I am participating in http://latinaish.com/’s Spanish Friday, so this post is in Spanish. An English translation is included in parenthesis. Cuando eran chiquitos mis hijos, estaba obsesionada con meterles tanto español como posible a la cabeza. Traía de México y España música, libros y juguetes, cosas que hoy se pueden comprar fácilmente en linea. También buscaba siempre, y normalmente sin mucha suerte, ropa para niños con palabras en español. Es un detalle, pero creo que [...]
Talk about this picture of a snowman with your child to help her 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 objects in the picture as you talk about them. Use gestures, facial expressions and actions to help your child understand what [...]
Debajo de un botón (Under A Button) is a traditional Spanish song for children. Children love this song because it is tells a little story, and it is short and fun. It has great rhythm, as it repeats the last syllable of the last word of each line. It is one of the most common children’s songs in Spanish. Although there are a couple of different versions of Debajo de un botón, there is less [...]
With these free printable pictures, kids find the differences and practice common Spanish words. These Spanish activities, Encuentra las diferencias, are from Minihogar Kids, the children’s section of El Minihogar. The puzzles are designed for native-speakers, so the solutions are in Spanish. Kids can use the words as they look for differences and then see the written Spanish words when they check their answers. There are three Hello Kitty scenes and two scenes with the [...]
Do you have children starting Spanish in school? If you are looking for games and activities to supplement what they are doing in class, The Everything Kids’ First Spanish Puzzle and Activity Book has lots of fun ways to practice basic Spanish. Kids who like word games and activity books will love this book. It is packed with mazes, codes, word searches, hidden pictures and other puzzles that reinforce basic Spanish vocabulary and concepts. There [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]