While cooking up new ideas to offer our students this winter, our team came up with a snow man themed class, where children will learn/review body parts using frosty!
Activities involved are Frosty coloring page, place body parts on frosty on the wall, throw snow balls(white balls) at frosty and tell the body parts where it was hit, read a winter book and watch frosty the snowman video:
Body Parts in Spanish:
arm — el brazo
back — la espalda
backbone — la columna vertebral
breast, chest — el pecho
calf — la pantorrilla
ear — el oído, la oreja
elbow — el codo
eye — el ojo
finger — el dedo
foot — el pie
hair — el pelo
hand — la mano
head — la cabeza
heart — el corazón
hip — la cadera
intestine — el intestino
knee — la rodilla
leg — la pierna
mouth — la boca
muscle — el músculo
neck — el cuello
nose — la nariz
shoulder — el hombro
skin — la piel
stomach (abdomen) — el vientre
stomach (internal organ) — el estómago
thigh — el muslo
throat — la garganta
toe — el dedo (See Note 1)
tongue — la lengua
tooth — el diente
We also cooked up some other new ideas which I will be sharing week by week. The materials listed on this post are available on our membership portion of this site. Those activities hopefully motivate you to bring Spanish to your home/class using innovative techniques chasing away cabin fever mood!
Some teachers have asked me in the past years for ideas on Halloween themed classes. We have used many different topics but this year, I believe we really capture the children’s interest with the classes. We divided the Halloween topic in two classes, using the verb poner (Yo pongo), the children were asked:
1. To place Halloween objects in the cauldron – Yo pongo el fantasma en el calderon ( I put the ghost in the caldron)
2. To place eyes, mouth, ears, nose on the ghost’s face- Yo pongo la nariz en la cara….(Used a paper bag, markers for eyes, ribbon to tie the ghost), nice activity and cute craft
3. Book Activity- We read the book 5 little ghosts in Spanish and they had to place each ghost in each part of the book- Yo pongo un fantasma……
4. Song- Original Yo pongo sung by me to be released on my upcoming cd- for sound file email me directly
Vocabulary needed:
Ghost- Fantasma
Witch- Bruja
Monster- monstro
Mummy- mumia
Halloween – Dia de las Brujas or Dia de los muertos
Candy – dulce
trick or treat – dulce o travesura
Halloween, Dia de Las Brujas, is all about making children have fun!!!! Dressing up, having candy…..I hope my ideas will inspire teachers and parents celebrate Halloween at home using a foreign language!
Some parents asked about our summer camps and how to invest on bringing the best of a foreign language program to summer fun, so we decided to post our summer camps schedule on the blog for a week, after that, we will have it on our site. Enrolment has started. Come and Splash en español this summer!
Spanish Splashing Summer Camps
EasyLearn Programs
West Deptford
July 26th-30th August 16th-20th
10-12 am 2 hours of pure fun! Outdoor activities, sports, nature exploration at the park besides the office, water games, summer vocabulary, basic Spanish concepts and more!! Snack is included.
Cost: $ 60.00 per week / Ages 3-5 and 5-7.
Cherry Hill
August 2-6th
10-12 am 2 hours of pure fun! Outdoor activities, sports, nature exploration at the playground area, water games, basic Spanish concepts and more!! Snack is provided.
Cost: $ 50.00 per week / Ages 3-6.
Lumberton
August 9-13th
10-12 am 2 hours of pure fun! Outdoor activities, sports, nature exploration at the playground area, water games and more!! Snack is provided.
Cost: $ 99.00 per week / Ages 3-8.
Fox
All summer, every Friday in July and August, two hours per Friday, 10-12pm! Outdoor activities, sports, nature exploration at the playground area, water games and more!! Snack is provided.
Cost: $ 50.00 per month / Ages 3-6
Mullica Hill
July 19-23rd, afternoon times per age. Outdoor activities, sports, nature exploration at the playground area, water games and more!!
This time of the year brings the best memories of my childhood. When my mom used to stay hours in the kitchen preparing the seafood dishes for Easter! My dad would spend hours stirring Vatapá, Camarão, arroz branco, farofinha…..makes my mouth water. Those sounds and smells still surround me when Easter times come, so I try to make this a special time for my son as well…bringing some of the traditions like purchasing the one pound Easter Egg at the Brazilian store….making sea food on good Friday and working on a two hour sweet bread which allows me to share some of my memories with him.
If you wish to share some traditions with your child or use some interesting materials in the classroom, I would suggest:
Use bunny songs which can be found in YouTube:
De olhos vermelhos or Coelhinho da Páscoa, words for the songs can also be found online
Memory game with Easter vocabulary like, coelho, cesta, ovos, chocolate, colorante, páscoa
Print easter egg from online free coloring pages and cut them in three parts, have the children put pieces of the eggs together, this can also be used to review colors on the eggs.
I have been working for children for more than 10 years now and they never cease to amaze me! Anything can happen when you are working with little ones! I could write a book on my great experiences with them! Some stayed on my mind like the little 3 year old Spanish student who looked at a paper tree, which I called the magic tree, I told him she would talk…….., el arbol magico, and he said, Ms. Claudia, this is a paper tree…..why do you think it’s magic? or the other little four year old Spanish student in NJ, who looked at me and started talking about moon craters, when I asked what do you see in the sky???Or the 14 m old girl who did not speak English, but started speaking Spanish during the classes and then English afterwards!
If you are a parent or teacher and wish to use some of the concepts used to create the classes, I will be happy to share with you and bring the joy of a creative foreign language experience to many other little ones!
Abraços,
Claudia Krusch
Director of CK Translations and EasyLearn Programs for adults and children
I would like to share some of the activities we have used during the two weeks prior to Halloween.
I would not recommend talking about dia de los muertos with ages 14m-5 years old……we use some of the traditions without naming cemeteries or showing skeletons.
14m-36m
Toss the pumpkin
materials
10 plastic pumpkins
basket
You will instruct the children to line up and toss the pumpkins inside the basket.
Objective: new vocabulary: calabazas – pumpkins
review numbers.
3-5years old
candy corn bingo
Make bingo sheet with candy corn picture and use candy corn to mark the numbers. Children will love it!
5-7 years old
Black cat on the wall
Cat picture
Velcro
Print a cat’s pic and color it many different colors and ask children to match cats to circles on the wall, saying the color in Spanish.
Objective: Follow up activity for color.
We need to make the Halloween experience fun for the children, those activities listed can be done at home as well.
Authentic materials sometimes don’t reach the children and bring a barrier between young minds and the language itself.
A lot of the parents which come from families or are Brazilian have asked me to post vocabulary and suggestion of activities on different topics. This is the first of a series.
Spring Vocabulary:
Spring – primavera
Flower – flor
Spring colors- green – verde, purple- roxo pink- rosa, blue- azul, yellow- amarelo
My favorite spring song: O Barquinho – Tom Jobim – This song always reminds me of spring in Brazil, but I don’t have a recording to offer to readers to check it out. Maybe in a Brazilian search engine.
Suggestion on activities:
1)Take your child to a garden or your backyard and show him/her the flowers, grass and bring the vocabulary on this list to life.
2)There is a children’s lullaby- O cravo brigou com a rosa….very nice, will put your child in a spring mood, right before bed: http://www.microvip.com.br/vipkids/ocravoearosa.htm. My son loves this song….the hard part was explain the flower names to him….cravo…..
If you are teaching your child how to read in Portuguese, spring vocabulary is great for asking the child to read the flower names, for example.
For more suggestions, information, please don’t hesitate to contact me.
I strongly advocate for introducing a second and many foreign language to children at early age, so it will be my pleasure to give any readers, any information to help them introduce or bring foreign languages to children.
Next posting will give some information on colors.
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