Storytime Bilingüe featuring “Algarabía en la granja”

This week’s storytime bilingüe features a unique and fun story set to music. Agarabía en la granja by Margaret Reed MacDonald is a beautifully illustrated picture book that depicts a Chilean folk tale. It’s a story that reinforces counting skills, colors, and farm animals, and it is particularly engaging and entertaining because a song accompanied the text of the book.

Agarabía means “jubilee” in English and the book tells the tale of a little farm boy receiving gifts of animals from all of his extended family members, and then finally receiving a guitar which unites everyone in song and dance. So it is only fitting that the story be sung! The song is performed by Javier Mendoza, and it is so catchy, it will be in your head all day. It definitely got stuck in ours! Maya was signing “ya tengo seis animales!” for the rest of the day.

Anyone who knows our family, knows the Barrios family loves the farm and all the farm animals. On our own little homestead, we have two rabbits, three roosters, a flock of chickens that give us fresh eggs, and we’re waiting on some eggs to hatch.

Even before they can walk, my kids are learning to care for and love our animals, especially the chickens!

Here’s Teo with his favorite rooster, Danny.

Here’s Maya last year with her favorite English hen (left),

and this year with her little English rooster (right).

I think the joy these animals bring to our family is clearly etched on the faces of these little farmers!

Maybe one day we’ll have an entire farm, but until then, we’ll appreciate singing about and learning about the farm animals and their noises from books like Algarabía en la granja.

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