Melody is the tune. It’s the part of the music that you often find yourself singing along with.
Pitch is how high or low a note sounds. A melody is made up of high and low pitched notes played one after the other. Catchy melodies often repeat the same series of notes over and over.
This week’s Spanish challenge is to practise the words for different colours.
Some colours have two different versions, one that ends in ‘o’ and one that ends in ‘a’. Why do you think that might be? (Answer: below the colours!)
Red- rojo / roja
Blue- azul
Yellow- amarillo / amarilla
Green- verde
Purple- morado / morada
Orange – naranja
Pink- rosa
Brown- marrón
Grey- gris
Black – negro / negra
White- blanco / blanca
Dark- oscuro
Light – claro
*Ms F’s Top Tip* – Remember ‘v‘ in Spanish always sounds like ‘b‘ and ‘j’ makes a ‘ch’ sound like in the Scottish word ‘loch‘. When you see ll in Spanish, it is actually a special letter. The sound it makes is y, like in ‘you’, so amarillo sounds like amareeyo. You may recognise it from me llamo (my name is) and llueves (rain).
Answer: If a colour is being used to describe something male it ends in an o, and for something that is female it would end in a.
So for example, a male white cat would be un gato blanco.
Whereas a female white cat would be una gata blanca.
Notice the colour comes after the word it is describing – this is always true in Spanish.
Ideas to help you practise
Create your own colour flashcards – one set with the Spanish words and another set with the colour. You can then use these to play a game of memory, match the colour to the word, or create your own game.
Make your own arco iris (rainbow) and label with the words in Spanish. You could do this using items found around your house, use chalk on the pavement outside your house, or build using lego. Get creative!
Practise Mrs McCracken’s Sign-a-long signs for colours using the words in Spanish.
Ask a parent or sibling to pick a colour, read it in Spanish, and you have to find something that is that colour around your house. If you are feeling confident you can be the teacher!
¡Que te diviertas!
Ms Ferguson
There are some free games you can play on Linguascope as well as on this website:
Seeing all the lovely rainbows in windows on my daily walk made me want to learn how to sign the rainbow. We already know the sign for the word rainbow itself – here is Ms Ferguson to remind you of the sign AND the Spanish word:
What we don’t know yet is the signs for all the colours. So I put my thinking cap on and found out the signs we need. I even rummaged through my wardrobe to see if I could dress in the right colour for each sign. See if you can spot anything special about my top for the green sign!
Now you know the signs you can talk about your favourite colour.
What is your favourite colour?
My favourite colour is …
Can you tell what my favourite colour is?
Ideas to practice your colour signs:
Ask people what their favourite colour is using Signalong and tell them yours.
Play “Eye Spy” with colours and sign the colour as well as saying it.
Go on a colour hunt around your home and say and sign the colours you find.
Sing and sign the rainbow song.
Make a rainbow with different objects you find in your house and sign all the colours you can see in it.
Before Easter I asked you to listen to ‘The Great Escape’ by Bernstein, and work out how many beats in a bar. I hope you all managed to count 4 beats in a bar?
Did you show anyone else at home how to conduct?
Thank you for sending photos of some of the instruments you have been making from recycled materials. There were a great variety of drums, shakers and even some cabasa, using plastic netting from fruit punnets and filled with buttons or shells and rocks! I was most impressed!
This week we are looking at rhythms. Using your percussion instrument, play along, following the beats of the bar of the Alligators and Cats song?
I hope you are all doing well and have had a lovely Easter break. This week’s Spanish challenge is to learn some words for emotions in Spanish and to be able to answer the question ¿Qué tal? – How are you?
Here are some Spanish words for emotions:
Happy – feliz
Sad – triste
Sleepy – sueño
Scared – miedo
Now, there are a few words where you have a different ending to the word depending on who is feeling the emotion. The word will end in o for boys and a for girls.
So, for example the word for angry is enojado for boys and enojadafor girls.
If I wanted to say I am angry, I would say “Estoy enojada.”
But Mr Hunter would say “Estoy enojado.”
Angry – enojado / enojada
Sick – enfermo / enferma
Nervous – nervioso / nerviosa
Shy – tímido / tímida
Worried – preocupado / preocupada
Excited – entusiasmado / entusiasmada
Confused – confuso / confusa
*Ms F’s Top Tip* – Remember ‘v‘ in Spanish always sounds like ‘b‘ and ‘j’ makes a ‘ch’ sound like in the Scottish word ‘loch‘. The special Spanish letter ñ makes an ny sound so sueño sounds like suenyo. You should know it from the Spanish words cumpleaños (birthday) and mañana (tomorrow).
How to Practise
Have a conversation with a parent or sibling where they ask ¿Qué tal? and you answer with a Spanish emotion. You could then ask ¿Y tu? (and you?) and they could answer back.
Create a fortune teller with different emotions.
Play a game of charades where you have to guess the emotion being acted out.
Draw emojis for each Spanish emotion word.
Make your own cards – make a set with the Spanish words and a set with the English words. You can then use these to play memory, match the cards or play emotion pictionary.
Play ‘Articulate’ with emotions – where someone picks an emotion (or a card if you have made them) and has to describe the emotion, how it feels inside, or a situation when they have felt this way. The other player has to guess the emotion.
Before we finished school we explored how we could talk about our emotions using our Signalong skills. All three classes gave me some fabulous suggestions for signs we might need to learn and we began having a look at some of them. For our Signalong challenge this week we will remind ourselves what we learned in school.
First, if you were talking about emotions you might want to ask someone how they are feeling by saying “How are you?”.
Here is how you sign that question. Remember we say the words out loud too.
Next you need to know how to answer the question if someone asked you it.
How are you Mrs McCracken?
Right now I’m happy to be back signing with you all again!
Here are some others emotion signs that might help you to sign how you are feeling.
Have a go at some of these signs. Ask someone in your house how they are feeling and show them your emotions with your Signalong skills.
Perhaps you could play a guessing game with your emotion signs. Draw some of the emotions as emojis, fold them up and put them in a hat or a bowl. Pull an emotion out and see if you can do the sign for it. Make sure to show the emotion on your face too! Can your partner guess which emotion you are signing?
Let me know if you have any questions or suggestions of other signs you’d like to learn.
We hope you had a good holiday and enjoyed the good weather. We have been keeping busy and enjoying our daily walks in the sunshine. Mrs McCracken has been practising her dressmaking skills and helped her husband build a deck in their garden so they can have a cup of tea outside. Mrs Campbell enjoyed improving her cooking and baking skills, although she has a long way to go, learning some Spanish and doing lots of gardening. Ms Ferguson got back into running and cycling in the sunshine (on a very squeaky bike!), watched some classic films and started learning French. We would love to hear what you have all been getting up to over the holidays.
This week’s Home Learning Grid has been put up on the blog. Please work through it at your own pace. Look out for our regular blog posts, where we will be giving you special weekly challenges for Signalong, Spanish and music each week.
Many of you have been enjoying the maths and spelling games on Sumdog. It is lots of fun and we recommend that everyone has a go. We will set new maths and spelling challenges each week so keep checking in. If you need your username and password for Sumdog please contact us and access it via our teacher accounts.
We will be taking a wee break from the blog over the holiday but first we thought we’d wish you a Happy Easter. And we’ve got some special guest signers too!
Happy Easter from Mr HunterHappy Easter from Ms AnstrutherHappy Easter from Ms GallagherHappy Easter from Mrs McCrackenFelices Pascuas from Ms FergusonHappy Easter from Mrs Campbell
We will post the next Home Learning Grid after the holiday but in the meantime we hope you all have a good break, and try and relax and have fun at home. There are lots of ideas online for fun ways to fill your time and you can also use the links on our Home Learning Page.
Here are some of the things we will be doing to keep busy:
Ms Ferguson will be using Duolingo to learn some French.
Mrs McCracken is going to keep up her daily drawing challenge – lots of artists out there are setting them but her favourite at the moment is illustrator Claire Powell on Instagram.
Mrs Campbell will hopefully be enjoying lots of time outside in her garden and is going to practise her Spanish.
You all know how much I love Spanish, so here is your weekly Spanish learning. I would love you to practise saying the Spanish words for numbers as high as you can go!
The numbers would continue to treinta y uno, treinta y dos, treinta y tres….
*Ms F’s Top Tip* – Remember ‘v‘ in Spanish always sounds like ‘b‘ and the accent above vowels (like á, é, í, ó, ú) and means you put emphasis on this, so veintiséis sounds like ‘bain-ti-sayees’.
How to Practise
You could practise any way you like but here are some ideas to get you started:
Count forwards and backwards – start with a random number for a challenge!
Ask a parent or sibling to show you a number with their fingers and say it in Spanish
Make up your own Spanish number flashcards using paper and coloured pens – put the numbers on the front and Spanish word for that number at the back.
Use your flashcards to play a Spanish number memory game
Teach your family how to play ‘veintiuno’ – remember the aim of the game is to not say veintiuno and each player can say up to 3 numbers each in order. You can help them with the Spanish if they get stuck!
Sciennes Primary Five 