I is for Iguana

This week is Spanish week. We practiced saying hola and adios. We counted from uno to diez. We played with our toy drum that says the alphabet in Spanish (although I had to consult a friend to clarify the alphabet. Did you know that "ch" is no longer in the Spanish alphabet?) And we practiced our Spanish playing a computer game. So what does Spanish have to do with the letter "I" you ask...I found a very fun book - Manana Iguana. It's a southwestern version of The Little Red Hen. The characters in the book are named the Spanish word for them. For example, the snake is Culebra and the tortoise is Tortuga. It's an adorable story with a happy ending (the friends feel bad for not helping the Iguana so they clean up after the fiesta.) We read another book to help us learn more Spanish called Say Hola to Spanish. We really enjoyed the sing-song nature and silly pictures in this book that really teaches a lot of Spanish. The kids thought it was particularly funny that burrito, pinata, and mosquito are the same in English and Spanish. I would like to start teaching a foreign language, I just hope they're as eager to learn as they've been this week when I finally get serious!

We also spent some time talking about Iguanas, reading books from the library, and looking at pictures on the internet. We learned that iguanas are a lizard and can live in deserts, rainforests or even the ocean. This is Adam putting his coloring into his notebook.We actually saw an iguana at the zoo the week before. But our field trip this week was Sea World. This was a fabulous homeschool trip were we attended a great educational sea lion show and then self-toured the rest of the park. As for the letter I...how about "icky" when the dolphin soaked Adam :) Or how about "interesting" as these four eyed fish definitely were. Oh, I know - invisible. We all really liked these fish...Ok, we didn't focus on our letter of the week at all that day but Adam learned that fish breathe with gills. He thought that was very interesting, and we've even spent time at home reading about fish and looking at their gills....it's important to be flexible and seize those teachable moments! Now back to our letter...Adam spent the week turning his letter "I" into letter "H." Did you know you could do that? He did it with the wooden sticks, ABC crackers, stickers...I'm confident he knows the shape of H and I (I just hope he remembers which is which after being silly and switching them all week!) And to complete our "I" week, we did eat a very special "I" food - ice cream! (that was a Klondike bar but he ate most of the chocolate first :)