Latinx culture that is passed from generation to generation.
To extend children’ s excitement around mariachi, we invited families to join their children in a guided play activity that focused on building students’ oral language skills. In response to flyers and social media posts, 27 prekindergarten-to-second-grade children and their families attended our mariachithemed cafecito.
Ms. Hernández begins reading Qué Quiere El Mariachi? What Does the Mariachi Want?, by Giuseppe Di Maggio. This bilingual picture book, which aligns with families’ home language of Spanish, features a mariachi who asks questions about the families’ daily lives, such as“ Do you want to play?” The simple yes or no questions help to build vocabulary and comprehension in both English and Spanish.
After the read aloud, Ms. Hernández asks the children and their families to create a mariachi puppet from assembled materials. These include a paper lunch bag for the puppet’ s body, black construction paper for a mustache or beard, various squares of colored paper to represent sarapes and sombreros, and brown construction paper to represent musical instruments.
Families and children enthusiastically begin the activity, with children measuring construction-paper mustaches and beards on their faces before gluing them down and pretending to string their instruments before placing them on their puppets. Families begin to position paper sombreros on their heads, asking children for their approval and talking about puppet making.
When the families and children are done, Ms. Hernández plays“ Cielito Lindo,” projecting the lyrics on a big screen so that everyone can sing along. As the song ends, she offers time for the children and their families to play with their puppets, retell the story of Qué Quiere El Mariachi?, and sing together. Some families decide to share more mariachi songs while others tell stories about their experiences with mariachis.
Language is foundational to the child, home, and community; it cannot be separated from these contexts as children grow and learn in school( García & García 2012). It is through language that“ we represent the world and learn about the world”( Otto 2014, 3). Oral language can develop through many engaging, playful activities in early childhood settings, including retelling stories, singing, and— in this case— puppet making( Mujahidah et al. 2021).
When planning this guided play, family-focused activity, we began by thinking about the members of our school community. To ensure families’ involvement, we had to know who they were and what they enjoyed. Based on our knowledge of the community, conversations we had with the families, and talking with Ms. Hernández, we knew how closely the Mariachi Extravaganza connected to the elementary school’ s Latinx population.
Fall 2026 Young Children 33