Online Free Spanish has added more syllable activities. This set uses the letter m plus the vowels: ma, me, mi, mo, mu. These activities are perfect for beginning Spanish readers and are also a good way to expose kids to new words. You can read more about why these activities work so well for children learning Spanish and find suggestions for additional activities using the printed pages here: Spanish syllable activities. These syllable activities have [...]
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 [...]
Where did the summer go? Lots of us are going to have new Spanish learners in just a few weeks, and some of you have already started classes. Whether you are a teacher with new students or a parent who is teaching Spanish at home, simple songs are one of the easiest ways for children to produce the language. Songs provide lots of repetition and the rhythm helps kids pronounce words correctly. Songs to familiar [...]
El juego de Beenny (Beenny’s game) teaches children correct Spanish pronunciation, to read and write the sounds of Spanish, and lots of vocabulary. The game is from OnlineFreeSpanish and it is very entertaining! To play, kids guide a bee through a maze. Each time there is a frog blocking the path, the player writes a word by putting the letters in order. There is a picture of the word and a speaker to click to [...]
The songs from two of my favorite CDs for teaching Spanish to children are now available on iTunes. We Love Spanish and Sing, Move and Dance in Spanish, both from Spanish Together, are wonderful collections that teach Spanish to kids through great music. You can read a detailed review of another Spanish Together CD Hands on Spanish here and about why I like the the song El Cuerpo (also called Cabeza, hombro) so much. You can [...]
Descubre las palabras del cuerpo humano is a good activity for children who are learning to read and write the body parts in Spanish. Each screen has a picture of a body part and a word with two letters missing. There are letter combinations above the word and you drag and drop the correct letter combination into the spaces. Children do not have to recognize the word with the letters missing. Instead, they can identify [...]
This online activity was designed for native Spanish speakers, but works well with Spanish language learners too. The concept is simple – the player is given a set of pictures. In the space below the pictures, she writes the first letter of each image in order to build words and discover a phrase. If the player cannot identify a picture, she can see a hint (the word) by passing the mouse over the picture. There [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
The website OnlineFreeSpanish.com has lots of entertaining activities and games for Spanish language learners. For children learning the letters in Spanish, the Bouncing Letter Game is an effective and engaging way to master the names of the letters. The object is to maneuver a cart under a falling letter so that it does not hit the ground. Each time a letter bounces off the cart, you will hear the name of the letter pronounced in [...]
I recently wrote about a song to teach children the vowel sounds in Spanish. The song A,E,I,O,U is by Carolina Gómez, and she was kind enough to send me the CD. I always enjoy making connections with people who are creating quality Spanish-language materials for children. Hands on Spanish has 20 songs and comes with the Spanish lyrics and an English translation of all the tracks. The lyrics and the translations are printed in alternating [...]