This year our Easter season was followed by some mixed feelings when one parent asked me not to mention the word Easter in one of our classes. We normally do a class pretty low key, more towards bunnies, eggs and egg hunt, but we do have Happy Easter in all the coloring pages and her request made me think about how people have a more exclusive than inclusive mentality. It is about excluding Christian values, so the other values are respected and uplifted. Sounds like double standard to me. As a Christian, I feel insulted, as a business owner, I feel my program and its content, since it is announced beforehand, prior to enrollment, should not be subject to change for whatever reason. I believe all religions are important and should be respected, I also believe God does not have a religion and he should be the center of any and every faith.
I had to share what happened this year, which has never happened before, because I believe foreign languages should express the culture of language learned and Spanish and Christians walk hand in hand, there is no denying it!
My comments don’t have any intention to offend any of clients which are not Christians, they do offer my perspective on this issue, though. Now let’s get to the important topic! Easter!
Happy Easter – Feliz Pascua
We started with flashcards, showing pictures and words in most of our classes in South Jersey:
We also Played the Carrot Baseball, children had to use my oversized carrot to hit the eggs on the other side of the room saying just color, huevos + color or Yo veo un huevo amarillo, depending on level.
We colored a page with bunnies in some classes and we wrote a letter to a friend saying what we like about Easter using vocabulary and me gusta…
We played domino, they loved it!
We showed this video: Caramelo!
We absolutely had a blast looking for matches of Easter words and placing them in the canasta!
Hope you enjoyed our class and you use some of the activities at home or in your classroom!
I really love jingle bells, so this year, we decided to sing the song in Portuguese and Spanish! This song will be used in our classes this month, we will be using it along with a coloring page where they will color the bell, sino or cascabel and we will bring some bells for them to hunt and count! I will also bring some instruments and they will play along with them!
Hope you enjoy the activities and video!
We would like to share our brand new video with our song recorded in the studio for our classes and our readers! We used this video in our classes to show the children who have learned body parts, how we put a frosty together! We also put the parts which were cut and colored to make frosty as a craft! Hope you enjoy!
I purchased the Eric Carle’s Book! Decided to use it as inspiration for teaching fruits and introducing my Spring Class topics! Well, I started reading the book! stopped before the fruits! I told the children the oruga was hungry! She needed to shout that out, we sang: Yo ten go hambre, Yo tengo hambre! Quiero comida, quiero frutas, with hand motions and the same thing with sed ( thirsty) and quiero agua and jugo! They loved it! We learned, when we ask for food, we say por favor and gracias!
We moved to an oruga game, they needed to crawl like an oruga and eat the fruits on the other side of the room, telling me the name of each fruit they were eating.
We added a coloring page with three apples (manzanas), they would color the apples the oruga would eat and draw the oruga and tell me how many and incorporate color to the apples! They passed with flying colors! Older ones also wrote on the page and filled out with number of apples.
I was looking for a fun new way to bring shapes to our classrooms and I was hit by a technology wave when I looked at a robot made out of tissue roll tube….I decided he would be the centerpiece of our class!
We start by learning shapes, then selecting shapes which will go on our robot, we will paint and glue shapes on our robot and place arms and the antenna is a glued toothpick. Can’t wait to see all the amazing robots!
Then we will use a scale I have and balance shapes, telling what shapes, colors and which side is higher and lower for the more advanced classes!
A Larger scale picture of the robot placed on the wall will serve as background while children take turns finishing that robot with shapes for body parts!!
Classes are perfect for children 4 and older! I can’t wait to start!
If you are planning on doing some of those activities at home, here is a list of Spanish shapes: circulo, rectangulo, cuadrado, triangulo, estrella, rombo!
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.
This week was my birthday! I share this joyful time with some of my students who had the class on Friday. I promised I would share the vocabulary here! If your child had another class, please look on archive for other topics.
I hope you enjoy as much as I did!
We looked at birthday vocabulary using a bingo sheet:
Los globos – balloons
Lasvelas – candles
El regalo – gift
El juguete – the toy/game
We did Ispy looking for those objects in the room. We also colored a cake ( Torta) and placed candles for each child’s next birthday. Older children received some candles and had to add the amount to make the total for the amount of candles on his next birthday. We broke a piñata, ate cupcakes ( pastelitos) and reviewed tableware.
We also sang Happy Birthday in Spanish:
FelizCumpleaños a ti, FelizCumpleaños a ti,FelizCumpleaños a ti,FelizCumpleaños a ti!
We showed a Sesame Place video about Fiesta in Spanish and read a book on the same topic which taught children how they celebrate birthdays in Mexico.
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!
I’m so excited to announce that we listened to parents and we are now offering our summer book with activities to be used at home! The book contains 20 pages of pure fun, coloring pages, games, suggestions on activities and more! The book is recommended for children 2-7 years old, but some of the activities can be done with older ones as well!
Make it a family fun time and join us in the great journey of bringing foreign languages to little ones!
To purchase the book only, go to our site: www.easylearnlanguages.com and make a payment of $ 10.00 + shipping and handling and you will receive your book at home or receive instructions for download.
To join the membership portion of our site, you will click on the membership icon on this blog and follow instructions, that will give you the book, personal consultation on how to use it, newsletter with great articles, class plans and more!
I am proud of our new venture and I hope you enjoy it too!
Saludos,
Claudia Krusch
EasyLearn Languages Programs Director
I have answered this question more than 5 times this week, which motivated me to bring this topic to our blog.
Children who are exposed on a 30min foreign language class a week, will basically forget a lot of what was learned if the stimulus cease.
I highly encourage parents to buy cds, invest on classes, books anything that can keep the foreign language present in their lives!
Amazon offers many options of cds with songs and programs, classes as also offered nationwide and Bookstores like Barnes and Noble offer many offerings for at least 5 different languages, which can be easily downloaded to an ipad with the B&N reader, an app for ipads.
Please e-mail me privately if you wish to receive recommendation for specific materials and to receive a free sample of my spanish summer activity guide!
Enjoy the summer!
Claudia Krusch- Director of EasyLearn Language Programs
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.
