Storytime Bilingüe featuring “La cerdita sonadora”

These beautiful summer days we’ve been having are perfect for day dreaming, and the story for this week’s storytime bilingüe just happens to be about a little pig day dreamer!

Last week, we received a surprise package in the mail. It was a new Spanish storybook, with a note that was signed anonymously. I figured it must be a gift from one of our fans of our storytime bilingüe, and I was right! The next day, my friend Ashley called and said the book was from her.

We were very excited for a new book for our storytime, and decided to use it right away. The story, La cerdita soñadora, is set on a little farm where the animals live like an extended family. The main character, a little piggy, dreams of a life of adventure beyond the fence of the farm, and as a twist of fate, she gets exactly what her heart desires. I loved the message of the story (dream big!), and I especially love when children’s books rhyme. Rhyming books help build reading fluency with their meter and rhythm, and build students’ phonemic awareness, making it easier for them to predict the pronunciation of new words.

I regret that my own reading of the text isn’t more fluid in this recording... As I said we wanted to read it right away, so I didn’t practice at all beforehand, and we needed Francisco to record us, so we made the video first thing in the morning, before he left for work. (You can even catch Maya yawning a few times!)

But my favorite part of this week’s storytime is supporting a fellow bilingual writer! Author Tanya Montás Paris is a friend and colleague of our Titi Ashley, and writes novels and children’s books in English and Spanish. She said this story was inspired by a true story of an orphan pig on their family farm that was cared for and nursed by a cow!

So if you like La cerdita soñadora, check out her author’s page on Amazon to see her other titles.

Y ojalá que disfrutan este storytime bilingüe!

Comments

Is 5 Little Monkeys Racist?

I’ve seen a lot of Tik Toks debunking children’s nursery rhymes lately. I have two toddlers, so now whenever I hear one of those rhymes, I think about their unsavory origins. But my son loves, loves Five Little Monkeys. He’s just learning to talk, and can almost say it by himself. I’ve thought about telling him to stop singing it since I learned in the original lyrics it’s not monkeys jumping on the bed, but he just gets so much joy from singing it as he jumps up and falls down, I thought... no harm, no foul, right? As long as he thinks the song is about monkeys, it’s ok. Until my niece came over one day, and the three toddlers were playing on an old mattress we have on the living room floor for them to jump around on. My son asked me to sing 5 Little Monkeys. At first it was cute, because they literally were jumping on the bed, but then I took a good look at the three of them. My kids are half-Guatemalan but very fair, like I am. Whereas my niece is half-black, and her ski...

Why You Should Travel with Little Kids

I took my first cross-country road trip when I was six-weeks-old. My parents loaded me up in an old Ford Wagoneer and drove me home from my dad's hometown of Pittsburgh, PA, to my hometown of Ojai, CA. After that, we traveled back and forth between the East Coast and the West Coast every summer of my life. A few times we flew, but most years we loaded up the car with the suitcases, the dogs, and the children and drove 3,000 miles across the country. This early exposure to travel instilled within me a joy of seeing the world, and since that first trip I have visited 34 states and 14 countries. And I hope to share that same joy with my own little ones. Traveling with children can be hard--it disrupts their nap schedules, may involve crossing timelines, and definitely pushes everyone beyond their comfort zones. But seeing different countries and different parts of our country as children gives them a greater appreciation for cultural and regional differences, and it widens their exper...

Toddler Morning Schedule in Spanish

Do you struggle to get your toddlers ready and out of the house on time in the morning? The past few morning in the Barrios house have been absolutely terrible. Maya usually wakes up early with me, but I let Mateo sleep until the last possible moment before we need to wake him up to get to school and work on time. This worked for a while, but this week we have left the house in tears. Since this is the kids' first year apart during the day, they miss each other so much. They want to play with each other in the mornings instead of getting ready, so I tried to think of a way to keep all of us on track. In order to help build their independence and organizational skills, I came up with a morning schedule for us to follow, with words and images. Then I placed a Maya copy and a Mateo copy in a clear dry-erase pocket and hung it in a central place by the kitchen. Now the kids know exactly what they need to do in order to get time to play with each other before school each mo...

Search This Blog