A Little Extra Spanish Practice

We've recently come upon a couple more great ways to practice our Spanish vocabulary.

1. I give the kids a lunch menu with food choices listed only in Spanish. It's a great way to pracice the names for numerous foods. It's also a great way to have them practice asking for things and saying thank you in Spanish. They can ask for cold/hot, big/little foods, and a certain number of foods if they can remember those words in Spanish. 

2. In a similar way, I can use Spanish words in center time directions and instructions in other subjects. Useful words here are "write", "read", "draw", the colors, and direction words like "under, above, beside". Examples include instructions to measure the "lapiz rojo", circle the "quinto" square, or find two adjectives on "la página 25".

Foreign Language and PE 1

Here's a heart-pumping way to review foreign language vocabulary words.

Before the game begins: Scatter Spanish vocabulary words throughout your playing area. Spread them all around your space to get maximum exercise value. If playing outdoors, you can tape words to the sidewalk, trees, porch, flowerbox, etc. If playing indoors you can hide them in different rooms, under tables, on the wall just at the tip of your children's reach.

Call the troops: Explain to them that they will take turns finding and retrieving one vocabulary word. They are to say what the word means in English. If it is correct, the next person takes a turn. If incorrect, they should go back and return the word for someone else to translate. (You could also just keep a pile of the unknown words to be translated as a team at the end of the game.)

Foreign Language and Science 1

One way to connect Spanish (or another foreign language) with science is to learn various words from your current topic in that foreign language.

For instance, during our unit on space we learn words such as these:

star-estrella
sun-sol
moon-luna
Earth-Tierra
planet-planeta
rocket-cohete
comet-cometa