Talk about this photograph of teenagers playing soccer in the rain to speak Spanish with your child. 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 [...]
Kids in Wisconsin are building lots of snowmen this week, so we are talking about them in class too. This is an activity where kids practice listening in Spanish to find the snowman that is being described. I do it with clothespins, but they can also mark them off with a pencil. My kids like this collection of muñecos de nieve and of course they love the clothespins! Using clothespins, you can describe a snowman [...]
Listen to this short Spanish audio description of a common word and try to guess what it is. This is one of a series of videos called Adivina la palabra de hoy (Guess Today’s Word). Most of the Spanish audio in these short videos is excellent. The series is produced by a private non-profit from Spain that promotes the teaching of Spanish, the Fundación de la Lengua Española. In this video, two children describe a [...]
Talk about this photo of kids on the first day of school to help your child 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 [...]
Tesoros de lectura is a Spanish reading program from MacMillan/McGraw-Hill. It is the counterpart to the English program, Treasures. As a part of the program, the publisher makes available a variety of support materials for teachers and families. Specifically, there is a weekly letter with activities to send home. Although the activities are intended for classes using the Tesoros de lectura program, they provide excellent examples and are a wonderful resource for teachers and parents [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Can you guess this word? Listen to this short Spanish audio description of a word that we often associate with summer and vacation. This is one of a series of videos called Adivina la palabra de hoy (Guess Today’s Word). The Spanish audio in these short videos is excellent. The series is produced by a private non-profit from Spain that promotes the teaching of Spanish, the Fundación de la Lengua Española. In this video, two [...]
Whether your kids are beginning to learn Spanish this summer or keeping up on their skills during a break from Spanish class, these interactive websites are a great way to keep them engaged with Spanish text. These are sites that provide kids with lots of opportunity to read. Several of the sites have a variety of activities. I have tried to list the websites roughly in order of increasing difficulty. The first sites have material [...]
Since the time I wrote this post, Northumberland Grid for Learning has begun to charge users who are not in Northunberland for the materials. You can find the information on a subscription here: Northumberland Grid for Learning. I will leave these descriptions, but remove the links because they no longer take you to the materials. This selection of language activities and materials is a useful resource for anyone teaching children Spanish in a classroom [...]
I am participating in Latinaish’s Spanish Friday, so this post is in Spanish. An English translation is included in parenthesis. Hay momentos cuando enseñar un idioma a niños es como tener una ventana a su mente. Es lo que me ocurrió ayer. Estaba con un grupo de diez niños. Tienen tres años y solo están llevando clases de español desde hace seis semanas. Ayer, uno de ellos, le vamos a decir Miguel, entendió que se [...]
Sube publishes a Spanish curriculum for preschool through 5th grade. I have been working with the Level A materials and I am so impressed! Sube is used by many schools and it has proved very easy to use with smaller groups and in an after-school setting. This is because Sube has great lesson plans and the materials can be used in a variety of ways. The Level A set has games, books, reproducible take-home books [...]