el arca de Noé

Many of our songs and activities have revolved around weather and animals, so this week we did a preview to a few weeks of activities related to Noah and the ark.

This week I used a picture book to tell the story to the children in Spanish. Because many are familiar with the story and most are familiar with the vocabulary (and because they have pictures to go along with the story in Spanish), the children can understand easily.

Before introducing the book, we talked about the weather for the day. We always do this by looking at pictures of weather and doing a chant (¿qué tiempo hace afuera afuera? ¿qué tiempo hace afuera afuera hoy?) The children say "sí" or "no" to identify the weather. Our options are:

hace sol (ah-say SOLE): it's sunny
nieva (nee-EH-bah): it's snowing
llueve (yoo-WAY-vay): it's raining

This is a good segue into a story about sunny days that turn to lots of rain! As I read the story, I asked about the weather throughout. I also asked the students what animals they see, and asked them to identify ones that they cannot yet recall in Spanish.

We sang a song about Noah's ark and the animals:

Noé hizo el arca, arca, arca
Noé hizo el arca y su familia se salvó.
Noé hizo el arca, arca, arca
Noé hizo el arca y el agua se subió.
Entraron los elefantes
Entraron los leones
Entraron los patitos...

At the end of the song, when we sing, "entraron los...", we are singing about how each animal entered the ark. The children make the noise and/or movement of the animal as we sing about it.

Next week we will stress the rainbow, talking about the colors and singing songs about it. We may even do a simple scripture verse in the preschool class!