Sticky notes have to be one of the handiest inventions ever. In addition to keeping us organized, they are wonderful for language activities to teach kids Spanish. You can rearrange sticky notes, so they are perfect for matching activities. You can put them on a wall, so everything is bigger and kids can stand up and move. You can put them anywhere, so language can be applied to the physical world (I couldn’t resist the [...]
Semillitas is a Spanish language cable television channel for preschoolers from SomosTV. In Wisconsin, it is available through Charter Communications, but it is carried by other companies in different parts of the country. The Spanish videos for kids on Semillitas are designed specifically for the Latino community of the United States and Puerto Rico and dedicated to “la educación, estimulación y divertimento de niños en edad temprana a la vez de asistir a sus padres [...]
iPad apps for kids provide fun ways to practice a language. Gus on the Go is an app for learning and practicing basic Spanish words. It is made by toojuice and is available in the iTunes store. With Gus on the Go, kids learn individual words by playing with a colorful, interactive screen. When they have mastered the words, they use the vocabulary in games, reinforcing what they have learned. The words are grouped by [...]
School is almost over and I have been playing some of the games that we played at the beginning of the year. This is a very simple Spanish game, and a favorite with my youngest students. I call it ¿Dónde está el pájaro? At the beginning of the year, the most challenging part of this game for the littlest ones is passing the bird around the circle. They have grown up so much! This is [...]
This traditional Spanish game, El juego de la oca, is a board game similar to Snakes and Ladders. Players roll dice and move in a spiral to reach the center of the board. If they land on la oca (the goose), they move ahead to the next oca and roll again, saying De oca a oca y tiro porque me toca. If they land on the bridge, they move to the next bridge and roll [...]
“Y ahora, pon un círculo rojo alrededor del triángulo. Mira, ¡ya llegó tu comida.” (And now put a red circle around the triangle. Look your dinner is here!) I used to entertain my kids waiting in restaurants or before appointments with drawing games where we gave Spanish instructions to each other. All we needed was paper and pencils and the game passed the time quickly and fairly quietly. Below you will find a couple of [...]
Chillola is a website designed to let children explore different languages. The site has lots of basic Spanish vocabulary accompanied by images and native-speaker audio. It also has a variety of printable activities. The vocabulary is divided into categories including numbers, colors, shapes, school words, animals, fruit, vegetables, food, the calender, weather, time, house, vocabulary, prepositions, and opposites. The activities for several of the categories show one screen with pictures of all of the vocabulary [...]
This extensive set of free printable materials has lots of wonderful activities for Spanish language learners. It is offered by Udicom on the educational portal Educarm of the Department of Education in Murcia, Spain. These printable PDFs are designed for native Spanish speakers with a focus on language in context. The set includes a variety of activities that can be used with Spanish language learners at different levels. These materials are divided into 11 units. [...]
This online Spanish game with native-speaker audio is a good way for children to practice vocabulary and listening comprehension while they are sorting, grouping and matching. Listening to native-speaker Spanish is also important for pronunciation. The set of activities is called Un poquito de orden and there are three temas (topics), each with several activities. Click on the link below to reach the online Spanish game. The site sometimes takes a little while to load. [...]
A find-it jar (or scavenger hunt in a bottle) is a great toy for kids who are learning Spanish. I have played with these in stores and love them. Searching for the tiny boat, discovering the dinosaur – it is captivating! Find-it jars can be a good language learning activity, so I was happy to discover that making your own is not complicated at all. A find-it jar is a plastic or glass jar [...]
9letras is the blog of Alberto Abarca Fillat of Huesca, Spain. Alberto shares educational material for teaching Spanish and the website has an impressive number of printable activities for young Spanish language learners. All of the material is created by the author, and lots of the activities have pictures to help Spanish learners interpret the language. Many of these activities with pictures are designed for beginning readers. They also work well with children who do [...]
Recognizing patterns is an important pre-math and pre-reading skill for children. Talking about patterns is also a valuable language activity for kids learning Spanish. The word for patterns is secuencias in Spanish. Secuencias are an easy and fun way to practice vocabulary. There is a lot of repetition and even if the patterns are easy, kids have fun with them. There is also enough language involved that children work with common verbs like seguir (to [...]