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.
6) Valentine’s Tic tac toe – regular template with hearts printed on card stock as pieces, white and red.
I hope you enjoy my activities! Try some of them with your little ones!
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!
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’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!
Many parents asked if there is Halloween in Spanish speaking countries and I used to say no, there is a Dia de Los Muertos celebration which is more religious and not child oriented. Well, a parent of one of my students recently shared that in Colombia they do Dulces o Travesuras (trick or treat) and children dress up like in the US. That surprised me!
In Brazil, my native country, Halloween is only celebrated in English Schools, not as a real holiday…..They have dia das crianças, October 12th when little children receive toys.
I will share later this week some linkswith information on dia de los muertos and Spanish Halloween worksheets and songs. Stay tuned!
I had a parent call this week and the parent wanted to find out how we used LEGOS in our classes? Well, I decided to share my conversation with other parents in order to inform them of the benefit of using LEGOS in the child’s play time.
There’s a theory developed which defends that LEGOS can be used to treat children with autism, they improve brain function, accelerate reasoning thinking, increase attention and the tactile experience brings an amazing feeling of empowerment not shown with other toys.
We jumped on the idea and developed a program which took the same concept to bring a fun and educational experience to little ones! We teach basic Spanish vocabulary through building and manipulating the blocks.
There are some things you can do at home, such as depending on the age, use megablocks or LEGOS and have them identify colors, number counting, building a house, a car, a boat….take pictures, show it to everybody! Your child will be motivated to accomplish more! Contact us for a list of words you can use while playing with the LEGOS.
If you are interested in having your child join a group, our first sets of classes proved to be a huge success! We will be offering two new sets starting in March. Log on our website for more information:www.easylearnlanguages.com
We recently received an overwhelming amount of calls asking for Italian classes for children! We are happy to announce that we will be offering two new classes starting October 27th, 4pm for ages 3-5 and 6-9.
We are fortunate to have a native speaker teaching the classes at our West Deptford location, bringing South Italian flair to our award winning children’s program.
Parents are also taking classes with their children as a new way to interact and have fun together. We currently have 6 families taking the Parents and Mommy and Me classes with us.
When parents realize the importance of introducing a foreign language to a child in early age, they open the doors to a new world of possibilities! Yesterday a mom said, Nathan has been taking Spanish classes since he was two and now he is interested in starting a second language! That always amazes me! Especially because Nathan is one of the students who demonstrate the highest rate of retaining the information received. So maybe I will be teaching him Portuguese as well in a near future!
Please post your comments, experiences with second language teaching and learning. I would love to hear your comments and questions!
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