These photos of Olympic sports are a fun way to speak Spanish with kids. You can use them for activities like these: – Match the name of the sport to the photos. – Read the descriptions and find the picture that is being described. – Take turns describing a picture and guessing which picture is being described. – Teachers can project the pictures onto a whiteboard and use them as a tic-tac-toe board. Teams tell [...]
Cántame un cuento is a wonderful project by Natalia Spialter and Filip Tee, both of Spain. Together, they produce fun, educational songs, and many of them can be used with Spanish language learners. You can learn more about their story and music on the Cántame un cuento website. Nat began to write songs when her oldest daughter was an infant as a way to connect and pass on her values. The songs deal with the [...]
I often get questions about Spanish programs for adults from parents who want to learn Spanish with their children. I recently had the chance to try Visual Link Spanish, and 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 it could certainly be used by motivated high school students. The Basics of Visual Link [...]
The 2012 Summer Olympic Games in London are beginning and they are great fun to talk about with kids in any language. The following resources provide information about the Olympic Games in Spanish. The information and activities are at a variety of levels and can be adapted for children learning Spanish. 1. Calendario Juegos Olímpicos de Londres 2012- This calendar shows all of the scheduled events of the Olympic Games. It is from El mundo, [...]
I wrote this rhyme to read with children learning Spanish. Kids help tell the story by providing phrases based on the pictures in the text. The story is really a simple Spanish poem for kids and the rhythm and rhyme help children predict the words. I wrote the counting rhyme Un paseo por el parque to use with my preschool students. Each of the pictures represents a number and an object – un árbol, dos [...]
The title of this Spanish song and game, A pares y nones, is Evens and Odds (numbers) in English. This is a traditional game and it is played a lot with groups of kids in Mexico. Everyone joins hands in a circle and walks singing the song. Then, the leader (teacher) calls out a number and everyone hurries to form a group of that many people. I have also seen the game played using other [...]
Kids can learn and practice lots of Spanish as they do math problems. Math word problems have language that kids will hear and use in other situations, too. With children learning Spanish, doing math problems that are easy for them, that use material that they have already mastered, is a great way to learn language. For example, word problems that practice basic math skills use important Spanish verbs to express the problem that children need [...]
The vowel sounds in Spanish are essential to correct pronunciation and, of course, to learning to read. A song about las vocales from OnlineFreeSpanish and a printable Spanish activity book from Orientación Andújar give children lots of practice with Spanish vowels. The song La ronda de las vocales teaches children the names of the vowels, which are also the vowel sounds. It reinforces those sounds by using them in rhyming words. For example, children sing [...]
There are lots of simple Spanish jokes that children can understand. I have written several posts with jokes and suggestions for telling them to Spanish language learners. They have many of the most common Spanish jokes for kids and you can find there here: First Jokes for Children Learning Spanish More Jokes for Children Learning Spanish Spanish Jokes for Children 10 Simple Spanish Jokes for Kids Which jokes a child understands will depend on her [...]
While I am here in Mexico, I bought more of these pinzas to use in my classes and I realized that I should share of my clothespin activities. I use wooden clothespins too, but I like these because of they are smaller (for little hands), washable, brightly colored and I get 30 for 10 pesos (about 75 cents). Clothespin activities are a fun way to practice listening and speaking skills in Spanish. The idea is [...]
OnlineFreeSpanish has nine activities to teach farm animal vocabulary in Spanish. The games combine an image, the written word, and sound. These are not whole language activities; they focus on individual words. Teachers and parents can make the most of these games by building a context, using the words in sentences, and relating the words to each other. Like the other games on OnlineFreeSpanish, the farm animal activities include pronunciation. The words are pronounced normally, [...]
It is going fast, but there is still a lot of summer left to enjoy. Here is a list of activities to do during the remaining days of vacation and on into the fall. Kids can read the suggestions in Spanish, check off the activities they have done this summer and choose new ones to try. This Spanish list of activities is part of creating a print-rich environment for children learning the language. You will [...]