Book with CD teaches gustar, adjective – noun agreement, and colors in Spanish

Me gustan los colores is a picture book with wonderful photos supported by a clear Spanish text. Each page has four photos of objects of one color, red for example.

The objects are labeled in Spanish – manzana roja, naríz roja, pájaro rojo, rosa roja.

The text that follows the pictures says El color rojo me gusta a mí (I like the color red.) and then asks ¿Te gusta el rojo a ti? (Do you like red?).  This pattern is repeated for blue, yellow, green, orange, purple, brown and black. It’s simple, right?  It is, and yet it exposes children to lots of important elements of Spanish.

First, the photos are of common objects, so children learn useful Spanish vocabulary. Each phrase mentions an object and a color, so children learn important Spanish word order.  That is, they learn that adjectives often follow nouns in Spanish. In addition, some of the objects are masculine and some are feminine, so that the colors that end in a vowel change to agree with the noun. (Click here for more about adjective-noun agreement.). This exposes children to the essential Spanish concept of adjective-noun agreement.  Finally, with the statement and question children understand the meaning of gustar and hear the structure of this important Spanish verb.

To teach correct Spanish pronunciation, this book comes with a CD which includes a spoken version of the text, a version of the text as a song, and twelve additional songs which reinforce colors and numbers.  If you are learning Spanish with your child, this is wonderful material. You can expose your child to native-speaker Spanish and also repeat the pronunciation you hear.  The final track on the CD is a version of the text with page turn signals, so that children can “read” the book themselves – fabulous for in the car!

This book is an excellent example of how deceptively simple a book can be.  There is lots of language-learning packed into these pages. It is perfect for a child learning to speak Spanish.