Every year we celebrate Cinco de Mayo, this year, though, to spice up our past year activities, so we decided to make some piñatas, which look like Jalapeño Peppers! Click Here to see what our craft will look like!

We will dance the Mexican hat dance and play a pin the tail on the donkey, a very Mexican looking one! 🙂 Children love music and games and there is no fiesta without them!

Our video of the week will be this cute video: 

Always finish the party with a good story time, so we will be reading this book talking about all the differences between parties in Latin countries and in the US!

Hope you enjoyed our suggestions and share more ways to enjoy Cinco de Mayo at your classes and your home!

Claudia K. – Director

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

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

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!

We sing the House rap ©  Claudia Krusch (pointing to the parts of the house, the children love it!)

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!

Claudia Krusch

EasyLearn Languages

I had a parent call this week and the parent wanted to find out how we used LEGOS in our classes? Well, I decided to share my conversation with other parents in order to inform them of the benefit of using LEGOS in the child’s play time.

There’s a theory developed which defends that LEGOS can be used to treat children with autism, they improve brain function, accelerate reasoning thinking, increase attention and the tactile experience brings an amazing feeling of empowerment not shown with other toys.

We jumped on the idea and developed a program which took the same concept to bring a fun and educational experience to little ones! We teach basic Spanish vocabulary through building and manipulating the blocks.

There are some things you can do at home, such as depending on the age, use megablocks or LEGOS and have them identify colors, number counting, building a house, a car, a boat….take pictures, show it to everybody! Your child will be motivated to accomplish more! Contact us for a list of words you can use while playing with the LEGOS.

If you are interested in having your child join a group, our first sets of classes proved to be a huge success! We will be offering two new sets starting in March. Log on our website for more information:www.easylearnlanguages.com

Saludos,

Claudia Krusch

Director

We recently received an overwhelming amount of calls asking for Italian classes for children! We are happy to announce that we will be offering two new classes starting October 27th, 4pm for ages 3-5 and 6-9.

We are fortunate to have a native speaker teaching the classes at our West Deptford location, bringing South Italian flair to our award winning children’s program.

Parents are also taking classes with their children as a new way to interact and have fun together. We currently have 6 families taking the Parents and Mommy and Me classes with us.

When parents realize the importance of introducing a foreign language to a child in early age, they open the doors to a new world of possibilities! Yesterday a mom said, Nathan has been taking Spanish classes since he was two and now he is interested in starting a second language! That always amazes me! Especially because Nathan is one of the students who demonstrate the highest rate of retaining the information received. So maybe I will be teaching him Portuguese as well in a near future!

Please post your comments, experiences with second language teaching and learning. I would love to hear your comments and questions!

Saludos,

Claudia Krusch

Easylearn Programs Director

Dear Readers,

I will be talking about FAQs asked by parents. This week’s question is how early should a child be introduced to a foreign language?

My experience in teaching 12 month old children and my son and all studies in this field point to the conclusion that there’s no better time to introduce a foreign language than at an early age, when the brain and phonological system are still being developed.

I advocat the theory which defends that there’s a limit for brain development and that by the age of 7, 90% of our brain development is completed.

I personally think that parent interaction and making the experience fun and nurturing are the best ingredients to early childhood learning in all areas.

If you want to learn more, ask questions here, make comments, talk to me!

Saludos,

Claudia Krusch

Easylearn Programs now offering foreign language birthday parties in NJ.

www.easylearnlanguages.com

Dear Members,

We’re proud to announce that we will be offering a free Spanish story time for children 2-6 years old at our West Deptford location this Saturday, July 18th, 9:30am. Children will hear the story, do a craft and sing a song.  The story time will bring the amazing world of Spanish to children, giving them the exposure to a foreign language in a fun way!

We usually reduce the numbers of classes in the summer due to my schedule, so parents asked for a little more Spanish time for their littles and we listened! The event is free!

We look forward to seeing you there. CK Translations LLC – 1007 Mantua Pike S# 1 West Deptford, NJ 08096 almost in front of the new LA Fitness on R. 45.

Saludos,

Claudia Krusch

Easylearn Programs director