¡Artículos de merienda en primera infancia! / Snack items in Early Childhood

Snack time is an essential part of our Early Childhood curriculum.  It can be a wonderful moment for social interactions as well as learning basic life skills, as the children are encouraged to be self-sufficient by serving and cleaning up after themselves. It is also a great opportunity to introduce and reinforce important concepts such as counting and number sense, creating patterns and groups, sorting, and so much more. So, why not add foreign language to the mix? With that in mind, it made perfect sense to start our youngest learners’ Spanish class experience by introducing the vocabulary for the common items that are provided for snack.

To help initiated the topic of snack, we first read a book by Pat Mora, “Lets Eat! - ¡A comer!” All enjoyed this sweet story with minimal text and colorful watercolor illustrations as we learned some food words such as frijoles (beans), tortillas, queso (cheese), and a few others. 

Afterwards, flashcards for usual snack items offered were introduced. 

Later, to help reinforce the learning, the students were presented with a game, los matamoscas (the flyswatters). In this game the flashcards were placed on the ground and the object was for the students to match the oral command with its corresponding picture by gently swatting the card. What great fun! 

And, as we always end Spanish class, a friend was picked to squeeze a very important friend named La vaca (the cow). Upon squeezing her belly, la vaca states moochas gracias (thank you very much) to which we all respond, de nada (you're welcome).

Vocabulary introduced:

queso - cheese

queso crema – cream cheese

galleta - cracker

galleta graham – graham cracker

manzana roja – red apple

manzana verde – green apple

naranja - orange

banana/platano - banana

rosquilla – bagel

pan pita – Pita bread

pasta de garbanzos – hummus

salsa de soja – soy butter