It's almost Halloween!  ¡Calabazas, fantasmas, monstruos! ¡Ay, ay, ay!  

1.  Song about a pumpkin, calabaza.
2.  Story about a ghost, fantasma. 
3.  Song about a monster, monstruo.  

An important part of the preschool years is playing with letters and sounds of the languages we speak.  We do this often with word games, rhymes, songs, chants, tongue twisters.  I remember my own children playing sounds when they were younger, often making up their own nonsensical words.  This would, of course, leave us laughing and would encourage more of the play with the sounds of our languages.  

I like to practice this song with the children, with each child having their own copy of the paper.  I encourage children to lay the paper flat on the floor or on the table and to follow along with their finger.  I like to have my own copy to model how I follow along with my finger, too.  

This song teaches:

• left to right tracking
• concepts of print
• alphabetic principle
• one-to-one correspondence
• segmenting initial sounds/phonemes
• vocabulary

If you you don't have the poster in front of you, and if your child is bored, impatient, hungry, waiting, .... look around point to or touch different objects in your surrounding and sing the song...

"chair, chair, ch, ch, ch; silla silla s, s, s; mano, mano, m, m, m..."

Don't worry about the letter names.  We can use other songs, games, and activities to teach letter names and other emerging literacy skills through meaningful play experiences.  Follow along with the video or audio below.  Have fun with this song!

Email your favorite maestra for a downloadable pdf file to the poster below.  You can also find the English song on your favorite music player, including YouTube.