I recently wrote about a song to teach children the vowel sounds in Spanish. The song A,E,I,O,U is by Carolina Gómez, and she was kind enough to send me the CD. I always enjoy making connections with people who are creating quality Spanish-language materials for children. Hands on Spanish has 20 songs and comes with [...]
This is a great set of online activities for introducing the body parts in Spanish or for focused practice with the vocabulary. The activities are from OnlineFreeSpanish. The first activity teaches the words and correct Spanish pronunciation and the second is a game. Click the titles to open the activities in a new window. Activity [...]
¿Algo más? (Anything else?). Such a common, useful question! When I am choosing picture books to read with beginning Spanish learners, I am always happy to find a repeated phrase that we use commonly in conversation. ¿Algo más? is that phrase in the book Siesta, by Ginger Foglesong Guy. Siesta is a bilingual book with [...]
Douglas Wright is a well-known poet, illustrator, and humorist from Argentina. In addition to being the author of many books, his work appears in magazines and newspapers in Argentina and other countries. He is extremely generous with his work, making much of it available on the site La biblio de los chicos, and also as [...]
My son Andrew is 23 and he just got back from visiting my daughter, Kate, in Lima, Peru. He was telling me about being there and about arm wrestling with Kate’s boyfriend. Listening to him, for a moment I saw the eight-year-old Andrew, arm wrestling with his friends in Mexico, the whole group cheering and [...]
Try speaking Spanish with your child by playing with the I Spy cards. The bright cards with their assortment of objects have a magical appeal. They are powerful language learning tools because the images are memorable and serve as a visual reference for vocabulary. When children associate a Spanish word with a striking image that [...]
The game Veo, Veo in Spanish is I Spy in English. In addition to the guessing game that children play, there are I Spy cards, books and games by Brairpatch in association with Scholastic. These wonderful visual materials are fascinating to kids and adults, and can be used in lots of Spanish language activities. There [...]
The game I Spy is Veo, veo in Spanish, and it begins with a simple rhyme – a question-answer exchange. This game and its many variations are wonderful activities for children learning Spanish. In addition to the traditional game of guessing an object, there are card games, online activities and books based on I Spy [...]
Children can draw on information they already know to understand new Spanish vocabulary and structures. When teachers and parents talk about familiar subjects in Spanish, children associate concepts they understand with the new language. This way, children learn Spanish vocabulary in context and applied to content, rather than as lists of vocabulary words which are [...]
Using Spanish to talk about information that your child already knows is an effective way of exposing her to the language. If a child is familiar with certain information, she can draw on what she knows to understand Spanish. This is one way of providing comprehensible input, and comprehensible input is essential to language acquisition. [...]
One of the biggest challenges for Spanish teachers and parents teaching Spanish to their children is providing sufficient input at the appropriate level. Exposing a child to Spanish is not difficult, but exposing a child to Spanish at the right level and in a way that promotes learning is time consuming and a lot of [...]
This online story is an unusual version of Los tres cerditos (The Three Little Pigs) meant for native Spanish speakers. It has a simple plot and the common vocabulary is well supported by the animation. Although the sentence structure is more complex than in some stories for beginning Spanish learners, children can easily understand what [...]
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