I thought a lot before offering Valentine’s classes in Portuguese because Brazilian people don’t celebrate it! I decided to bring the theme and incorporate some ideas used in the Spanish class, so they would still learn the vocabulary without meaning less translations.
I created a math worksheet with hearts, they learn the word heart, coração and had to add the hearts on the page, children 3 and under just had to look, count on fingers and give me the answer in Spanish, with them I used hearts I cut out and we did the math on the rug.
I also used the song beijo, Ivete San Galo to talk about Valentine words…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXvcKm6tERQ We played a tic tac toe with pictures cut where they would have to use thier piece to try to win
I used pictures of hearts- coração, cupid – cupido, chocolate- chocolate, baloons-balão
I explained in Brazil, Valentine’s Day is in June and it’s called the boyfriend/girlfriend’s day, it’s not for friends, but for people
who are inlove, married, in a relationship.
They loved the activities and learned Portuguese!
Até a próxima!
Abraços,
Claudia Krusch
EasyLearn Languages CEO
This is a topic which I love, but I never find good ideas or nice materials to teach a great Valentine’s class or Spanish Classes in February! So this year, I decided to
innovate and I created Spanish and Portuguese classes with the Valentine Day topic which not only teach the vocabulary of a day which is celebrated in some Spanish speaking countries but also teach children to share and show friendship! Enjoy!
Today I will share my ideas for Spanish:
1) Children ages 3-5 will hold on a portion of a large tablecloth, making a sort of parachute and place a light pink ball in the middle, la pelota de la amistad! When the ball pops up, they will shout amigo, when stays on/around the tablecloth, they will shout pasa…pasa! children love to move the ball around!
2) Children will pass a soft ball, and say Pasa, pasa, pasa mi amigo! The teacher will stop and say Amigo randomly and the child who has the ball will share it with a friend in the circle….teaches them how to share and how to be nice to friends. Songs are originals composed and written by me. Email me for words and tune.
3) I also show the snoopy San Valentin cartoon which is cute:
4) We made a San Valentin card which they colored and cut. I don’t have a template to upload to the blog but you can easily make a card and have them color it.
5) Lucky charms craft- I used the marshmallow hearts on lucky charms box and they glued to a heart shape. They loved doing it! You can use paper heart or stickers as well.
I hope you enjoy my activities! Try some of them with your little ones!
This past week we worked on several themes and home and furniture was one of them!
Children would look at pictures of rooms in the house and learn their names, then we would work on a game and they would place items in each room, making vocab work easy and fun! For example, we place a sink,lavabo in the bathroom, baño.
We sang en la casa, en la casa hay….using room names
baño – bathroom
sala de estar – living room
cuarto – bedroom
cocina- kitchen
We also watched the video from Boca Beth which tours a house, the video is called La Casa, where a chicken shows children things in the rooms.
Children had to cut and glue parts of the house and make their own house., older ones had to tell me their favorite rooms, why, describe their rooms as well.
This week was my birthday! I share this joyful time with some of my students who had the class on Friday. I promised I would share the vocabulary here! If your child had another class, please look on archive for other topics.
I hope you enjoy as much as I did!
We looked at birthday vocabulary using a bingo sheet:
Los globos – balloons
Lasvelas – candles
El regalo – gift
El juguete – the toy/game
We did Ispy looking for those objects in the room. We also colored a cake ( Torta) and placed candles for each child’s next birthday. Older children received some candles and had to add the amount to make the total for the amount of candles on his next birthday. We broke a piñata, ate cupcakes ( pastelitos) and reviewed tableware.
We also sang Happy Birthday in Spanish:
FelizCumpleaños a ti, FelizCumpleaños a ti,FelizCumpleaños a ti,FelizCumpleaños a ti!
We showed a Sesame Place video about Fiesta in Spanish and read a book on the same topic which taught children how they celebrate birthdays in Mexico.
While cooking up new ideas to offer our students this winter, our team came up with a snow man themed class, where children will learn/review body parts using frosty!
Activities involved are Frosty coloring page, place body parts on frosty on the wall, throw snow balls(white balls) at frosty and tell the body parts where it was hit, read a winter book and watch frosty the snowman video:
Body Parts in Spanish:
arm — el brazo
back — la espalda
backbone — la columna vertebral
breast, chest — el pecho
calf — la pantorrilla
ear — el oído, la oreja
elbow — el codo
eye — el ojo
finger — el dedo
foot — el pie
hair — el pelo
hand — la mano
head — la cabeza
heart — el corazón
hip — la cadera
intestine — el intestino
knee — la rodilla
leg — la pierna
mouth — la boca
muscle — el músculo
neck — el cuello
nose — la nariz
shoulder — el hombro
skin — la piel
stomach (abdomen) — el vientre
stomach (internal organ) — el estómago
thigh — el muslo
throat — la garganta
toe — el dedo (See Note 1)
tongue — la lengua
tooth — el diente
We also cooked up some other new ideas which I will be sharing week by week. The materials listed on this post are available on our membership portion of this site. Those activities hopefully motivate you to bring Spanish to your home/class using innovative techniques chasing away cabin fever mood!
I was thinking about good ideas for games to play with my son while we were home during the holidays and new year’s and I came up with some ideas to bring foreign language into our play time, I hope you get a chance to try some of them!!!
1. Año Nuevo - Buena Suerte- make a popcorn string and add a marshmallow after each 10 pieces, they will have to count pieces while placing them on a piece of thin wool or rope, ribbon….
2. Baking together- A very famous holiday baking recipe is for pan dulce, try this recipe and ask children to place dried fruits inside of it, they will have to tell you the colors while placing them. For recipe:
La receta del pan dulce casero es una buena y energética receta que permite elaborar unos sabroso panecillos muy apropiados para almorzar o merendar gracias a su gran aporte energético y nutricional.
Ingredientes para 4 personas:
Pasas de corinto: 50 gramos
Azúcar: 6 cucharadas
Huevos: 2 unidades
Levadura en polvo: 1 sobre (15 gramos)
Harina: 280 gramos
Mantequilla: 100 gramos
Leche: 100 cl
Anís: 1 copa
Fruta confitada: 50 gramos
Piñones: 30 gramos
Preparación:
Tiempo estimado:
Se ponen las pasas en remojo para que estén blandas cuando las tengamos de utilizar
Por otro lado, se separan las claras de las yemas de los huevos. Las claras se reservan y las yemas se ponen en un bol junto con el azúcar y se baten enérgicamente hasta obtener una consistencia espumosa
A continuación se añade la mantequilla previamente derretida y, sin dejar de remover, se van agregando alternativamente la harina, la levadura el polvo y la leche vertida lentamente
Cuando está todo bien mezclado se agrega el anís, las pasas previamente pasadas por harina, los piñones, las frutas confitadas cortadas a trocitos
Por otro lado se baten bien las claras de los huevos a punto de nieve y se añaden a al mezcla anterior
Se remueve todo bien hasta que quede una mezcla homogénea y esponjosa
A parte, se unta un molde con mantequilla y se enharina para que no se pegue el pan a las paredes del molde
Se vierte la mezcla en el bol y se introduce en el horno a 180? durante una hora. Cuando el pan esta cocido se saca del horno y se deja enfriar a temperatura ambiente
3. Counting Beans- In Brazil, people place lentils or beans on the table during new year’s eve to bring prosperity, place a bowl with beans or lentils on your table, explain the tradition and count the beans together!
4. Print some foreign language words and hide them in cookie dough, bake them, after cooling it off, have children break cookie before eating and they will read the words….make sure you know the meaning and that words are previously explained to children before baking or in another activity! Suggestion on words: Spanish: coche, pelota, libro, agua, jugo, galleta, Portuguese: Carro, bola, livro, água, suco, biscoito.
I wanted to share some of my experiences in the past week with children in our Spanish and Portuguese classes!
Some interesting things happened when we asked children to make a lista de presentes or lista de regalos (gift list), one of our students told me that he didn’t need anything, he had everything and asked me how you say that in Spanish! Another student had a 20 item list and we spent the whole class, trying to have him say the gifts in Spanish….off course they came up with fuzzoodles, zuzu pets and other wierd names….I used my imagination to help them say those things in Spanish and Portuguese!
We also brought some cookies and had them decorate the cookies and place things on Santa’s plate (prato de papai noel/plato de papá noel). We also did a craft with cookies, chocolate and milk. We placed a plate on a coloring page, children cut the cookies, candy and candy cane and glued and colored it.
I also share with children that candy canes are not a Christmas treat in South America, gifts are placed in shoes on the windows in many countries and no real trees, just plastic ones! Weather is warm in South America, so people eat lighter meals!
I hope that brought more ideas to parents and educators on how to share holidays with children using a foreign language!
I’m so excited to start sharing some activities our instructors will be using at our Spanish classes in South Jersey!
First I would like to share a list of words, must have when you are teaching Christmas in Spanish:
Feliz Navidad! -Merry Christmas
Christmas tree – árbol de Navidad
presents – regalos
sleigh – trineo
chimney – chimenea
the shepherds – los pastores
bells – campanas
peace – paz
ornaments - adornos
wreath - corona
For children who read, they will “decorate” the tree below with the words above ( cut them and have them glue them on the tree, saying the names in Spanish)
I also have a line of bells, children will ring (repicar) and each time I stop in a different number of bells, they need to count them.
I read Santa Claus is coming to town in Spanish, I use the book in English and make 2 line sentences for each page. They know the story, so it becomes easier. I also use the video and turn in the Spanish mode for the dvd, I do that with frost the snowman and Rudolf too. We have a whole class, just with Frosty! I may share that later!
I also print colored balls and color cotton balls with paint and have them do a “snowball fight” and each ball touches another student, they need to tell me the color. Younger and older ones love it!
Google ” cascabel” and you will find the words for jingle bells in Spanish, there are three or four versions.
The one listed here on youtube is a little hard for little ones, so when we sing only, I use
Cascabel, Cascabel musica de amor
Dulces horas, gratas horas
Juventud in flor
Cascabel, Cascabel
Tan sentimental
No ceces o cascabel,
de repiquetear
I hope you enjoyed my ideas! Please share your experiences in using them here!
This past two weeks, I searched for a different way to bring the Thansgiving theme a different flavor! I decided to use prepositions and shapes for the first two weeks and food as well.
Children learned or revisited food vocabulary while setting up a table with thanksgiving favorites, such as :
Pastel de Calabaza- Pumpkin Pie
Pavo- turkey
Patata- Potato
Pan- Bread
We also learned:
Feliz Dia de Acción de Gracias – Happy Thanksgiving
and shapes which were compared to food and feathers of Pablo the turkey!
I am very happy to share some interesting links to show thanksgiving traditions in Spanish and bring vocabulary to celebrate the season of being grateful in a great way!
A parent asked me: Thanksgiving has such hard words for children to learn and memorize! Her statement inspired me to focus on activities which will capture the child’s attention while teaching Thanksgiving words and concepts in Spanish.
Click on this link and have the child repeat some basic words
You can use a turkey coloring page online and ask the child to color the feathers in patterns, amarillo, rojo, verde….the pattern can be as complicated as the child’s age. If your child is under 3 years old you can help them by coloring using the pattern, repeating colors in Spanish and asking what comes next? Que viene ahora?? Rojo, no!, Amarillo, no, verde, si!!!
I have designed the EasyLearn materials which are coming out of the oven for you! Please keep checking us out for more info on how to share Thanksgiving vocabulary with your child!
