This Week we are so happy to highlight a new location for our Summer Camps! Turnersville is home of our Summer Camp at Monkey Business!
We will be blending our scavenger hunt and games around the location and children will have the opportunity to bounce at the end of the camp! All using our foreign language funcamp curriculum! If you are still undecided about signing up your child, please keep in mind this is a great option for younger children, as they will enjoy a half day camp and not be overwhelmed by a full day of activities!
If this is your child’s first camp, they are in for a treat! We will:
Look for hidden treasures
Camp in a dessert island
Enjoy a birthday bash with water fun
Plant and take care of summer flowers and vegetables and fruits
Travel to Puerto Rico! Enjoying a fun cultural journey!
Children will enjoy 15min of complimentary bounce time at the end of the camp!
Rate is $ 150.00 a week, a snack is included and crafts, books, games, so much more in our super fun camp!
I have basically used and tried any strategy to help my son grow up bilingual, making it fun, a part of our lives! Showing him pride in being a latino, love for foreign languages, culture and all they represent, embracing who he is and knows, along with the new elements, the new words, a whole new world!
If tell you it has been an easy task, I would be lying, but I would not trade nor would do anything different!
My son is growing and the foreign languages are slowly becoming something mom brings and does, more than a part of his life, something disconnected….since my lack of time and my husband’s lack of foreign language knowledge add obstacles to my life goal to raise a bilingual child!
I was reading some of my friend’s facebook pages and came across a friend, Ana Flores who is sponsoring a child abroad and went to visit that child! I was inspired by that story and decided to do some research to sponsor a child and make it a fun and inspiring bond between my son and another child who lives and breathes the language and culture I teach and talk about!
I am still research, therefore don’t endorse or recommend any organizations at this time. We are going to spend the next two weeks looking at faces, reading info and deciding who we will sponsor, write to, share care packages, etc! He is very excited, so am I! My goal is to embrace the organization and promote it in our bilingual events!
My husband recently retired, so when I shared my idea with some friends, they thought I was crazy since our income decreased to even consider this right now! I replied, I walk in faith, not in fear! I believe this is something my son and I need to do together and it will amazing for both of us and specially for the child who will benefit from it!
I hope sponsoring a child will bring more love for foreign languages, for another culture, will develop friendship and compassion in my son’s heart and move him from associating bilingual time with mommy as his only foreign language memories at home to a place out of his comfort zone where the curiosity and love will lead him in a whole new journey! We even started talking about him blogging about his new friend and making vlogs!
I will be updating our journey as we move forward!
I am a confessed bookworm, as such, I have always kept books on my desk, after my teenage years they came in different languages and to suit my broad taste. I am trying to pass my legacy to my son, we love going to Barnes and Noble and picking out new books and he has a reading chart where he gets a new toy for every 30 days of reading!
Since books have been my best friend for as long as I can remember, they taught me so much! Made who I am! I owe my books so much! The fact that I am able to read English, German, Spanish and Portuguese classics in its original language is a priceless gift!
When planning my classes, I try to bring the joy to the children, specially the ones who can’t read yet, because I can’t always find Spanish and Portuguese books to match my units, but I can always find an English one and read them my way!
I have been using story time as one of the components for my class planning for as early as I can remember!
The key is to reduce Spanish Classics to meet baby’s short attention spam and one sentence page for toddlers is a must! After all, if you wish to make the experience fun, you must cater to your audience, otherwise the children will associate reading with BORING and my program is called Spanish made fun, not Spanish made boring!
So, I wanted to share some tips on how to make story time a powerful tool in your foreign language classroom, at your home, in your library story time, anywhere!
Chose the right book! Depending on what you trying to accomplish, your thematic unit or the age or all the above!!!
Reduce the amount of reading to suit your audience, early ages, short one word-3 word sentences, words will increase with age!
Pictures will help children understand your story better, so definitely lots of pictures when reading in a foreign language to non native speakers.
Bring stories which speak to their lives, to the things they know and love! Authentic shouldn’t always mean foreign, should mean close to their heart! I am against the thought that only authentic literature should be used when teaching a language.
This Holiday I changed my plans made in the summer for my holiday unit and incorporated the elf, el duende! Brought my story time to a whole new level, connected to the children like never before and brought the Spanish closer to their heart, so mission accomplished! I used the book The Elf on a Shelf™ in Spanish
I paired the book, which can only be found at Target online, with hide and seek, tell the elf (since he can’t talk) what you want for Christmas and Elf chat activities! My Spanish elf came in a darker color which creates a conversation about ethnicity I would never be able to bring to the classroom, if I did not have my special friend! Shared, that different is beautiful and we are all beautiful, no matter what language we speak!
I hope you enjoy our ideas and that you make the great decision to bring books when teaching a foreign language, it will inspire children to read, will open the doors to the fact that books speak that language as well, increase vocabulary and bring the fun to a whole new level!
Off course we talked about advent and Los Reyes in our Spanish classes and the shoes in Portuguese ones, but the elf was definitely the highlight and resulted that I was invited to read the story 1000+ children in December, in the most popular Santa story times in our area, so it is all about sharing bilingual love!
Hope you enjoyed my thoughts on using story time to teach or bring a foreign language to children and get your book, elf, out of your shelf and use it in your next bilingual experience!
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!
I attended BlogWorld Conference this past week in NYC and BEA, Book Expo and it was an amazing experience to see so many accents and foreign colors represented at the conference and during our time off!
I took my husband and son because it was my son’s request to spend his birthday in NYC, so we enjoyed the best of both worlds! I never imagined the trip would end up giving us a lot more than what we bargained for, such a rich environment for bilingual growth for international learning, it gave me one more reason to come back to NY!
I would spend days sharing all the opportunities we had to share and experience culture exchange, so I will limit this post to our highlights!
My husband and I attended the conference, so my friend generously asked her mom to help us and babysit my son! Little did I know that he would get a lot more than a babysitter! Ita, how he affectionately called her, became a second grandmother, latin way, loving and caring! She not only taught him Spanish those 3 days but brought him Spanish snacks and cooked arroz con frijoles on the last day and introduced him to her lovely family! She enriched his life in a bigger way than she will ever understand! He lost one of his grandmas when he was born and my mom is in Brazil, so Ita filled an empty space in his heart and gave him more reasons to be proud of speaking a foreign language and to learn it! I wished she lived closer!
Our second night in the hotel my son decided to go to the pool and an older German couple came with grand kids, they were talking in German about the water and asking about a shower, dusche….I heard and said to myself, here I go, dust my German spiderwebs and try to help them, this lead into a whole conversation about Brazil and soccer and to my son being able to play with a German child without speaking his language! I could see in my son’s eyes how proud he was of my German, since he had never heard me speak the language; I was surprised myself to remember so many words and to be able to carry a conversation for over 40min with them! At the end my son came back saying spielen…..(play in German), Wasser (water), and other words he picked up! Priceless to see foreign languages in action outside the formal classroom scenario!
Thursday night we went to HardRock Cafe in Times Square and Toys r us, both places had so many Brazilians, it was unbelievable! It looked like New Year’s Eve there! That’s when I saw Mario and Luigi and tried to teach them some Spanish or Portuguese and they said, Mama Mia!!
On Friday we went to the Tish zoo in Central Park and the main part of the zoo had a rain forest exhibit with so many birds from South America, I swear, it smelled and felt like Brazil in there! LOL We then, heard all these Brazilians in there and my son jumped, mom, this is Brazilian, why are they speaking Brazilian?? I was also amazed at the amount of Brazilians there! It felt like we were all invited to a party! I showed my son some birds and explained their names in Portuguese. I highly recommend, great activity for children in NYC, great place to teach them a foreign language, Spanish and Portuguese in particular! We saw this Arara and I told my son, call her, ARARA, ARARA! He did and she aswnered! Loved it!
I wanted to visit Macy’s Brazilian exhibit, that will have to wait until August when we return for BlogHer! Can’t wait to share more places bilingual friendly! Hope you enjoyed our journey! My family had a blast! Thinking NY is not for children, think twice!
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!
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!!!!
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.
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.
