We are spending the whole week 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 :
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.
We also went fishing on a small water bucket where I placed twenty fish and they practiced: Yo tengo un pez (color) en mi mano. This was done at intermediate level classes.
We used this book during the class! A translated version of the original!
Can’t wait to share this and other class plans on our membership portion of our site which is currently being updated! Stay tuned!
Valentine’s Day in Brazil is in June, so I usually do the regular Valentine’s Celebrations in February and again in the Portuguese classes in June! In Brazil Valentin’s Day, Dia dos namorados is a celebration for lovers, couples only, no friendship, just love.
My favorite Bilingual Books:
Be Mine – Brenda Ponnay
Primer Dia de San Valentin de Clifford
Dora Quiere Mucho a Boots
El Primer Beso de Froggy
Feliz Dia de La Amistad, Gus
We are making Butterflies with candy:
We are teaching love, hugs, kisses, smile as vocabulary and they will see the pic behind a hear and have to say what it is in Spanish or Portuguese.
The more advanced students will receive a blank cardstock and make pics for the front and write simple sentences inside, I will be posting later pics of what they did!
Wanted to share this link from Mommy Maestra for Valentine’s Cards:
It’s that time of year and you are thinking, how can I sneak in some bilingual toys and make my child enjoy it and help him/her learn a foreign language at the same time???
Well, I looked around and will share some of my favorites!
Books:
Amazon, Barnes and Noble and other book stores have a whole section of Spanish, French, Chinese or bilingual versions of classics like Dr. Seuss and others, so if you like adding books to your child’s list, this is a favorite way to share great moments and bring some bilingual fun to your child’s bed time or reading time!
I did not find Christmas Classics in foreign languages available in bookstores, trust me, I looked for it, but I believe you should look at your child’s preferences and classic stories. I wanted to share my activity book, which combines a cd which reads the story in both languages and suggestions on activities in each page!
Many other options are out there like Dora™, Curious George™, and Other famous characters books!
You can also download them in your tablet or computer and have a paperless version of them or do a surprise dowload to your child’s tablet! My son loves comic books and character books, I have found some of his favorites in Portuguese and will download them into his tablet before Christmas!
Itunes has so many options!
Music
It’s always a great way to connect with children! The holidays bring the magic of showing children favorite tunes in different languages!
I have this cd and we always play it on weekends and when we are decorating the tree!
I have a Brazilian Cd with songs in Portuguese with the character Monica, a famous comic book character in Brazil, but I could not find the link to share, I have found this one, not sure why it so hard to find music in Portuguese when you are here in the US! Sharing the songs and culture like the fact that South American countries don’t have stockings but shoes where Santa brings the toys and other traditions I will be sharing in a later post, will bring your child to a magic new world where America traditions are added to the new ones! Priceless!
Basically any movie you purchase nowadays, has the Spanish and French options, so your child can watch the movie in a foreign language. I would recommend showing them the movie in English first, unless they are totally fluent in the second language. You would be surprised how children sit down and watch the elf, Christmas Carol and Mr Magoo in Spanish and love it! Brazil has a different zone for movies, so I purchase my dvds there when I go or in the sendex.net store and load to my laptop as they will not play on my blueray/dvd player!
Toys
Dora, Elmo, Diego, so many toys are now offered with bilingual versions, Dora has a new gymnastics doll which sings in Spanish! So cute!
Clothes
I ordered a shirt on vista print, it is green, long sleeve and it says Feliz Natal! Every year we have a tradicion to wake up in new jammies on Christmas morning and I ordered this shirt for $ 15,00 with the printing in red and will buy the pj bottoms and surprise my son with it! You can also place granparents pics and saying in a foreign language if your in laws or parents are from a foreign country or make the shirt your child/children’s pic in it, place the Merry Christmas in their native language and ship as a Christmas gift! Shipping of a shirt to a country like Brazil is only $ 4,50!
After all, it’s all about bringing the holiday cheer to your children, making the foreign language, a part of it!
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!
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 :
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!
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
The owner of this website, Claudia Krusch, is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking Easy Learn Languages Blog to Amazon properties including, but not limited to, amazon.com, endless.com, myhabit.com, smallparts.com, or amazonwireless.com.
