Tagxedo is an online tool for making word clouds in different shapes. It is a wonderful way to play with vocabulary related to a theme. There are animals, trees, flowers, and other common shapes. There are also shapes related to different holidays (a pumpkin, a bat and a witch, for example). You can experiment with design options like color, font, and text orientation, but all of the word clouds look good. This is the Tagxedo website.
You can save and share Tagxedo word clouds in different ways. You can print them, and they can also be shared online.
Online the words pop out when you mouse over, and it is very cool. This might not work for you depending on your browser and whether or not you have Silverlight installed, but you can see lots of examples on the Tagxedo website. Try it here:
The size and frequency of the text is proportional to the frequency you put in, so you do not have to enter many words. For the apple above, the text was:
manzana, manzana, manzana, manzana, manzana, manzana
salud salud salud salud salud salud salud
fruta fruta fruta
dulce dulce dulce dulce
deliciosa deliciosa
For this foot with all verbs, the text was:
correr, correr, correr, correr, correr, correr, correr, correr
jugar, jugar, jugar, jugar, jugar, jugar
bailar bailar bailar bailar
nadar, nadar, nadar
And here is the animated version:
There are an endless number of ways to use Tagxedo for language learning and just for fun. You can find some of them at 101 Ways to Use Tagxedo.
¡Que se diviertan!
You can find more ideas for using words clouds with children learning Spanish here: Use Wordle to Teach Spanish to Children
