I use this Spanish song for kids with preschoolers and beginning language learners. I suggested it on Spanish Playground about a year and a half ago, but I wanted to share a couple of variations and a great video from a preschool in Spain. La luna y el sol teaches basic concepts about the sun and the moon: the moon is small and the sun is bigger; the moon comes out at night and the [...]
Don’t these pigs looks happy? Talk about this great photograph to help your kids learn Spanish. The questions that follow, like all the Learn Spanish with Pictures activities, are ordered to help children master the vocabulary and gain confidence with the language. Start with Describe the photo (1), and be sure to point to the pigs as you talk about them. Use gestures, facial expressions and actions to help your child understand what the words [...]
Kids can learn lots of Spanish by measuring. I use measuring as an at-home activity with my students to practice vocabulary and numbers. In addition to the names of the objects they measure and the tools they use, kids learn words like ancho (width), largo (length), alto (height) and the verb medir (to measure). There are lots of online activities in Spanish to teach measuring that work well with children learning Spanish. This is a [...]
This make-your-own online puppet show is a great way to get kids speaking Spanish or any language. Start by choosing scenery and characters. Then you can move the characters around and have them talk to each other. They automatically turn toward each other, and you can move them below the level of the stage. There are four scenes to choose from and four pairs of characters. This activity is on UpToTen – one of the [...]
Spanish in a Basket was such a treat to get in the mail! It is a lovely wicker picnic basket filled with bright, beautiful toys to help introduce children to Spanish. When I opened the basket, I found colorful wooden fruits and vegetables, hand-knit finger puppets, soft animal friends, and a bright table-setting. There were also 4 CDs and a DVD with 20 audio Spanish lessons for kids ages 3 to 8. Beth Manners, creator [...]
Cinco calabazas, by Spanish Together, is a wonderful song for the week before Halloween or anytime. There is so much important language packed into this short, fun song! The video on YouTube is really cute and makes it easy to be sure kids are getting the most out of the song. The structure of Cinco calabazas is familiar: there are five pumpkins, then four, and kids count down until there is only one. Then, they [...]
Bingo in Spanish is a good way to review vocabulary with kids of any age and it is good listening practice, too. There are lots of printable bingo games online, but this version with pictures of common words is great for children learning Spanish. The game is made available by the Asociación Mundial de Educadores Infantiles. There are only eight pictures on each card and you play until the whole card is covered. The cards [...]
!Qué globos bonitos! What pretty balloons! Use this simple activity to practice colors in Spanish with the photo of balloons below. For children who do not read in Spanish, you can make the path with crayons or markers so they can see and talk about what color is next. Say the Spanish colors as you follow the path through the balloons. Follow the color paths from the top of the picture to the bottom. Move [...]
I was excited to see Juanita Ulloa’s name in my inbox recently. She wrote suggesting that Spanish Playground readers might be interested in her songs for children learning Spanish. Juanita Ulloa is one of the nation’s leading bilingual performers and songwriters. You can read more about her wonderful music on the Juanita Ulloa website. Juanita’s latest CD of music for children, ¡Canta mi son!, has won a National Association of Parenting Products Gold award and [...]
It is easy to talk about the calendar and the weather in Spanish with these colorful materials. They are provided by the Asociación mundial de educadores infantiles and they are all PDFs that you can download and print. There are signs with the Spanish months and the days of the week. There are numbers for the date, both day and year. There are also colorful signs for the seasons in Spanish. My favorite part of [...]
Every now and then, I get questions about Spanish programs for adults from parents learning Spanish with their children. So when I had the chance to try Visual Link Spanish, I thought it might be something Spanish Playground readers would be interested in. I tried Level 1: Sentence Building and Conversation. This Spanish software program is intended for adults, but could certainly be used by motivated high school students. The Basics of Visual Link Spanish [...]
This is a collection of videos to use in the classroom, and many of them are short and appropriate for children learning Spanish. The government of Chile makes these videos available on the education portal Educarchile. You can download the videos to use with children learning Spanish. You can also watch them on the site, but they sometimes load slowly. Downloading them is easy and then they play really well. You can find the Spanish [...]