Suffering with cabin fever? Oh no! I wanted to share some of the activities we are currently using in the classroom with you to help you beat the winter and bring the fun inside your classroom or home!The first topic I wanted to share with you is the house!

We share the basic house vocab:

House – Casa        Cuarto- bedroom   Sala – living room     Cocina – kitchen  Baño – bathroom

Table – mesa        Chair- silla                Sofa – sofá          Bed – cama

We used flashcards to show the vocabulary, made into a memory game! Children all ages love memory games!

We sing the House rap ©  Claudia Krusch (pointing to the parts of the house, the children love it!)

La casa, la casa, la casa tiene un piso, un piso, un piso, la casa tiene un piso

La casa, la casa, la casa tiene una puerta, una puerta, una puerta, la casa tiene una puerta

que abre y cierra, que abre y cierra, la casa tiene una puerta

La casa, la casa, la casa tiene una ventana, ventana,  ventana, la casa tiene una ventana

La casa, la casa, la casa tiene un techo, un techo, un techo, la casa tiene un techo

Casa Tag- they will tag the part of the house, after you say the name, I give rewards for each correct answer.

Doll House Fun – even the boys have fun, because I brought some legos and we populated the house, they needed to place the doll or lego in a room and tell me the name of the room! Sooo much fun!

Legos were also used to build the favorite room of the house. Below are some pics of the amazing job they did!

We add the winter vocabulary and placed cotton and fake rain the “house” coloring page we used!

One of the students who is 6 worked on so many details in the room, it looked like an architect did it! Children never cease to amaze me!

 

Hope you enjoyed our activities and that you will use them and share your experience here on our blog!

Claudia Krusch

EasyLearn Languages

 

 

 

 

 

Dear Readers,

This month we decided to bring our Spring activities to the next level!

Children started this week, by contrasting the differences between winter and spring and singing a song about weather….we make hand motions and sing about lluvia(rain), sol (sun), viento ( wind) y nubens( clouds). We read a book called Primavera and they saw the trees with leaves and the bugs and birds who came back!

We also did a coloring page with  a Mariposa ( butterfly) and a flor ( flower) and the kids would color and draw on the worksheet. You can easily make it at home with coloring page drawings.

I bought a collection of bugs and bug cat and nets and we went bug hunting, saying the name of the bug, color and comparing sizes.

Off course if you child never had Spanish before and you are starting, I would recommend just doing colors for now…..

I made a memory game with pictures of bugs and they had to match and say the name of the insect, Mariquita( lady bug), Escarabajo ( beetle), mariposa ( butterfly), abeja ( bee), saltamontes ( grasshopper).

I will be happy to answer questions and send the worksheet, if you wish to have it at home!

Saludos,

Claudia Krusch

EasyLearn Languages CEO

Dear Readers,

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!

Saludos,

Claudia Krusch

Easylearn languages CEO

Dear Members,

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!

Merry Christmas!

Claudia Krusch

Easylearn Languages CEO

A lot of the parents which come from families or are Brazilian have asked me to post vocabulary and suggestion of activities on different topics. This is the first of a series.

Spring Vocabulary:

Spring – primavera

Flower – flor

Spring colors- green – verde, purple- roxo pink- rosa, blue- azul, yellow- amarelo

Grass-grama

Garden-jardim

Bee- abelha

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Y9m_EYWOi0 - video with spring scenes in Rio

Coloring Page: http://www.kidsdomain.com/holiday/spring/color/bee7.gif

My favorite spring song: O Barquinho – Tom Jobim – This song always reminds me of spring in Brazil, but I don’t have a recording to offer to readers to check it out. Maybe in a Brazilian search engine.

Suggestion on activities:

1)Take your child to a garden or your backyard and show him/her the flowers, grass and bring the vocabulary on this list to life.

2)There is a children’s lullaby- O cravo brigou com a rosa….very nice, will put your child in a spring mood, right before bed: http://www.microvip.com.br/vipkids/ocravoearosa.htm. My son loves this song….the hard part was explain the flower names to him….cravo…..

If you are teaching your child how to read in Portuguese, spring vocabulary is great for asking the child to read the flower names, for example.

For more suggestions, information, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

I strongly advocate for introducing a second and many foreign language to children at early age, so it will be my pleasure to give any readers, any information to help them introduce or bring foreign languages to children.

Next posting will give some information on colors.

I hope you enjoyed it.

Tell us what you think!

Claudia Krusch

EasyLearnLanguages Director

www.easylearnlanguages.com