Hide and Speak!

Hide and speak Spanish (humph, can't believe they've no picture!)

So, Laniña generally gets me to read something in Spanish these evenings as a bedtime story (that said, I did have to read Peppa Pig in English last night - she's only three; she's allowed to be fickle! And I'm not prepared to pretend that I can't speak English when I clearly can!)

But there's one book in particular that she often asks for, and she just calls it "Español" This book is Hide and Speak Spanish. It has a nice illustration and simple sentences on the left; on the right are boxes with specific pictures of individual items from the large picture, alongside other boxes with the names of those items. There are also two flaps so you can cover up either the words or the pics. We don´t do that, though.

I just read the sentences and point at the big picture. Then we go down the list of items on the left and I say the words. Laniña repeats what I say. She really seems to enjoy it. What is interesting is that when I say "El mar" she repeats "mar". If the word is "La calle", she repeats "calle". "La cama" becomes "cama". You get the idea. She leaves out the definite article, the the-word, if you know what I mean.

What is cool about this, is that it means she has sort of figured out that el and la are separate words, and can therefore be left off, sometimes. I mean, when I say "La cama" it actually sounds like one word - lacama. Therefore, she should repeat the whole sound - but she has somehow spotted the pattern of els and las and knows that there´s comething special about them.

Another interesting thing happened the other night, but I´m going to keep you in suspense for now...