When­ever our library has Span­ish sto­ry­times, we bring in guests who are flu­ent in Span­ish. I like to throw in some Span­ish here and there though. This rhyme from Mamá Goose: A Latino Nurs­ery Treasury/Un Tesoro de Rimas Infan­tiles by Alma Flor Ada and F. Isabel Cam­poy per­fectly illus­trates the rich­ness of learn­ing mul­ti­ple lan­guages. The Eng­lish trans­la­tion isn’t nearly as fun to say as the orig­i­nal Spanish!

Debajo de un botón, ton, ton,
que encon­tró Martín, tin, tin,
había un ratón, ton, ton.
Ay! que chiq­ui­tín, tin, tin.

Under a but­ton, but­ton, but­ton
In Martin’s house, house, house,
He found a tiny, tiny, tiny
Hid­den mouse, mouse, mouse.

One over­sized but­ton has been added to my Lit­tle Mouse in the House folder to use with this rhyme. In any lan­guage flan­nel pieces can rein­force new vocab­u­lary in rhymes.

This week’s host is Shawn at Read, Rhyme, & Sing. You can also find past and future roundups and lots more infor­ma­tion about Flan­nel Fri­day at our new Flan­nel Fri­day web­site. For a visual round-up of all post­ings, check out Flan­nel Fri­day on Pin­ter­est.