Eight Animals on the Town

Learning how to count is a huge step for toddlers/preschoolers - at least, it has been for my daughter. Since numbers were the theme of the week at her preschool when it was my turn to volunteer to read to her class during story time, I wanted to take the opportunity to introduce the numbers in Spanish.

While we were browsing the shelves of our local library - which I recently realized has a lot more bilingual books than I originally thought - we came across, Eight animals on the town by Susan Middleton Elya. A bilingual counting book. Perfect!

True to its title, Eight Animals on the Town, is about ocho animales - a mouse, a cat, a dog, a frog, a horse, a bird, a pig and a cow - who go to el mercardo so they can each get something to eat. The story is told in rhymes and it includes more than just the numbers in Spanish. Kids can learn other vocabulary including that related to animals and the foods they like to eat.
For example:

Número cinco is a young frog.
Fifth in the line behind Bird and Dog.
Frog hops along hungry for flies.
"Moscas," says Rana, "economy size."

The illustration for that particular page includes the number 5 all around the frame of the image, but it also provides the chance to introduce even more vocabulary because there's a picture of five different jars containing insects like gusanos and hormigas - and labeled accordingly in both languages. The same goes for all the other numbers.

Speaking of the illustrations, not only are they vibrant, but they reflect Mexican folk art, making it fun just to look at them.

I'm not sure how much my daughter's classmates actually learned, but it was definitely fun introducing them to some Spanish vocabulary through, Eight Animals on the Town.