Thinking about a new post for Valentine’s day, I decided to share something amazing that happened to me yesterday! I had my usual busy schedule, taught 5 classes during the day, but since the first one, my students, boys and girls, noticed my outfit, my bracelet, my earrings and complimented me….it made me think how children, starting age of 3 were being influenced by me….how much we take for granted when we, teachers, get dressed to bring knowledge to the little ones, we seldom think how much our overall presence and acts affect them!
When a 3 year old says: Ms Claudia, your earrings are beautiful! Another two girls asked me to lend them my bracelet and proudly shared them during the class…..that really touched my heart because all the effort and style or lack of…LOL I try to bring to the classroom, from my hair to my shoes, really does influence and puts a strong mark on my work, which opens the door to bring a rich foreign language experience to the little ones!
Yesterday’s experience made me think about something much deeper than just cutting papers and preparing for a class, but how much love I put in getting ready for a class, from the moment I get dressed to the moment I finish it!
This Valentine’s day I wanted to share my AHA moment, when I finally understood, teaching for me is not a job, it is an act of love and best of it: I receive a lot more love than I give and that is very gratifying!!!!
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.
6) Valentine’s Tic tac toe – regular template with hearts printed on card stock as pieces, white and red.
I hope you enjoy my activities! Try some of them with your little ones!
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.
Many parents ask me, is there Halloween in Spanish, well the majority of Spanish speaking countries do not have Halloween as it known in the US. They have Dia de Los Muertos which is a party and celebration to pay respects to the dead and celebrate death!
Spanish and Foreign Language teachers translate materials this time of the year to bring a little bit of Halloween to their classes!
I decided to share some of the words we used this week and let you know we have sets of flashcards and worksheets available for purchase on the website.
Spanish
Bruja – witch
Calabaza – pumpkin
Calavera- Esqueleton
Murcielago – bat
Fantasma – ghost
Bruxa – witch
abobora – pumpkin
Caveira- Esqueleton
Morcego – bat
Fantasma – ghost
Suggestion on activities: bring real pumpkins, place on the floor and tell the children they will go pumpkin picking and they need to count the pumpkins. They can paint pumpkins and tell the colors. You can use our memory cards to play memory game or throw mini pumpkin erasers on cards on the floor and say the word where they fall. We bought large pumpkins and they had to throw balls on pumpkins and say the color before they hit the pumpkins.
Videos on youtube, like Halloween para peques and others.
Happy Halloween – Feliz Dia de Las Brujas, Feliz Dia das bruxas
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.
Children will be invited to sing, dance and play games using soccer, dodge ball, monkey in the middle, hide and seek, shark and minos and other games all in Spanish!
I know some parents have been asking for activities to bring Summer and Spanish together! We have posted some on our FB page, but I wanted to share some of my favorites here:
1) Numbers- Please make sure you had exposed the child to numbers before, taught them and this activity will bring all the joy of counting alive! Buy an oversized bubble container, blow bubbles as the child pops them and counts in Spanish! Great outdoor activity!
2) Summer vocabulary- You can use a few words to start: Pelota de Playa ( beach ball), Castillo de arena ( sand castle), Toalla (towell), Gafas de sol ( sun glasses), Palo ( bucket), Oceano (ocean) and buy a small set of sand toys, which represent some of the words above ( Target has them), buy moon sand if you don’t have a sand box or can’t do it at the beach! Have the child play and make different things as you teach vocabulary.
3)Colors-Every summer we do a different water color project at our camps, this year we used a colorful parrot. They used fingerpainting as they were painting with primary colors and telling us the colors in Spanish, they also mixed the colors while doing it, so we had a chance to go over combinations as well. Here is a list of colors you can use:
amarillo — yellow
anaranjado — orange
azul — blue
blanco — white
dorado — golden
gris — gray
marrón — brown
negro — black
púrpura/morado — purple
rojo — red
rosado — pink
verde — green
We hope you have enjoyed our activities and to see you soon checking out our news!
I was singing to my son tonight and I sang all the same Brazilian Lullabies I always sing:
Boi da cara preta, Maezinha do céu, Chu chu chu, Sereia, Samba lele ( I will list those songs in another post)
He said Mom, Im kind of tired of the same songs, can you sing something different and I sang this song which reminds us how beautiful life is! It always makes me cry, because reminds me of Brazil! So I wanted to share here on the blog:
This month we decided to bring our Spring activities to the next level!
Children started this week, by contrasting the differences between winter and spring and singing a song about weather….we make hand motions and sing about lluvia(rain), sol (sun), viento ( wind) y nubens( clouds). We read a book called Primavera and they saw the trees with leaves and the bugs and birds who came back!
We also did a coloring page with a Mariposa ( butterfly) and a flor ( flower) and the kids would color and draw on the worksheet. You can easily make it at home with coloring page drawings.
I bought a collection of bugs and bug cat and nets and we went bug hunting, saying the name of the bug, color and comparing sizes.
Off course if you child never had Spanish before and you are starting, I would recommend just doing colors for now…..
I made a memory game with pictures of bugs and they had to match and say the name of the insect, Mariquita( lady bug), Escarabajo ( beetle), mariposa ( butterfly), abeja ( bee), saltamontes ( grasshopper).
I will be happy to answer questions and send the worksheet, if you wish to have it at home!
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.
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