PBS has launched the web-original series Noah comprende to introduce children to Spanish and also to the process of language learning. Using animated video with embedded games, the series teaches basic Spanish vocabulary and creates a context where children hear Spanish and can begin to understand what is being said. The premise of the series is that Noah is visiting his grandmother in a community where no one speaks English. He is trying to learn [...]
This is a very short, fun Spanish-language video from Discovery Kids about keeping water clean. It’s perfect for El día de la tierra, Earth Day. The audio is at a natural rate for native Spanish speakers, so it is great exposure for Spanish language learners. They will not understand every word, but that is fine. They will understand what is happening from the pictures. It is important for kids to get comfortable with not understanding [...]
Earth Day, El día de la Tierra, is April 22, and children will be hearing and thinking about how to care for the planet. When you do activities related to El día de la Tierra in Spanish, their awareness of the topic in English will help them understand and learn the same concepts in Spanish. This 12-page activity book on conserving resources is from the EPA. It is designed for Spanish-speaking children, but works really [...]
Bilingual Fun Spanish For Children Vol. 1 I was excited to get this DVD in the mail from The Bilingual Fun Company. What great work Jennifer Manriquez and her husband Mark are doing teaching Spanish to children! This DVD, Volume 1 of Spanish for Children, is a wonderful place to start for parents and educators who want to expose children to the language. The DVD is designed as an introduction to Spanish for young children [...]
Mamá pájaro (Mama Bird) is a free printable mini-book, and it is excellent for speaking Spanish with your child. The book is short, with basic Spanish words and simple, common Spanish structures. The story lends itself well to follow-up activities, so it is easy to reinforce what your child is learning. This mini-book tells the story of a mother bird building a nest, and sitting on her eggs. The eggs hatch and she finds a [...]
This is fun and effective song for teaching Spanish to children. The tune and the actions make it fun. The actions and the association of related words make it a great learning tool. There is enough repetition that kids quickly learn the chorus and also enough variety to make the song interesting. Arriba, abajo is by Los pimpollos. Los pimpollos is an educational TV program from Peru and the word pimpollo, which is literally the [...]
These online Spanish games involve matching simple text to the correct picture. You change objects in a scene to make them match a sentence in Spanish. The games are excellent for beginning Spanish readers and can also be used with children who don’t read if an adult reads the text aloud. In either case, the picture exactly reinforces the language, so that the games are also perfect for Spanish language learners. There is something satisfying [...]
These photographs of houses are an excellent prompt for speaking Spanish with your child. The houses are so interesting! They are all very different. Some are whimsical, and others are elaborate or spooky. There are tree houses, rock houses and underground houses. The settings are impressive too, and they lend themselves to using lots of Spanish vocabulary related to nature and geography. You will have a great time checking out the photos, regardless of the [...]
This weekend you may have celebrated Children’s Book Day. If you work with Spanish language learners, you may also want to recognize World Book Day, or El Día Internacional del Libro later in the month. This is a wonderful way to celebrate part of Spanish history and culture. UNESCO designated April 23 as a day to recognize the importance of books and authors and to encourage everyone to read. The date is symbolic because Cervantes, [...]
Picture books in Spanish are one of the best language learning tools you can use with children. Even as kids get older, if you can convince them to listen or to read together, they will learn an amazing amount of Spanish. I love the Spanish-English bilingual book Un gato y un perro/A Cat and a Dog by Claire Masurel. Although it is hard to define what exactly makes a picture book fun, in this case, [...]
This game, Pelota de ping pong (Ping pong ball), has a simple song in Spanish, lots of movement, and takes only a few minutes to play. Everyone sings the song the whole time, so there is lots of repetition. I have played this game with preschool and grade school groups and once I even played it with a university Spanish class that convinced me to go outside on a warm spring day. You can play [...]
Letras de colores is a set of activities for native speakers who are learning to read and write. Two of the activities in particular are excellent for Spanish language learners because they are based on listening to native speaker audio. The first activity involves discriminating letter sounds and the second activity consists of ordering words in a phrase. 1. Discriminación auditiva This activity involves listening to a letter sound and choosing a word that has [...]