StSt Cinco de Mayo

Hi everybody,
This week @ Saint we did Cinco de Mayo as our theme for ToddlerTime and Preschool storytimes. I explained at the start that we were working with the ECRR literacy skill of vocabulary this week and explained what it was and why it was important. I had note cards that had key words from the books I used. One side was English, "Grandma" and the other was in Espanol, "Abuelito". After the story we looked at the cards and the children responded back with the word both in Spanish and English, pictures were also on the card. We also had # and color cards and I incorporated those into our songs and finger plays. I created these cards using Word and Clip Art. At the end I asked what Fiesta was and most of the children responded with Party. I would say they were able to recall 1/2 of the words used without the cards during our review. After our coloring time the children had access to the cards to look at and play with. Three of the 17 children did this. I am still having a problem with two of my daycare providers using this time as a chat fest during storytime. One is working on her teaching degree, she should know better. She will be moving to the Vale area by August, April be prepared they'll be coming your way. At times it is frustrating to try to convince our audiences that what we are doing in our story times is a bit more valuable than "babysitting", as we implement ECRR, I hope that this will become more apparent.
Donna