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!

http://www.easylearnlanguages.com/products.html

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!

http://www.amazon.com/Feliz-Navidad-Christmas-Songs-Spanish/dp/B000FI8LW6/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1349627481&sr=8-1&keywords=christmas+songs+in+spanish

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!

http://musicabrasileira.org/brasilianchristmas/

 Movies

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!

Claudia Krusch

CEO of EasyLearn Languages

Dear readers,

I’m so excited to start sharing some activities our instructors will be using at our Spanish classes in South Jersey!

First I would like to share a list of words, must have when you are teaching Christmas in Spanish:

Feliz Navidad! -Merry Christmas 

Christmas tree – árbol de Navidad

presents – regalos

sleigh – trineo

chimney – chimenea

the shepherds – los pastores

bells – campanas

peace – paz

ornaments – adornos

wreath – corona

For children who read, they will “decorate” the tree below with the words above ( cut them and have them glue them on the tree, saying the names in Spanish)

http://www.coloring-page.net/pages/xtree027.html Word find for older ones:

http://spanish.about.com/library/weekly/aa121399a.htm Song/video for little and older ones:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pq34OLRM5Mw

I also have a line of bells, children will ring (repicar) and each time I stop in a different number of bells, they need to count them.

I read Santa Claus is coming to town in Spanish, I use the book in English and make 2 line sentences for each page. They know the story, so it becomes easier. I also use the video and turn in the Spanish mode for the dvd, I do that with frost the snowman and Rudolf too. We have a whole class, just with Frosty! I may share that later!

I also print colored balls and color cotton balls with paint and have them do a “snowball fight” and each ball touches another student, they need to tell me the color. Younger and older ones love it!

Google ” cascabel” and you will find the words for jingle bells in Spanish, there are three or four versions.

The one listed here on youtube is a little hard for little ones, so when we sing only, I use

Cascabel, Cascabel musica de amor

Dulces horas, gratas horas

Juventud in flor

Cascabel, Cascabel

Tan sentimental

No ceces o cascabel,

de repiquetear

I hope you enjoyed my ideas! Please share your experiences in using them here!

¡Feliz Navidad!

Claudia Krusch

EasyLearn Languages© CEO

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