Tuesday, February 26, 2019

¡JUEGOS en el jardín de infancia! / GAMES in kindergarten!


The kindergarteners have taken such an interest in “games” that a class study has emerged from this curiosity. To enhance their learning in a holistic way, Spanish classes have been planned around this thematic unit. Even though juegos are often associated with fun, they provide pedagogical values, particularly in learning a second language. Juegos
  • Are motivating and challenging for all learning styles; auditory, visual, tactile, and kinesthetic 
  • Lower language-learners’ stress
  • Help and encourage in sustaining the interest on the target language
  • Provide communication practice in the various skills; listening, speaking, reading and writing
  • Encourages participants to interact and communicate, building class cohesion
In addition to the traditional juegos we play such as mata moscas (fly swatters), here are just a few of the newest juegos the kindergarteners have been enjoying …
To reinforce vocabulary for food items, we played “¿Qué está en mi cabeza? / What is on my head?” During this game, the students are paired and facing each other. One student puts on a pair of sunglasses and, without looking, attaches a flashcard to the sunglasses. (The card and the sunglasses have Velcro dots.) Then, the student not wearing the sunglasses will give hints in English while the student wearing the sunglasses tries to guess what is on their head in español. Hilarious!!

Some juegos can also be used to help understand multi-concept ideas by using a combination of things to look for such as in “Tornado / Twister” where the new vocabulary for derecha (right) and izquierda (left) was reinforced along with previously learned words for colors, hand and foot.
Bingo de números helped with making connections between the numeral symbol and its written form in español.

Dominoes were yet another fun game introduced to the kindergarteners that reinforces counting and adding in español.
Stay tune, as soon we will be using an interdisciplinary approach during Community Time. This is an hour allotted for all the resource teachers to set up stations with a game connected to their discipline and all kindergarteners will have the chance to rotate and explore.

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