Dear Members,

I thought a lot before offering Valentine’s classes in Portuguese because Brazilian people don’t celebrate it! I decided to bring the theme and incorporate some ideas used in the Spanish class, so they would still learn the vocabulary without meaning less translations.
I created a math worksheet with hearts, they learn the word heart, coração and had to add the hearts on the page, children 3 and under just had to look, count on fingers and give me the answer in Spanish, with them I used hearts I cut out and we did the math on the rug.
I also used the song beijo, Ivete San Galo to talk about Valentine words…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXvcKm6tERQ
We played a tic tac toe with pictures cut where they would have to use thier piece to try to win
I used pictures of hearts- coração, cupid – cupido, chocolate- chocolate, baloons-balão
I explained in Brazil, Valentine’s Day is in June and it’s called the boyfriend/girlfriend’s day, it’s not for friends, but for people
who are inlove, married, in a relationship.
They loved the activities and learned Portuguese!
Até a próxima!
Abraços,
Claudia Krusch
EasyLearn Languages CEO

Dear readers,

This past week we worked on several themes and home and furniture was one of them!

Children would look at pictures of rooms in the house and learn their names, then we would work on a game and they would place items in each room, making vocab work easy and fun! For example, we place a sink,lavabo in the bathroom, baño.

We sang en la casa, en la casa hay….using room names

baño – bathroom

sala de estar – living room

cuarto – bedroom

cocina- kitchen

We also watched the video from Boca Beth which tours a house, the video is called La Casa, where a chicken shows children things in the rooms.

Children had to cut and glue parts of the house and make their own house., older ones had to tell me their favorite rooms, why, describe their rooms as well.

Loved sharing this subject with our little ones!

I hope you enjoyed it!

Claudia Krusch

EasyLearn Languages CEO

Dear Readers,

Many parents asked if there is Halloween in Spanish speaking countries and I used to say no, there is a Dia de Los Muertos celebration which is more religious and not child oriented. Well, a parent of one of my students recently shared that in Colombia they do Dulces o Travesuras (trick or treat) and children dress up like in the US. That surprised me!

 In Brazil, my native country, Halloween is only celebrated in English Schools, not as a real holiday…..They have dia das crianças, October 12th when little children receive toys.
I will share later this week some linkswith information on dia de los muertos and Spanish Halloween worksheets and songs. Stay tuned!

Saludos,

Claudia Krusch
CEO EasyLearn Languages LLC

Dear Readers,

I absolutely love new gadgets, I must confess I’m a huge fan of apple products, not quite sure if I am a bigger fan of Apple or Steve Jobs, who did to Apple, what I dream to do with my business- bring monetary value to the same level of the quality of our product.
Back to the ipad, I need to share: it is a great gadget! I immediately started experimenting and downloading children’s books in various languages….found out an app for children practicing Spanish called Salta! Now I can sing songs, read bedtime stories and play with my son using a foreign language and everything is done on the ipad! Very interesting….
My son asked tonight, mom, where is the ipad? I answered, it is charging, he said, oh no! No story time tonight???
I know parents complain that technology drive children away from real interaction, family time…I just showed you that is not true!
Whether you have an ipad or not, please consider using technology to bring your little one closer to you, especially bringing a foreign language closer to both of you. Having that in mind, I am creating a series of videos for parents who wish to do something at home related to a foreign language, but don’t feel confident enough to do so. My videos and audio files will help parents use technology to do some cool things at home with the children, as well as follow our activity guide to bring more fun and a foreign language to their summer.

Summer Activity Book and audio files will be available here on the blog, under membership category. I will let all the parents know as soon as we have it up on the site.

Saludos!
Claudia Krusch