Los pollitos is a printable story and coloring book of a traditional children’s song. In addition to the story-coloring pages, it has figures for stick puppets, picture cards for games and a teacher and parent guide with ideas for using the material and additional activities. The song is available to download from Music with Sara, and there is a YouTube video of the song with the illustrations. I had a wonderful time collaborating with illustrator [...]
I am so excited to be able to share this book with Spanish Playground readers. Sofía en una aventura por la selva (Sophia’s Jungle Adventure) is published by Kids Yoga Stories. The book integrates yoga for children into a story in Spanish and creates an amazing language-learning experience. Yoga poses were inspired by the natural world. Kids Yoga Stories weaves those poses into a picture book. Children do the poses, imitating [...]
I recently asked readers to share the title of a book they enjoyed reading with their children or classes. These are the books that were mentioned. Froggy se viste and Buenas noches, luna were favorites with a number of people. The books by Bill Martin and Eric Carle and the “Oso” Barefoot Books also came up several times. Most of the books are translations. I am sure this is largely due to what is available [...]
This giveaway is closed. Congratulations to the winner Jodi Monroy! Thanks to everyone for entering, for the great book list (I’ll compile it) and for saying nice things about Spanish Playground. No saben cuanto les agradezco el apoyo! Pocoyó is an animated television series in Spanish. There are also Spanish books for kids based on the show and I am happy to be able to give two of them to one of my readers. The [...]
With Christmas coming, I know that lots of us are looking for gifts for Spanish language learners. Parents of my preschool students often ask me to recommend Spanish books to read to their children at home. I always mention this series of board books published by Macmillan Infantil y Juvenil. All of them are available to purchase on Amazon. These are a few reasons I recommend these books to parents and preschool [...]
Spanish books are the perfect gift for children learning the language! Sonrisas Spanish School is having a picture book sale just in time for Christmas. Sonrisas has an online book store with carefully selected Spanish stories to read with language learners. From December 1st-15th, all books in the store are 15% off. To take advantage of this great offer, visit the Sonrisas Book Store and use the discount code “booksale” in the shopping cart. Happy [...]
I am really excited to share this set of six little story books for Spanish language learners. The set is called Childhood Adventures and includes six Spanish stories and an audio CD with native-speaker narration. These are exactly the kind of materials that teachers and parents need: easy to use in any setting and very effective. There is an English translation at the back of each book. The vocabulary and structures in these stories are [...]
Relajo en la cocina is a Mexican story that I read to my children when they were little. It is published by CONAFE (Consejo Nacional de Fometo Educativo) and is now available online in the Biblioteca Digital del ILCE (This is an amazing resource. If you have not checked it out, be sure to take a look). I loved reading this short, rhyming story with my kids and still use it with students. In terms [...]
I wrote this rhyme to read with children learning Spanish. Kids help tell the story by providing phrases based on the pictures in the text. The story is really a simple Spanish poem for kids and the rhythm and rhyme help children predict the words. I wrote the counting rhyme Un paseo por el parque to use with my preschool students. Each of the pictures represents a number and an object – un árbol, dos [...]
Stories from BookBox are a wonderful resource for building reading and listening skills in Spanish. BookBox creates animated books with Same Language Subtitling (SLS) to support reading and literacy development around the world. They have a great website with dozens of stories that can be viewed in different languages at no cost. The not-for-profit enterprise PlanetRead is the parent organization of BookBox. Through PlanetRead, BookBox gifts one hour of reading to a beginning reader for [...]
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 [...]
These entertaining Spanish books for children are very popular with my students. In class just last week a student got really excited when she spotted the picture of the books on the back cover. She quickly determined that she had heard all but one and asked if I could bring the only one she had not heard to the next class. The kids love these stories! The series is about Eric and his little sister [...]