I attended BlogWorld Conference this past week in NYC and BEA, Book Expo and it was an amazing experience to see so many accents and foreign colors represented at the conference and during our time off!
I took my husband and son because it was my son’s request to spend his birthday in NYC, so we enjoyed the best of both worlds! I never imagined the trip would end up giving us a lot more than what we bargained for, such a rich environment for bilingual growth for international learning, it gave me one more reason to come back to NY!
I would spend days sharing all the opportunities we had to share and experience culture exchange, so I will limit this post to our highlights!
My husband and I attended the conference, so my friend generously asked her mom to help us and babysit my son! Little did I know that he would get a lot more than a babysitter! Ita, how he affectionately called her, became a second grandmother, latin way, loving and caring! She not only taught him Spanish those 3 days but brought him Spanish snacks and cooked arroz con frijoles on the last day and introduced him to her lovely family! She enriched his life in a bigger way than she will ever understand! He lost one of his grandmas when he was born and my mom is in Brazil, so Ita filled an empty space in his heart and gave him more reasons to be proud of speaking a foreign language and to learn it! I wished she lived closer!
Our second night in the hotel my son decided to go to the pool and an older German couple came with grand kids, they were talking in German about the water and asking about a shower, dusche….I heard and said to myself, here I go, dust my German spiderwebs and try to help them, this lead into a whole conversation about Brazil and soccer and to my son being able to play with a German child without speaking his language! I could see in my son’s eyes how proud he was of my German, since he had never heard me speak the language; I was surprised myself to remember so many words and to be able to carry a conversation for over 40min with them! At the end my son came back saying spielen…..(play in German), Wasser (water), and other words he picked up! Priceless to see foreign languages in action outside the formal classroom scenario!
Thursday night we went to HardRock Cafe in Times Square and Toys r us, both places had so many Brazilians, it was unbelievable! It looked like New Year’s Eve there! That’s when I saw Mario and Luigi and tried to teach them some Spanish or Portuguese and they said, Mama Mia!!
On Friday we went to the Tish zoo in Central Park and the main part of the zoo had a rain forest exhibit with so many birds from South America, I swear, it smelled and felt like Brazil in there! LOL We then, heard all these Brazilians in there and my son jumped, mom, this is Brazilian, why are they speaking Brazilian?? I was also amazed at the amount of Brazilians there! It felt like we were all invited to a party! I showed my son some birds and explained their names in Portuguese. I highly recommend, great activity for children in NYC, great place to teach them a foreign language, Spanish and Portuguese in particular! We saw this Arara and I told my son, call her, ARARA, ARARA! He did and she aswnered! Loved it!
I wanted to visit Macy’s Brazilian exhibit, that will have to wait until August when we return for BlogHer! Can’t wait to share more places bilingual friendly! Hope you enjoyed our journey! My family had a blast! Thinking NY is not for children, think twice!
This past week, we brought a very interesting approach to teaching furniture vocabulary in Spanish.
Children talked about their favorite rooms in their house, using the words learned, they also played domino and go fish with our flashcards.
They played hit or miss with a ball around the room, hitting the pictures that they could identify and watched a great video of the bear in the big blue house, welcoming them to his house!
Our coloring page was a furniture piece in different classes, coloring pages, flashcards and domino are available for sale, please contact us for sample!
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:
basement:el sótano
bathroom:el baño, el cuarto de baño, el retrete
bedroom:el dormitorio
closet, wardrobe:el armario, el ropero
courtyard:el patio
den, study:el estudio
dining room:el comedor
entryway:la entrada
family room:la estancia, el cuarto de estar
garage:el garage, la cochera
kitchen:la cocina
living room:la sala de estar, el salón
room:el cuarto
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.
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
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:
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.
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!
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!
Researching good activities for earth day, April 22nd, I did not find out anything I really liked so I worked on some different ideas and totally outside la caja!
I think the vocabulary list should be:
Tierra – Earth, Sol- sun, Nubes- Clouds, Lluvia-Rain, Planta- Plant, Arbol- Tree, Flor-Flower and Aire- Air.
I showed some of my classes those things in their school playgrounds and they had a first hand experience of how to embrace, take care and appreciate madre tierra.
We played Pasa La Tierra game with blue and green small Plastic Balls, where they would pass the oceano y la tierra (which came from coloring page below, which they colored ocean blue and land green). They also alternated between pasa el ocean ( blue Ball) y vivo en la tierra ( green ball).
Looking for new activities to do using the Spring theme, it came to me to use a mural as a backdrop after we teach the new vocabulary or verbs associated to vocabulary learned in previous years by children who have been with us for a longer period of time!
We gave them the vocabulary by talking about season changes and:
Memory Cards with words – Primavera- Spring, Nube – Cloud, Lluvia- rain, Cesped- grass, Flor- flower, Arbol- tree, Mariposa- butterfly.
We also used the book Pedro Conejito to talk about spring words
We gave them stickers and asked them to draw on our wall and table mural, depending on age, they loved it! Some of the pictures are shown here!
Try and let us know how it was, we would love to share your picture!
Today we started from ages 14m-9 year old students and I wanted to share some of the amazing results! Check it out!
Think about Easter in South America is to think about food! Thinking back on so many Easter meals at my parent’s home! The most fun part was not the egg! In Brazil, they are ginormous! LOL Check it out!
It was all about sitting and eating ALL day! O dia todo! My family makes seafood dishes and yummy appetizers and desserts! My favorites listed under my pinterest account:
http://pinterest.com/easylearn/food/
Moqueca de Camarao ( shrimp stew), Farofa de manteiga (Cassava Flour with butter and onions and eggs), Vatapa ( bread pudding made from bread, cashews, dried shrimp and other ingredients), white rice and more! Sooo good! Tao bom!
Some good words for Easter in Portuguese: Pascoa (Easter), Feliz Pascoa (Happy Easter), Ovo ( Egg), Chocolate ( chocolate), Cesta ( basket)
The best memories are all the aromas coming from my mom’s kitchen, my dad’s jokes and all the talk around the table! After all, Easter means giving and looking back, that is what ours was all about!
Saludos! Easter is coming up and I wanted to share suggestions on activities we are using in the classrooms in the upcoming weeks!
Numbers – Bingo and Domino using Easter pics and dots on the other side for dominoes! We made our own dominoes on card stock paper, very easy!
Colors – Color Easter Eggs and have the child tell the colors or coloring page with them and have them name the color and learn Huevos (Eggs), other useful words are Conejo (bunny), Candy (Dulce), Canasta (basket), Easter Pascua, Feliz Pascua ( Happy Easter), Zanahoria (carrot).
I also purchased an over sized blow up carrot and the children will throw circles to fit them on the carrot! Also used for colors.
I also use some songs like los pollitos dicen and conejito an original song I created. You can find los pollitos on youtube:
I also use the book with the same name and Pedro conejito ( translation of Peter rabbit)
We are offering a free sample of one of Easter worksheets, flashcards, bingo sheets and so much more which are available for purchase at our new E-Store! Check them out at : www.easylearnlanguages.com/estore
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