Saturday, January 24, 2015

La Casa Adormecida


This post is part of a series, 31 Days of Spanish Books for Kids. Please click HERE for the complete list of posts. {Each of these posts contain affiliate links. Thanks for supporting this blog!}




I love using children's literature that has repeating phrases when teaching my Spanish students. It gives them a chance to hear a word or combination of words over and over which aids in them learning more vocabulary. La Casa Adormecida provides a tremendous amount of repetition in each page. The premise of the plot is a house full of nappers that pile onto one bed. With each page, the list of sleepers is repeated with another character added.

Here is the list of characters that decide to take a nap and are disturbed by the final arrival (the flea):

La abuela
El niño
El perro
El gato
El ratón

La pulga

La Casa Adormecida is an excellent teaching book for language learners. One of the concepts you can focus on are prepositions like...

sobre
encima de
debajo de

The word "sobre" is the one used in the book, but I have downloaded, colored, and laminated the characters from the book so that we can practice these prepositions. In Spanish I give my students instructions on how to arrange the characters on the bed.  Here are some examples:

"Pongan la abuela sobre el gato."
"Pongan la pulga sobre el perro."

You don't necessarily have to put them in the order the book does.  Actually, there is humor in putting them in an order that doesn't make sense like putting the grandma on top of everyone else. After arranging them in the bed I can then ask my students questions about the characters' location. Who is under the flea? Who is on top of the boy?


Another activity that can be done is math related. I teach my students the words for "feet" and "paw" (el pie y la pata). We then proceed to count the number of feet or paws in the house. I give my students footprint stickers and paw print stickers. We then go through the process of counting out how many feet and paws to put on a piece of paper to correspond with the number in the book.  A great way to review numbers!

La Casa Adormecida is definitely not to be missed! My students have loved this book and the activities that I do with them.

2 comments:

  1. Ya me encanta este librito en inglés, pero nunca pensaba de usarlo por ayudar a enseñar el español. ¡Qué buena idea! Muchas gracias por compartir tus ideas y el recurso para acompañar el libro. Intento usarlos con mis hijitos. :)

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