La Fiesta de Fritzi/Fritzi's Party

PreS-Gr 2—It's Fritzi's birthday, and Maria, along with the Whistlefritz kids, needs to prepare before the rodent wakes up. All the preparations for a traditional birthday party figure in. Making cake, choosing presents, blowing up balloons, even cleaning up the living room are all introduced in simple Spanish sentences and repeated single words. The verbal repetition is augmented by children and adults performing the actions and by songs about the activity. The five songs, all written by singer/songwriter Jorge Anaya, are catchy and entertaining, serving to make vocabulary acquisition both fun and easy. Clean graphics and clear audio make this production attractive as well as instructive. Included with the DVD are a vocabulary list and a printout of the lyrics to the songs. Easily divided into four sections, this set of lessons could be incorporated into classroom routines either as a sponge activity or to introduce a more in-depth lesson.—Ann Welton, Grant Elementary School, Tacoma, WA