Vocabulary

• Have fun teaching your children key words in Spanish. Consider teaching them two or three words a day and labeling them around the classroom. For example, if you want to teach them "Hola" and "Adios" (Hello and Goodbye), you can role play a greeting scenario with the preschoolers and hang up a poster with two characters saying these greetings. You can label the days of the week, starting with "Lunes" for Monday and "Martes" for Tuesday. You can also read books to the children during story time, which will help them learn words specifically related to Hispanic culture. Apples 4 Teachers recommends kids' books, such as "Abuela," about a Hispanic-American girl, and "Cinco de Mayo," which are both suitable for preschoolers.
  
  

Music

• Preschoolers can learn some Spanish words or Hispanic culture through simple songs. For example, Hispanic Culture Online recommends the "Dos Elefantes" song to teach numbers and "Los Colores" to learn colors in Spanish. The Texas State Library and Archives Commission offers several examples of active Spanish nursery rhymes and songs. You can even organize a fiesta for your preschool class. With the help of parent volunteers and teaching assistants, preschoolers can make Peruvian dance capes by decorating a 3-by-3-foot piece of plain fabric with colorful fabric markers, or homemade sombreros out of newspaper and colorful wrapping paper. They can also make homemade maracas out of cups and dried beans or mini castanets out of buttons and elastics. Play some Mexican, Cuban, Venezuelan, Puerto Rican or other music borrowed from the library while children dance around with their homemade costumes and percussion instruments.
  
  

Games

• Preschoolers will enjoy playing games from Spanish speaking countries. For example, they can play "Hit the Penny," a game played in Chile: Insert a stake, with a square top, into the ground and balance a coin on top. Children try to knock off the coin by throwing their own coin. You can also make a pinata by covering a balloon with papier mache, or buy one from a party store, and allow the preschoolers to try and break it open under adult supervision. Perpetual Preschool recommends hiding flags of all the Spanish-speaking countries around the room and getting the preschoolers to find them. Once the children find all the flags, you can tell the children which country each flag belongs to.
  
  

Cuisine

• It would also be a valuable experience for preschoolers to try food from various Hispanic cultures. If one of the children has a parent of Hispanic Heritage, you could enlist her help to make food for the class, such as enchiladas, corn cakes, tortillas, chili, rice and beans, teja, rice pudding and flan. If there is a day you can recruit some parent volunteers to the class, organize a simple meal for the preschoolers to prepare themselves.