace "mis amigos" with each child's name.

Buenos días, mis amigos
Buenos días, mis amigos, buenos días
Buenos días, mis amigos, buenos días
Buenos días, buenos días
Buenos días, mis amigos, buenos días.

2. Each day we do a "simon says" type of activity where I say an action and the children do that action. This week the actions included:

salte (SAL-teh): jump
dese la vuelta (DEH-seh lah VWEL-tah): spin
siéntese (see-EHN-teh-seh): sit down
levántese (leh-VAHN-teh-seh): stand up
toque la nariz (TOE-kay lah nah-REES): touch your nose

3. The children love this elefante song about an elephant who gets on a spiderweb and sees that it holds him up, so he calls another elephant to join him... and then another... and then another. We have a silly spider (araña (ah-RAHN-yah)) that pops out of a flower and we add elephants to a web as we sing the song. José Luis Orozco has a version of this song on his CD De Colores. You can find it here.

Un elefante
Un elefante se balanceaba
sobre la tela de una araña
como veía que resistía
fue a llamar a otro elefante...

(dos elefantes, tres elefantes, cuatro elefantes)

Incidentally, many of the songs we will sing this year, including Los Elefantes, are included on this album. I often just download one or two songs from various artists, but this is one album where most songs are easy to follow and engaging for children.





4. We finish each class with a goodbye song:

Adiós
Voy a decirles adiós a mis amigos
Voy a decirles adiós a mis amigos
Voy a decirles adiós, Voy a decirles adiós
Voy a decirles adiós a mis amigos

As with the hello song, we replace "mis amigos" with each child's name in the second round of the song.