I'm in love...

...with Latin American kids.



Oh my. Tonight when I went downtown to tutor, Jorge wasn't there, so I didn't have anyone to tutor, but I played with 4 little Hispanic kids so their moms could focus on their tutoring sessions better. Oh my. Jessica was 6, Haley was 5, then I'd guess that Charlie was 3-ish, and Emilie was probably 2. We first laid out Haley's Disney princess blanket in the toy corner and then settled down to read stories. Even though we were technically playing, I worked in lots of English lessons. Every now and then as I was reading, I'd stop and ask "What does that word mean?" For instance... "The Beast's face was fierce looking, but he had a kind and gentle heart...What does fierce mean?" Two little girl hands would shoot up and I'd call on one. "Um, like, strong?" "Well, that's close. More like kind of mean looking - like this:" I scrunch up my face and curl my fingers. The kids giggle and we proceed.



Then we got a box of opposite picture flash cards and made up a game with them. We discussed opposites, and identified them, then we played a sort of "go fish" type of game. It was so fun! The girls giggled and giggled. Then we (all of us at the center) had our break time and ate snacks. Jessica spent most of the time telling me that she wanted another cookie. She eventually got her mom to let her have one. Oh, I discovered the Spanish word for cookie - galleta. I absolutely LOVE being able to say some Spanish words to them, for instance, when we were playing a game of "memory" with picture cards later, I'd ask "Que es esta en Espanol?" And they'd answer me in Spanish as if it were the most natural thing. :D When we played memory Charlie thought it was most amusing to drive his fire engine over our game, which made it virtually impossible to play. We kept asking him to stop, in English AND Spanish, but it didn't work, because he just kept giggling and saying "Iss funny!" "No, no, no, por favor! Malo nino!" (Naughty boy) :) Memory was another great English teaching tool, because we discussed each picture as it came up and said it in English and sometimes in Spanish. Oh my. What funness. Yup, I'm in love. :D