Feliz dia das Maes! Feliz Dia de las madres!

This post is dedicated to all the moms who read and support our efforts to bring foreign languages into their homes and enable us to do that!
Being a multilingual mom has been a challenge for me and has proven to also be very rewarding at the same time. I have been walking my son through learning two languages while building up his native language and some of my efforts have being successful, others not so….Mother’s day should be celebrated all year , but I try to bring a special meaning at this time of the year!  I hope you try and enjoy some of my suggestions!!!
My son loves music, so we always hear music in Spanish and Portuguese….I still laugh when I hear him sing, tomo guarana, such de caju, goiabada para sobremesa!!! He blasts this song out on his iPod

speakers!!http://letras.terra.com.br/jorge-ben-jor/594602/

We also read some books, I try to read some of the books I am using in my classes and some in Portuguese as well!

We play his favorite game: mela mela tin, where we rub our noses agains it each other and then bang heads ( softly) sometimes he prefers not so softly, LOL, boys!  I make ovinho ( eggs for breakfast) on Saturday and he and daddy cook on Sunday for me!

He likes rock and fast paced music, so I like showing him some j-lo and Ricky Martin songs and dancing around the house, have not done that this week! And reading is a must!

I read this one last night, Quiero a mi mama porque:

http://astore.amazon.com/easylearn-20/detail/052547248

I wanted to change the way we celebrated Mother’s day this year, so my team started spinning wheels and we came up with a super fun class! Hope you can use some of these activities in your classroom or at home!

We start with matching game, cards printed with family member’s pic and name in Spanish.Then we  use similar cards to place in a family tree and each student places cards which correspond to their families. Other copies of the cards are placed on children’s back and they pass the ball, when music stops, they need to tell who the family member that student has on their back, who they are? Quien soy yo??? The others answer eres….

We colored a mother’s day page which I am placing here as a free gift to all moms and teachers who follow our blog.

We watched a great video and the older ones had to tell us what family members were missing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c89nmoBd9Qk

We also sang bingo tune for my version:

Te amo mama, mucho, mucho eres mi mama!

Amo a mi mama! Amo a mi mama, amo a mi mama, Yo amo a mi mama!

We also read this book, they love hearing about Emma’s family! There’s a version without the read along and this one has the read along!

http://astore.amazon.com/easyleacom-20/detail/1931398585

Enjoy and Feliz Dia de las madres!

EasyLearn Languages Claudia Krusch

Multilingual Mom, CEO and Language Expert

Dear Readers,

I worked a lot to plan the activities for our cinco de mayo classes this week, because I was tired of the same old…..muy cansada! I also grabbed some special ideas to do at home, since the date is on Saturday this year!

I am using the book Fiesta, which I have used before, but with a new spin, I take them through the Mexican Village to celebrate it the old way, the way small Villages still celebrate it! Come and join us!

http://astore.amazon.com/easyleacom-20/detail/0060882263

So we travel through small town markets, looking at toys, games, we make anillos and exchange them for the ocho anillos game! We tried 8 instruments which are shown in the book and I purchased to bring to our classes, the children loved it, the challenge was to find Spanish names for some of them, like the rain shaker! We danced around the hat using La Bamba! Last but not least we look at the piñata and I placed candy, which falls at the end of the class, but we also look at the way they are homemade and serpentinas, we review colors, numbers which are added to the social aspect of the party!

I also show this video which reviews vocabulary as they ispy the video, looking for things we talked about before, I divided them in groups, they became so competitive! You will not believe it! Increible!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1y5N2hXOKL4

I also used a coloring page made with coloring page from the web, mounted with maracas, Mexico and a sun! Viva Cinco de Mayo as a title!

I hope you enjoyed my ideas and share here if you used some of them!

VIVA CINCO DE MAYO!

Claudia Krusch

EasyLearn Languages Bilingual Mom , Foreign language Expert and CEO

Dear Readers,

We are spending the whole celebrating Dr Seuss birthday! Even though he is not a South American traditional author, his influence in the American Schools made me take the time plan a special class to celebrate his birthday! I used two books, Un Pez, Dos Peces….and Huevos Verdes con jamon both for sale at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. I used the first book and planned a fish class, we went fishing with a plastic fish game with water and a bucket, they needed to go fishing and tell me the size, color and name of the sea creature, we used sea horses, alligators and crabs of different colors. We used pictures of large fish, whales and turtle in the ocean on the floor, they learned nadar, we also used speed and parar to guide movements.

We showed a video of bilingual reading of the books from youtube :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZ0wm1-Sr80

And the song I created: Yo soy un pea, yo soy un pea, yo soy un pez y me gusta nadar….repeat 2x and Nado rapido y despacio, nado rapido y despacio (3x), the kids loved going fast and slow.

We ate colored gold fish, they could eat the ones they could name the colors.

Can’t wait to share this and other class plans on our membership portion of our site which is currently being updated! Stay tuned!

A lot of fun!

Claudia Krusch

Dear Readers,

I have answered this question more than 5 times this week, which motivated me to bring this topic to our blog.

Children who are exposed on a 30min foreign language class a week, will basically forget a lot of what was learned if the stimulus cease.

I highly encourage parents to buy cds, invest on classes, books anything that can keep the foreign language present in their lives!

Amazon offers many options of cds with songs and programs, classes as also offered nationwide and Bookstores like Barnes and Noble offer many offerings for at least 5 different languages, which can be easily downloaded to an ipad with the B&N reader, an app for ipads.

Please e-mail me privately if you wish to receive recommendation for specific materials and to receive a free sample of my spanish summer activity guide!

Enjoy the summer!

Claudia Krusch- Director of EasyLearn Language Programs