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!
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!
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!
Halloween is one of my favorite holidays! I love getting dressed up! Baking cookies, making special spookie recipes! I usually don’t teach on Halloween, but we have two schools which are open, so I am doing a special Halloween Class with the spider theme! I wanted to share the activities:
Children will sing La Aranita ( Itsy bitsy Spider)
I printed some spiders on hard paper and they need to place them in the web, counting them
I printed some in regular paper, each student gets a crayon and color it, they need to say the color, say ” araña negra” .
They watched the video:
Showed the book with the same name a short 4 page version and read in Spanish, I could not find a Spanish book, read the English book in Spanish. There is a spider book in Spanish, a very busy spider.
I bought an oversized spider and printed colorful circles and used tape and the children had to glue the spider to the circle on the wall and tell me, the spider is on the: La araña está en el rojo, la araña está en el blanco…..
Kids loved it! Hope you use these activities to bring a foreign language to your class or little one during Halloween or this week! Enjoy!
Happy Halloween!
Claudia Krusch
EasyLearn Languages
The class activities and ideas are protected by copyright, please ask author’s permission to copy activities and ideas in private classes.
This week, while planning for our first multilingual playdate, I started thinking about how parents feel when they need to chose a foreign language to their children and why chose at all!
I have started a research to develop a program which will give parents some easy tools to teach basics of any languages at home, even without knowing the language and the most important, making it fun!
While thinking about activities for the playdate, I decided to use colorful balls and have children kick them around the room while counting the kicks, parents will coach with a helper sheet. Lot’s of fun!
If you would like to do this activity at home, here is the vocabulary for Spanish, Portuguese and German:
eins
1
zwei
2
drei
3
vier
4
fünf
5
sechs
6
sieben
7
acht
8
neun
9
zehn
10
eins
1
zwei
2
drei
3
vier
4
fünf
5
sechs
6
sieben
7
acht
8
neun
9
zehn
10
um
1
dois
2
tres
3
quatro
4
cinco
5
seis
6
sete
7
oito
8
nove
9
dez
10
uno
1
dos
2
tres
3
cuatro
4
cinco
5
seis
6
siete
7
ocho
8
nueve
9
diez
10
Going back to our question, I think above all, you need to offer a fun experience to your child, so if one or 10 languages, which they capable of learning at the same time, you must search for a fun way to bring them into their daily playtime and not make it a chore, a duty!!!
If you do the activity at home and send us the video to: claudia@easylearnlanguages.com, we will post your video on the blog.
This is an easy recipe which you can make it and bring a foreign language at the same time!
Cook 2 Tbsp of butter
1 Tbsp of chocolate powder
1 can of condensed milk
Cook in low heat until mixture is not stuck to the pot, it falls off. We are looking for a more firm consistency. Spread butter on a plate and spread the cooked mixture and let it cool off until you can take a piece and make a 1 inch ball with it. Roll the ball on jimmys or sugar or nuts. Ask kids to help you make the balls and count them in Portuguese or Spanish as you roll them.
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!
This week was my birthday! I share this joyful time with some of my students who had the class on Friday. I promised I would share the vocabulary here! If your child had another class, please look on archive for other topics.
I hope you enjoy as much as I did!
We looked at birthday vocabulary using a bingo sheet:
Los globos – balloons
Lasvelas – candles
El regalo – gift
El juguete – the toy/game
We did Ispy looking for those objects in the room. We also colored a cake ( Torta) and placed candles for each child’s next birthday. Older children received some candles and had to add the amount to make the total for the amount of candles on his next birthday. We broke a piñata, ate cupcakes ( pastelitos) and reviewed tableware.
We also sang Happy Birthday in Spanish:
FelizCumpleaños a ti, FelizCumpleaños a ti,FelizCumpleaños a ti,FelizCumpleaños a ti!
We showed a Sesame Place video about Fiesta in Spanish and read a book on the same topic which taught children how they celebrate birthdays in Mexico.
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!
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
I have been working for children for more than 10 years now and they never cease to amaze me! Anything can happen when you are working with little ones! I could write a book on my great experiences with them! Some stayed on my mind like the little 3 year old Spanish student who looked at a paper tree, which I called the magic tree, I told him she would talk…….., el arbol magico, and he said, Ms. Claudia, this is a paper tree…..why do you think it’s magic? or the other little four year old Spanish student in NJ, who looked at me and started talking about moon craters, when I asked what do you see in the sky???Or the 14 m old girl who did not speak English, but started speaking Spanish during the classes and then English afterwards!
If you are a parent or teacher and wish to use some of the concepts used to create the classes, I will be happy to share with you and bring the joy of a creative foreign language experience to many other little ones!
Abraços,
Claudia Krusch
Director of CK Translations and EasyLearn Programs for adults and children
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.
