Le temps et la nourriture (Weather and Food in French)

Bonjour,
the past few weeks we have been learning the calendar, days of week, months of the year, seasons, and weather. o practice at home, you can ask your child to do a mini weather report at breakfast or at dinner.

This week and next week we are starting to talk about food: what we love, like, and hate to eat. Your child will bring home a long list of common foods. To practice, I recommend having your child help create a grocery list or plan menus for le petit déjuener (breakfast), le déjuener (lunch), and le dîner (dinner). We will also learn how to set the table.

Finally, the French postal service has a website where children can write to Santa and he writes back (it takes a few weeks). The website also has some games. I am happy to help your child write a letter to Santa; please have your child bring a short (two or three items) list of what they would like to ask for and I will translate for them.

Merci
Elizabeth

German Class - Week Two

Guten Morgen!

Even though it's evening now, our mornings in German class have been great so far! We have been moving around, singing, and coloring. We learned a fun "ABC" song and have been talking about our favorite animals and what they do (fly, swim).

Here are some of the phrases we're working on:
Ich heiße ____ (My name is ___)
Ich fliege (I fly)
Ich schwimme (I swim)
Auf wiedersehen (goodbye)

...and some of our favorite animals:
der Vogel (bird)
der Adler (eagle)
der Tiger (tiger)
die Giraffe (giraffe)
die Katze (cat)
das Eichhörnchen (squirrel)

We've also listened to the "Fliegerlied" and we watched the version with Tim Toupet on YouTube, if you'd like to see some of that flying and swimming in a catchy song!

Be sure to keep track of our progress on the German blog and come join us!

¡Hola a todos!

We are in the second week of the semester already. We have started by learning -for those who had not learned that before- to ask and answer what our name is:
- ¿Cómo te llamas?
-Me llamo Rosario
and to greet in a couple of different forms:
-Hola (hello)
-Buenos días (good morning)
-Buenas tardes (good afternoon)
-Buenas noches (good night)
-Adiós (bye-bye)
-Nos vemos (see you)
-¿Cómo estás? (how are you?)
-Bien ¿y tú? (well, and you?)

I know that some of the kids already knew this from previous classes but others did not, so it was important to devote the first week to it. Anyway, since these are expressions that I say ABSOLUTELY EVERY DAY to them, I have no doubt that they will never forget them. My intention is to move on to other things immediately so the ones who have studied Spanish and started from the basic several times don't get bored soon, but for the new ones the repetition is important, so here's your homework: please, greet and make your child greet you in Spanish sometimes when you think of it.

Tomorrow we will talk about halloween a bit (of course) and play "Simon dice" with basic commands like siéntate (sit down), levántate (stand up), dame el lápiz (give me the pencil) and so on, so we set up the basis of a class communication in Spanish.

Gracias y hasta pronto.

Rosario.

French October 2013

Bonjour,
the first two weeks of French have gone well. I've enjoyed getting to know your sons and daughters. The past few weeks we have worked on greetings, colors, and numbers. Last Thursday your child came home with instructions and patterns to make a color-bingo game. This week we are starting to work on the verb "etre" which means "to be" as well as some adjectives. Our focus is on describing ourselves.
Merci
Elizabeth