This year  our Easter season was followed by some mixed feelings when one parent asked me not to mention the word Easter in one of our classes. We normally do a class pretty low key, more towards bunnies, eggs and egg hunt, but we do have Happy Easter in all the coloring pages and her request made me think about how people have a more exclusive than inclusive mentality. It is about excluding Christian values, so the other values are respected and uplifted. Sounds like double standard to me. As a Christian, I feel insulted, as a business owner, I feel my program and its content, since it is announced beforehand, prior to enrollment, should not be subject to change for whatever reason. I believe all religions are important and should be respected, I also believe God does not have a religion and he should be the center of any and every faith.

I had to share what happened this year, which has never happened before, because I believe foreign languages should express the culture of language learned and Spanish and Christians walk hand in hand, there is no denying it!

My comments don’t have any intention to offend any of clients which are not Christians, they do offer my perspective on this issue, though. Now let’s get to the important topic! Easter!

Happy Easter – Feliz Pascua 

We started with flashcards, showing pictures and words in most of our classes in South Jersey:

Easter – Pascua    Bunny – conejo  Eggs- Huevos  Canasta – Basket  Chocolate- chocolate  Carrot- Zanahoria

We also Played the Carrot Baseball, children had to use my oversized carrot to hit the eggs on the other side of the room saying just color, huevos + color or Yo veo un huevo amarillo, depending on level.

We colored a page with bunnies in some classes and we wrote a letter to a friend saying what we like about Easter using vocabulary and me gusta…

We played domino, they loved it!

We showed this video: Caramelo!

We absolutely had a blast looking for matches of Easter words and placing them in the canasta!

Hope you enjoyed our class and you use some of the activities at home or in your classroom!

Claudia Krusch

EasyLearn Languages – Director

This year I wanted to do different activities in our Spanish Classes, tired of same’ol. I wanted to surprise and make our Turkey classes more than coloring pages with color by numbers we have been doing for years. I wanted children as early as 14m to see the meaning of Thanksgiving, even if it was to say Gracias mommy, at the end of a mommy and me class! I believe we accomplished it, hope the children left our classes as happy as I was!

I would like to highlight some activities, since we used 24 different worksheets, 8 songs and more than 20 activities for many different age and proficiency levels.

Pin a Part on the Turkey

We put a new twist and blew up a turkey and cut pieces, the kids had with eyes closed, put the parts on the turkey. They has previously learned:

cabeza, pico, cola, pies, alas

Cabeza – head

Pico – Beak

Cola – tail

Pies – feet

Alas – wings

Color and Cut

We had a Turkey coloring page and they needed to cut and put the turkey back together and tell me the parts.

Turkey doesn’t say Gobble Gobble

Turkey says gluglú in Spanish, the kids laugh and love it! Their Thanksgiving just got a whole new twist! 

Flashcards

We learned flashcards with turkey – pavo, pelegrino- pelegrine, pumpkin- calabaza and others and they held the cards later and the other child would have to give the one holding it, hints, so they one holding would guess it, they did such a great job!

Turkey Dance

We dance cinco pavitos bailan en la clase, uno salió, quedanse 4, 4 pavitos bailan en la clase, uno salió, quedanse 3…..when we end, all the pavitos get together again, they loved it!

Match word and pic

We used a worksheet with vocabulary previously learned and matching with words for children ages 7 and older

Video I really like:

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!

We also continue using this great book!

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

We played tag, where children had to tag house furniture items in the room, they loved that!

Hope you enjoyed our ideas!

Claudia Krusch

CEO- EasyLearn Languages Curriculum and Program

Dear Readers,

Finishing up the details of our summer camp activities, working with my interns and staff made me think about how we should bring an innovative approach to foreign language teaching, challeging the children, raising the bar for offering fun and educative activities in an outdoor environment. Those ideas and concepts took shape in a form of a resource book for summer activities to be used by teachers and parents.

After many parents have asked what they should do to bring Spanish to their children while at home with them,  the book idea seemed not only an idea but a need. I then decided to work on a easy, well designed workbook to help parents who don’t speak Spanish to bring the fun home! We included topics such as numbers, colors, family, body parts, shapes and more, suggestions on activities, coloring pages and songs and audio for each topic to allow parents to repeat the words and sing songs with children while using the book. It is done in Spanish but the activities can be applied to any language.

My personal suggestion is that no matter what, it needs to be a fun time, when mommy or daddy will play with the child and have Spanish as a background to spending time with your child.

Use summer friendly toys such as water slide for colors, water baloons for counting, chalk for reinforcing vocabulary, treasure hunting for developing a deeper understanding of the language, bug catching for vocabulary and nature exploration and more….

The book will be available next week on our membership page!

Saludos,

Claudia Krusch

EasyLearn Programs