ANIMAL ANTICS
Spanish, art and humor.
"Thanks for creating such a great Spanish learning environment for the boys!
They are having such a blast!"
- Kathryn, Palo Alto
BRIEF DESCRIPTION
With a new animal featured each week, humor, music, movement, art, and interactive play provide a powerful context for effective and engaging language acquisition. While the class also has a Spanish reading and writing component, children who are not yet literate will not be at a disadvantage; this class has a highly auditory, visual and kinesthetic approach to language acquisition.
SECRET MESSAGES: VOCABULARY BUILDING
Each week the children will receive a secret message trapped inside a balloon. The message is a chunk of rhyming language relevant to the animal of the week (e.g. La jirafa perdio sus gafas...the giraffe lost his sunglasses.) Each secret message has an accompanying memory melody (a catchy, sticky tune). The memory melodies speed up the acquisition of nouns, adjectives and verbs which will, in turn, allow us to practice sentence building.
MEMORY MELODIES: NOTEBOOKS AND DICTATIONS
The children will listen to the secret message set to music (a memory melody), and write down what they hear in a notebook without visual clues. This exercise is highly effective in getting children to both become comfortable with making mistakes (a critical component of language learning) and, also, begin to play close attention to the predictable Spanish sound system. Younger children who are not yet comfortable writing independently will spend the time drawing the animal for the week, while listening to and absorbing the sung repetition of the secret message.
ART AND GAMES IN SPANISH!
During each class we engage in both a topic-relevant art/craft project and a game, both of which are designed to foster language acquisition. Each game requires the repetition of the secret message as part of the play. The relaxed and focused time provides us with an ideal opening for natural vocabulary acquisition.
DAYS, TIMES & LOCATION
Wednesdays, 4:40, Palo Alto (near Gamble Gardens), Class begins on September 5, 2018. FULL THROUGH MAY 2019
AGES
5-10 years old
CLASS LENGTH
50 minutes
COMMITMENT
This class requires a full, academic year commitment from September through May.
ENROLLMENT OR QUESTIONS
Please contact us to find out if a space is available for your child.
With a new animal featured each week, humor, music, movement, art, and interactive play provide a powerful context for effective and engaging language acquisition. While the class also has a Spanish reading and writing component, children who are not yet literate will not be at a disadvantage; this class has a highly auditory, visual and kinesthetic approach to language acquisition.
SECRET MESSAGES: VOCABULARY BUILDING
Each week the children will receive a secret message trapped inside a balloon. The message is a chunk of rhyming language relevant to the animal of the week (e.g. La jirafa perdio sus gafas...the giraffe lost his sunglasses.) Each secret message has an accompanying memory melody (a catchy, sticky tune). The memory melodies speed up the acquisition of nouns, adjectives and verbs which will, in turn, allow us to practice sentence building.
MEMORY MELODIES: NOTEBOOKS AND DICTATIONS
The children will listen to the secret message set to music (a memory melody), and write down what they hear in a notebook without visual clues. This exercise is highly effective in getting children to both become comfortable with making mistakes (a critical component of language learning) and, also, begin to play close attention to the predictable Spanish sound system. Younger children who are not yet comfortable writing independently will spend the time drawing the animal for the week, while listening to and absorbing the sung repetition of the secret message.
ART AND GAMES IN SPANISH!
During each class we engage in both a topic-relevant art/craft project and a game, both of which are designed to foster language acquisition. Each game requires the repetition of the secret message as part of the play. The relaxed and focused time provides us with an ideal opening for natural vocabulary acquisition.
DAYS, TIMES & LOCATION
Wednesdays, 4:40, Palo Alto (near Gamble Gardens), Class begins on September 5, 2018. FULL THROUGH MAY 2019
AGES
5-10 years old
CLASS LENGTH
50 minutes
COMMITMENT
This class requires a full, academic year commitment from September through May.
ENROLLMENT OR QUESTIONS
Please contact us to find out if a space is available for your child.