We started off with a fingerplay song, counting our manitas and deditos in English and Spanish. To the tune of "Ten Little Indians," we sang:
Dos manitas, diez deditos,
Dos manitas, diz deditos,
Dos manitas, diez deditos,
Cuentenlos conmigo.
Two little hands and ten little fingers,
Two little hands and ten little fingers,
Two little hands and ten little fingers,
Count them with me now.
Uno, dos, tres deditos
Cuatro, cinco, seis deditos,
Siete, ocho, nueve deditos
Diez deditos son.
One, two, three little fingers,
Four, five, six little fingers,
Seven, eight, nine little fingers,
One more and there's ten.
Then we were ready to move on to the stories, beginning with Nico y los lobos feroces by Valeri Gorbechav. In addition to being a super cute story about getting back to sleep after a bad dream, this book introduces more numbers than the standard 1-10. Nico believes he is being chased by 100 wolves...well maybe it was just 50...OK, maybe 15...or 5. As we read the story we pointed out the numbers on the flannelboard. Following the story, we talked about which numbers were bigger and smaller. Enhancing this, I filled four bags with corresponding numbers of buttons and had the kids pick out which bag had 100, 50, 15 or 5 buttons. They did a great job at this! It was also a nice opportunity to emphasize the "n" and the end of "fifteen" as I have noticed that many of the kids here have trouble hearing the difference between this number and "fifty."
From this we moved on to the story that introduces one of my all time favorite children's characters, Señor Calavera, in Yuyi Morales' instant classic, Just a Minute. We counted our fingers a different, more musical way, singing "Los deditos" from Jorge Anaya's A bailar = Let's Dance. Then we rhymed our way numerically across the globe (you know I have to work it that phonological awareness) with Abuelita fue al mercado. A trick I like to use with rhyming books that maintain the rhyme in both languages is to type out the English and tape it to the back of the Spanish book. This way we can read both as they are written and get that great rhyme, instead of trying to translate from either language on the fly.
This was a very fun program and parents responded enthusiastically, checking out more than half of the number-related books on display. Others I recommend on this theme are Fiesta by Ginger Foglesong Guy, Cuenta ratones by Ellen Stoll Walsh and Uno, dos, tres = One, Two, Three by Pat Mora. Tie the concepts in by printing out these great take home articles for parents on early numeracy at home from Reading Rockets, also available in Spanish.
How are you practicing numeracy in your storytimes, with your children, or with your students?
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