My little monkeys have fallen in love with the book Good Night Gorilla!
I changed up our Spanish plan during the break, and we had a couple of extra weeks to fill in. I remembered Spanish Mama had a preschool Spanish unit, and thought Week 1: Buenos Dias would be the perfect thing. Living in a Spanish-speaking country my children hear greetings all the time, so I assumed they automatically knew them. After asking them a couple of questions though, I realized we needed a little crash course. *cringe*
This song quickly became a favorite, and they have been singing it ALL week. hehe)
We used our Ecuadorian finger puppets to greet each other like he does in this version.
My littles preferred the Spanish only version, and I was so excited to discover the CD is free to stream with Amazon Prime Music. Wooohhoooo! Check it out here.
My two favorite teaching tools are music and a great storybook. Here is the perfect storybook AND it is available in both English and Spanish! Good Morning Gorilla is a book with just a few words, in fact the only words are “Good night ________.” I used to suffer with the concept of a “wordless” picture book. I just wanted to have my script, read it, and be done. However, these types of books are so great for increasing vocabulary, understanding story structure, strengthening retelling skills, etc. My very favorite part though, is that children of any age can read them successfully because there is no “right way” to read them. Back to Goodnight Gorilla.
What makes this book so fun is all of the details in the illustrations, along with the mischievous little gorilla that snatches the zookeeper’s keys. Of course, as the zookeeper is saying good night, the gorilla is letting all of the animals out of their cages and into the zookeeper’s house! No matter how many times we read it, there are always squeals when we get to this page. hehe
We made this story wheel to help us learn the animal names and retell the story. Click here to download it for FREE in English and Spanish!
My children had so much fun with this book, they kept demanding more. So, we went all out. hehe We made mini-books for them to read independently and keep in their Book Boxes. These pocket chart strips were a big hit. The children spent their free time changing around the story in the pocket chart and reading it over and over.
We made dice (using these), and graphed the animals using our zoo counters and reusable dry erase pockets so they could be used over and over again. This is my little guy that is very hard to engage, and he wouldn’t quit until he filled ALL the rows. Now that’ s a win! 🙂
It was an awesome week! We used the Spanish only version, but we made an English version too. If you would like your own packet, click on the images below to head over to our TpT store.
They love naming the animals and peals of laughter are guaranteed as the animals say good night to the zoo keeper after he gets in bed and again once his wife returns home with a couple of extras inspite of her nighttime trip to return most of the animals to the zoo.