Bilingual Storytime Idea - Flannel Friday!

I am a big fan of the librarians of Flannel Friday.  If you aren't familiar with this group, they are a wide variety of blogging librarians from across the country who every Friday share something super practical from their storytime toolkit with the rest of us.  Generally, this is a flannelboard story or rhyme, but it could also be a puppet story, prop story or creative dramatic.  They are all about sharing what works, and I LOVE that!  So when I saw a post from Miss Mary Liberry explaining how anyone can jump into the Flannel Friday fun, I decided to join them.  What I intend to contribute to the Flannel Friday network is material and ideas that can be used in Spanish and/or bilingual storytime programs.  I will be sharing my own translations as well as stories, rhymes, etc. that are already available in Spanish.  I will be using the flannels from my own collection, as well as creating new ones inspired by the work of other Flannel Friday contributors, if it can be modified to be used in Spanish.  I hope this will be helpful to bilingual librarians and teachers, as well as to programmers looking to make English storytime or circle time programs more inclusive of Latino culture and the Spanish language.

I follow Miss Mary's blog and really enjoy what she posts, so it's fitting that my first ever Flannel Friday contribution would be inspired by her.  Last week, Miss Mary posted a very cute flannel for the traditional song "Aiken Drum."  When I was reading her post, I started to hum the song to myself, but en español.  The first verse actually fit, and I wondered if the whole song could maintain its rhythm in Spanish.  To my surprise and delight, I found that it could!  My dear friend Raúl checked it over for accuracy, and now it is ready to share with all of you.  The only verse that is modified from the original version shared by Miss Mary is that I changed meatballs to chorizo - a spicy, smoked sausage!  For anyone unfamiliar with the tune to this song, you can listen to an audio file of another version at Songs for Teaching.

Vivía un hombre en la luna, en la luna, en la luna,
Vivía un hombre en la luna,
se llama Aiken Drum.

El tocó un cucharón, un cucharón, un cucharón
El tocó un cucharón,
se llama Aiken Drum

The remaining verses are as follows:

Con pelo de espaguetis...

Con ojos de chorizo...

Con orejas de brécol...

Con una boca de pizza...

Con una nariz de queso...

Please be sure to check out Miss Mary's original post as well as all of the other amazing storytime ideas being contributed weekly by the bloggers in the Flannel Friday network!  You can find all of the ideas being contributed this week at Notes from the Story Room.  Also, one of the things I am going to do with my flannels is to include PDF versions in addition to pictures.  This makes it very easy to recreate what you see to scale by printing the PDF version and using that as patterns for your own version of the flannel.  You will be able to find the PDF's on my SlideShare account.  Happy flanneling!

Aiken Drum Flannelboard

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