Announcement- Summer Camp

Hola Familias!

My name is Alexandra Alquati and I work with Level II Spanish in Hillcrest Spanish Program.

If you are interested in continuing with Spanish classes in the Summer, you might want to consider Aurora Summer Camp. I will be teaching two weeks of half day Spanish Camp, right around the corner!

The dates are:

6-15/6-19

6-22/6-26

The camps are structured in the following way:

5-7 year olds (9am-12am)

Spanish camp for beginning and low intermediate speakers. Children will have a great time learning Spanish through an outdoor camping theme. Campers will listen to stories inside a tent, make smores and sing songs by a (fake) campfire, and go on nature walks. It is a great opportunity to learn new vocabulary, and review vocabulary already known. We will be talking about animals, food, greetings, and summer make-believe activities!

7-12 year olds (1pm-4pm)

During this camp we will be traveling around the world visiting Spanish-speaking cultures, their food, music, games, and more. In this camp, children will learn new vocabulary, expressions, and hold conversations in Spanish about different countries. Each day we will "travel" to a country, including: Colombia, Mejico, Argentina, Venezuela, and Chile. We will use 95% Spanish in the process. The purpose of this camp is to develop the student's conversational skills in Spanish, and to explore different Hispanic cultures.

There are a great variety of other camps taking place in the same location, so they could be half day in one, and half day in another! Some of the other camps are:

- Fun and Fitness

- Gardening

- World Percussion

- Theater Arts

- Tennis

- Music through Literature

- Lego Engineering Camp

And many more!

I will send a flier with a registration in your child's backpack, if you are interested in learning more about the Aurora Summer Camps and signing up. Please take the form directly to Aurora School, and drop it off at the office.

Muchas gracias,

Alexandra

Friday note

Hola Familias!

We planted seeds and beans in small cups, and have been watching them and predicting what will happen to them.

These past two weeks we have been focusing on using the structure:

Va a _________. (Will ______).

This is a great opportunity to learn and review vocabulary:

- la planta (the plant)

- la hoja (the leaf)

- las raices (the roots)

- el tallo (the stem)

- la semilla (the seed)

- necesita (needs)

- plantar (to plant)

- crecer (to grow)

- brotar (to sprout)

- algodon (cotton)

- agua (water)

- sol (sun)

- ventana (window)

First we charted what color and kind of seed they chose, and used "es" and "son" to describe them:

Mis semillas son verdes. (My seeds are green)

Mis semillas son grandes. (My seeds are big)

Mis semillas van a crecer manana. (My seeds will grow tomorrow)

We have been keeping record of our seeds by discussing their progress every day:

Como esta tu semilla? Como esta tu planta? (How is your plant? How is your seed?)

Mi semilla broto. Mi semilla no broto.  (My seed sprouted. My seed did not sprout)

Mi planta crecio. Mi planta no crecio. (My plant grew. My plant did not grow)

We also make predictions about it:

Las raices van a crecer en dos dias. (The roots will grow in two days)

Las hojas van a crecer en muchos dias. (The leaves will grow in many days)

We are recording our observations in our journals, and then meet in the sharing circle to read the sentences to one another.

Some things to do at home:

- Ask your child about their seed:

Donde esta tu semilla? (Where is your seed?)

Tu semilla broto? (Did your seed sprout?)

Que color es tu semilla? (What color is your seed?)

Cuando va a brotar/crecer tu semilla? (When is your seed going to sprout/grow?)

Que es _______? (What is [vocabulary word]?)

Friday note

Hola Familias!

These are some of the exciting new things Level II is learning.

Speaking of the future!

We have been working so hard on vocabulary and verbs to talk about the simple present. But what happens when we want to talk about our weekend? Or the next week? Or even the next millennium??!!

Using words we already know, we have tied together the verb "ir" (Yo voy, El/Ella va) plus the infinite verb. Here "ir" is acting as a helping verb, and it alludes to an action that we haven't begun, but will begin.

Yo voy a comer.

Manana, yo voy a nadar en Lago Temescal.

La proxima semana, el va a comer pizza en Zachary's.

We have just begun exploring this structure, and we will use it to predict what will happen to seeds that we will plant, and talking about our plans.

Friday note

Hola Familias!

This week we are just finishing with "animales" and using verbs and adjectives to describe them. Today we wrapped up with a fun game: "Me gusta".

Children wrote secretly on pieces of paper "Me gusta (an animal) porque es (an adejctive)".

I like the _____ because it is _________.

This was a good opportunity to review the qu=K sound in the word "porque". Little by little our sentences keep getting longer and more detailed!

Then, we folded the papers and put them in a bag. One by one we got to pull out a paper and try to guess who wrote it. They had 3 chances to ask a friend: "Te gusta el pollito?" Most of them guessed it right away!

Try playing this at home!

Next week we will start talking about things that will happen in the future, and start making predictions using the structure "va a ______". (is going to _____)

Que tengan un buen fin de semana!

Alexandra

Level II Pictures

Practicing with -er verbs

Spanish Program 4th and 5th grades (Los Grandes)

We are happy to be part of Hillcrest Spanish Program blog.
The students of 4th and 5th grades are Laura, Lane, Phoebe and Varun and the teacher is Tania Figueroa.
This year, we have been learning about different topics: family, names, clothes, jobs, neighbors, and places around the city. In addition, we have been learning new verbs and prepositions. Last week we focused on adjectives in order to improve the Spanish vocabulary.

After eight weeks, the students created their own stories using only Spanish.
We were very excited with this project. We were happy with the funny and creative stories that “Los Grandes” group wrote.
We want to share the storied created with parents, students and teachers.

Picture Time

Getting ready for class!

Rainy day fun

Hola Familias!


Today was an unusual and fun day. When we got to school, it was pouring (or as we say in Colombia it was an "Aguacero!"). We decided to not go through the rain into our classes, so we had a great "Game Day" with the whole group! We had 5 stations, with a game or activity in each, and the kids got to rotate around the stations. We had shape and color bingos, numbers bingo, memory games, guess who (en espanol), and a writing and drawing station.

It was a great success, and all of the kids were using their vocabulary to play these games. At the bingo tables, they got to take turns calling out the names of the shapes and the numbers, memory helped them review their vocabulary, Guess Who helped the review body parts and characteristics, and writing and drawing was....well....just fun! Plus, they labeled their drawings in Spanish.