Los Cuentos

Last month I started a bilingual Story Time "Los Cuentos" (stories in Spanish).  After hosting our  first Dia Program and noticing more Spanish speaking families at our library I decided that I needed to try and offer a bilingual story time. I was greatly encouraged by a follow children's librarian & friend, Marissa Garcia.  The goal for this program is to provide story times for native speakers in their language, and opportunities for everyone to enjoy a different language. I have started with Spanish, because I am from Spain and of course the language is not a problem. Eventually, I want to expand to other languages and create a more multicultural experience.

 The biggest challenge so far is finding good books for a wide age range, good translations, and/or original stories.  This is a drop in program open to families with children under 7 years of age, so I never know who is going to join us. So far I have had 6-7 families joining us for each story time, all speaking Spanish to some degree.   This month we spent most of our time speaking Spanish and sharing our favorite colors, asking how we can mix colors, and remembering how to ask "what is your name?"

This month I read Spanish versions of



Our opening song is a translation of my "Everybody Says..."

Todos decimos Uno, los cuentos van a empezar

Todos decimos Dos, mueve los hombros y ensena los zapatos

Todos decimos Tres, vamos a escuchar

Todos decimos Cuatro, y ahora nos sentamos

  I also included the action rhyme "Wiggles"  and "Touch Your Nose" changing some of the parts to Spanish- like nariz for nose, rodillas for knees, orejas for ears, etc. I also used our TumbleBooks subscription and we viewed/listened to "Lola en la Biblioteca"





We listened to songs from My First Songs in Spanish by Beth Butlet. Hello Friend and I See Colors, both lyrics are in Spanish & English, which is fun and easier to follow but makes the songs a bit long.
Our closing song is

Colorin, Colorado                        Colorin, Colorado

This story is over,                         Este cuento se ha acabado

And if you liked this story             Y si este cuento les gusto

Tomorrow I’ll tell you another!             Manana les cuento otro!

  

I choose water colors & crayons for our craft after reading Colores which has beautiful watercolors accompanying the short poems.