🌱Daily Routines

Last week you learned to tell the time (¿Qué hora es?), the days of the week, and how to make plans (¿A qué hora...?). Now you can say *when* things happen - this week, you'll learn to say *what* happens. We're diving into verbs: the action words that power every sentence. You'll combine them with your time expressions to describe a full daily routine.

A verb is an action word - it tells you what someone does (speak, eat, work, live). You've already been using verbs throughout this course: "soy" (I am), "tengo" (I have), "me gusta" (I like). Now it's time to learn how verbs actually work so you can use any verb confidently.

In Spanish, verbs in their base form (called the infinitive) end in -AR, -ER, or -IR - for example, hablar (to speak), comer (to eat), vivir (to live). To use a verb in a sentence, you "conjugate" it - meaning you change the ending to show who is doing the action.

Verbs also have different tenses to show when something happens - present, past, future, and more. We'll explore these throughout the stages, but right now we're starting with the present tense (what you do regularly).

You'll often see verbs displayed in a verb table - a grid showing all the forms at once. Here's what one looks like, using "hablar" (to speak) as an example:

Most Spanish verbs end in -AR. To conjugate them in the present tense, remove the -AR ending and add the endings shown in green below:

Many daily routine verbs are reflexive - they include a pronoun (me, te, se...) that refers back to the person doing the action. Think of it as doing something "to yourself." Reflexive verbs end in -se: lavarse, levantarse, ducharse, acostarse.

To use a reflexive verb, conjugate it normally (just like you learnt above), then add the matching pronoun before the verb: me lavo, te lavas, se lava. We'll cover reflexive verbs fully in Stage 2 - for now, focus on these three singular pronouns:

Here are the essential verbs for describing a daily routine. Reflexive verbs are marked with (R).

You'll notice a couple of these look slightly different - "despertarse" becomes "me despierto" (not "me desperto") and "acostarse" becomes "me acuesto" (not "me acosto"). These are called stem-changing verbs and we'll cover them properly later. For now, just learn these forms as they are:

Now combine your verbs with the time expressions you learnt in Week 7. Use "a las..." (at...) for specific times and "por la mañana/tarde/noche" for general times of day:

Use the "tú" forms to ask others about their routines. For reflexive verbs, use te instead of me:

Use third person forms with se for reflexive verbs to describe what family, friends, or colleagues do. This is where all the pronouns come together:

Add these words to say how often you do something. They usually go before or after the verb:

Use sequence words to connect your daily activities in order: