Gatos y Perros (Cats and Dogs)

**Make sure to get all the way to the end for our link-up!**
In Spanish for Preschoolers I'm continuing to build lessons around animals.  It gives us a chance to review the animal names we've learned so far and what kid doesn't like animals?  Especially the furry friends we have in our homes!  So this week our lesson was about cats and dogs!



We actually started our with a review - charades-style!  I took the pictures of farm animals that I'd attached to pipe cleaners last week.  First we reviewed the names of all the animals, the children just repeating after me.  Then I had one child select an animal without letting the others see.  They had to pretend to be the animal and the others had to guess IN SPANISH what animal it was.  Since I was with all 2 to 4 year olds I had to explain the game in English a few times.  I'd practiced with Chiquita before hand so she could lead a little.  It was fun and I felt like the kids remembered a lot more of the animals names afterward.

Then we read "Un Perro y Un Gato" by Claire Masurel (it's a bilingual version!).  The cat and dog did NOT start out as friends but one day both of them had trouble that only the other could help fix.  They helped each other and became best of friends.  This book would be great for a friend or kindness themed lesson as well as animals.

After reading the book we played a sorting game.  I had printed a bunch of pictures of things for cats and dogs, like balls of yarn, bones, fish, and a leash.  I backed them with cardboard just to make them more durable.  On the white board I put a picture of a cat on one side and a dog on the other.  One by one I had the kids pick one of the cards with a picture on it and decide if it belonged to the cat or the dog.  I was very happy they all were able/willing to say gato and perro.  The only item we had trouble with was the fish - the girl decided that fish were for dogs and I couldn't disagree since dogs like any food in my experience, so we put it in the middle of the board.

We finished up by coloring dog and cat masks that I found online! Here's the cat mask.  Here's the dog mask. The page for the dog mask has annoying ads, but it's a cute mask.



Last week we had some fun entries to Say It Two Ways Thursdays, but one I thought was really fun was from School Time Snippets, "Mrs. Katz and Tush".  They did so many great activities based on this book, each covering a different area of learning.  I love that they picked out yiddish words out of the book to learn and learned about the Seder plate.