Spanish in Early Childhood

Spanish is part of our lives in the Early Childhood community. The children are exposed to Spanish from the beginning of the day when we greet them in the morning with, "Buenos días. Cómo estás?" Children learn Spanish by listening to the language and receiving lessons with many different materials in the classroom. We use Total Physical Response (TPR) to teach simple commands, such as: Cambiar los zapatos (change your shoes), lavar las manos con agua y jabón (wash your hands with soap and water), caminar despacio (walk slowly), acerca la silla a la mesa (push in your chair), etc. We reinforce language lessons by creating physical actions involving our entire bodies, which duplicate the message.

Children learn sounds in Spanish by consistently practicing the two phonemic awareness skills that are the foundations for all of the language curriculum in the classroom: The Beginning Sound Isolation and the Phoneme Segmentation. With the first activity, the child practices identifying the first sound in a spoken word. Example: the first sound of the word PATO is /p/. With the second activity, the child practices the ability to break words apart into individual sounds (phonemes). Example: the word PATO can be segmented into four sounds /p/ ... /a/ ... /t/ ... /o/ ....

The student identifies objects that start with the sound /e/, like "elefante."

Our goal is comprehension at all times, and every child accomplishes this at their own pace. Spanish is not only interesting, it is also fun and exciting. It's very common in our Early Childhood classrooms for a student to translate a guide's message from Spanish to English.  For example, when a guide gives an instruction in Spanish, such as, "En fila en el vestíbulo," one child might turn to another and say, "Line up at the vestibule."

The variety of Spanish-learning activities allows for a developmental process in which children listen to and absorb words in Spanish through songs, rhymes, and hands-on play!