This week we will be sharing house vocabulary and I am very excited to be sharing our activities with you!

We will be looking at a house as we enter the amazing world of different types of houses for older children and a house as we know for younger one! We will chat about their favorite part of the house! Using basically this vocabulary list and me gusta:

We will then, build a house with Legos and they will show me where the ventana is, la puerta, etc.

We will use shapes to make another house together, using their spacial skills to fit the shapes into the frame given to them. I use the Discovery Toy shapes and a House Page.

We read the book

http://astore.amazon.com/easylearn-20/detail/0316234486

I don’t show all the pages and just address vocabulary seen in class, the book is a little long for younger ones and a 30/45min class.

We also watch el Oso en la casa azul:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KKspxSCpKo

They listen to the song as we talk about La Cocina.

We also play tag and they will have to tag the parts of the house. They love that!

I hope you enjoyed our class and that you share it with your students or little ones!

Claudia Krusch

EasyLEarn Languages CEO

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