This cheat sheet covers the Spanish words and sentence patterns students need to talk about days, months, seasons, and dates. It helps students read calendars, answer classroom questions, and write simple date sentences correctly. The main goal is to make common calendar phrases easy to remember and use.
Key Facts
- The days of the week in Spanish are lunes, martes, miércoles, jueves, viernes, sábado, and domingo.
- The months in Spanish are enero, febrero, marzo, abril, mayo, junio, julio, agosto, septiembre, octubre, noviembre, and diciembre.
- Spanish days and months are not capitalized unless they begin a sentence.
- To say the date, use the pattern Hoy es el número de mes, as in Hoy es el 5 de mayo.
- For the first day of a month, use primero instead of uno, as in Es el primero de enero.
- To ask what day it is, say ¿Qué día es hoy?, and answer Hoy es lunes.
- To ask the date, say ¿Cuál es la fecha?, and answer Es el 12 de octubre.
- The seasons are la primavera, el verano, el otoño, and el invierno.
Vocabulary
- día
- A día is a day, such as lunes or martes.
- mes
- A mes is a month, such as enero or febrero.
- estación
- An estación is a season, such as primavera or invierno.
- fecha
- A fecha is a calendar date with a day number and a month.
- hoy
- Hoy means today and is used to talk about the current day or date.
- cumpleaños
- Cumpleaños means birthday and is often used with a date, as in Mi cumpleaños es el 7 de abril.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
- Capitalizing every day and month is incorrect because Spanish usually uses lowercase for lunes, enero, and other calendar words.
- Writing el uno de mayo is incorrect for the first day of the month because Spanish uses el primero de mayo.
- Forgetting accents in miércoles and sábado is incorrect because accents are part of the correct spelling.
- Using en before a full date is incorrect in the basic date pattern because Spanish says Es el 10 de marzo.
- Mixing up otoño and invierno is a common mistake because otoño means fall or autumn, while invierno means winter.
Practice Questions
- 1 Write this date in Spanish: May 5.
- 2 Write this date in Spanish: January 1.
- 3 Answer in Spanish: ¿Qué día es hoy? Use a complete sentence.
- 4 Explain why Spanish months and days are usually written with lowercase letters instead of capital letters.