Need some guidance for teaching preschool Spanish? You’re in the right place! Young children are the perfect age to soak up a new language. I'm currently raising my own three kids bilingually, and have taught classes to this age group as well. It's never too late to start, and 3-5 year olds are really fun to teach! In this post I've compiled my favorited strategies for you. To get started in learning Spanish together, you Can Do three things: 1. Outline some beginning topics. You can create your own list, with common preschool topics (think numbers, colors, greetings, etc.)Take a

These Spanish question words activities will help students master the Spanish interrogatives for once and for all!

Tips for how to teach Spanish in your homeschool co-op. Plus how to pick and order a Llamitas Spanish curriculum level.

In today's post, I'll share ideas and free materials for teaching beginning Spanish phonics. I'll cover letter sounds, open syllables (sílabas abiertas), syllables with blends (sílabas trabadas), and closed syllables (sílabas cerradas).

PandaTree was founded by a mom who needed a tutor for her children who were Mandarin Immersion students. They provide online tutoring for kids ages 5 to 15 through fun and engaging video conferencing. PandaTree is currently hiring native speaking Spanish tutors. In this review, I will look at the opportunity offered by PandaTree and

Inside: Tips and resources to learn Spanish with kids, at home. “Oh, I would love for my children to learn Spanish. Your kids are so lucky!” I hear this one often.Really, ask anyone if they’d like their young children to speak a second language and the answer will be YES. Of course we would! But

I finished my first year teaching a Spanish for Heritage Speakers class. These are my reflections on the personal journey it has been.

If your students have trouble understanding the difference between poner and ponerse, this activity can help them understand why a verb is reflexive in Spanish, and why the same verb isn't always reflexive. Using both reflexive and non-reflexive verbs to describe their daily routine also gives your Spanish students a chance to hone their vocabulary, conjugation and general grammar.

Are you a foreign language teacher who has native speakers in class? Get some tips for teaching native speakers in your French class here!

Inside: Conversation Jenga for the language class. When I put my students in a speaking situation, I like to make it low-pressure and fun. We’ve really enjoyed conversation Jenga lately– which is obviously better than a worksheet with questions to ask each other. In a sense, conversation Jenga is an authentic speaking situation because it’s a

Here are my free lesson plans for teaching el Viaje Perdido with my middle school Spanish students. We used this novel to learn the pretererite tense.

If you’ve just been hired or are starting your first year as a Spanish teacher, you are probably a) super excited and b) quite nervous. Hopefully we can help calm those nerves and make your y…

Looking for fresh new ideas to grab your class’s attention in Spanish? Who isn’t?!? We all have different attention getters that have worked for us in the past but it is always fun to spice up our classroom management toolbox with new ideas. Below is a list of eight attention grabbers in Spanish—some are call ... Read More about 8 Fun Attention Getters in Spanish

Beginner Spanish students love to learn family vocabulary in Spanish. Here is a week-by-week guide about how to teach it with some fun activities!

FOOD IS ONE OF THOSE TOPICS IN WORLD LANGUAGE CLASSES that gives a lot of bang for the buck.. we all like to talk about food, and there are so many ways to make it part of our lessons. Since I am a huge advocate of hands on learning, I use both plastic and paper play food whenever I am doing activities related to food- not only do they give little hands something to engage in, but it also provides visual support for my students. And this applies to all age groups, not just the littles- when I was teaching Russian to adults, I frequently incorporated manipulatives to support learning. Here are some ideas for using play food in your class: *CATEGORIZE ACCORDING TO PREFERENCE: This is a simple way to practice expressions of preference, even if your students don't know the words for all the food items. For my younger students, I make up ziploc baggies or an envelope with approximately 10 foods in them along with a set of cards indicating 'I like', 'I really like', 'I don't like', and 'I don't know' (for those foods they've never tried) and divide the class into pairs. Each pair gets a baggie and takes turns categorizing the foods based on their preferences. After a few minutes, I have them leave the foods in a pile, and they move to the next set (each baggie has different foods in it) so they can categorize again. I encourage them to say how they feel about each food in Spanish as they place it under a preference card-this is the focus of the activity, using the preference phrases themselves. For older kids, you could have them add reasons why they like or don't like a particular food- It's too spicy, It's sweet, It's gross, etc. This makes for a great (and simple!) Interpersonal Activity, particularly for novice speakers! *MY FAVORITE MEAL: Use paper plates to provide the starting prop, and have kids "fill" their plate with their favorite meal- could be breakfast, lunch or dinner! You could also title this: A MEAL I REALLY LIKE, since sometimes kids have a hard time deciding between multiple favorites. Kids can then turn and talk with the person on their left, then switch and turn and talk with the person on their right. I love activities where kids share with one another, it builds community by providing opportunities to learn about each other! *PLAY RESTAURANT OR MARKET: Play food lends itself really well to activities involving restaurant or market vocabulary and provide a hands on component to the action. Students can "order" food which is then delivered to them (put the play food on a plate!), or the play food can be displayed as part of a market stand where students can "buy" what they need to make a dish or to get items on a shopping list. This is a fun way to integrate imaginary play for little kids, and manners expressions such as 'please', 'thank you' and 'you're welcome'. *"ILLUSTRATE A RECIPE": Provide students with an authentic recipe and a basket or bin of printable food. Have them read the recipe and line up the ingredients below the recipe. This is a great center/ station activity! ALTERNATIVE: Have multiple sets of play food available, pair students up and have one student tell his/her partner which foods are needed for a particular recipe or dish. This is an easy way to add CULTURE to your classes! *PLAY 20 QUESTIONS: Have student go out into the hall and choose a food from a basket or bag. Upon re-entering the classroom, the rest of the class tries to guess the mystery food by asking a series of questions that can be answered with yes/no. Is it a fruit? Is it round? Is it an orange? etc. Once guessed, or the 20 questions are spent and the food revealed, choose another student and play again! *PLAY 'I'M GOING ON A PICNIC AND I'M BRINGING...': I love this old favorite, but I find it is easier for students to engage in when we have the food visuals in front of them. It helps with recall, and provides some structure and limits to what they can choose from. I put out a bunch of play food that they know the names of and as one is named by a student, they put it in front of them so we can all reference it. This also helps keep the game moving, as the task focuses on remembering the Spanish vocabulary, rather than what someone said on down the circle. *WHAT'S MISSING?: One of my favorite games with the littles is this one- place 4-5 foods in front of you, on the board or in a pocket chart. Have kids close their eyes, and take a food away. Have them open their eyes again and identify the missing food. After a few rounds, take away two foods, then three, etc. The funniest is when you take them all away! :) *CATEGORIZE INTO...: There are so many ways students can categorize food- healthy vs unhealthy foods, groups based on the food pyramid, meals (breakfast, lunch, dinner), foods they've tried vs foods they haven't, types of food (fruits, veggies, drinks, desserts, etc), and so on. Provide a graphic organizer for students to use as a template, placing food in categories they write at the top (or have the categories pre-written), ideal for novice speakers! When focusing on the category headers, this also means you can use foods that students still haven't learnt yet since the key language being used is the set of headers, rather than the individual words, meaning you can extend the activity beyond the food vocabulary set you've identified as core. *LUNCH TALK... an every more popular activity for class, lunch talk is a great way to incorporate authentic communication in a personalized format. The essence of lunch talk is taking the opportunity to talk with your students about what they have for lunch (or what they ate), which also allows for practice of high frequency phrases such as 'I have/I don't have', 'I like/don't like (and all the other variants), I eat (along with expressions of frequency), etc. The tricky part of lunch talk, most especially for novice speakers, is their limited vocabularies, yet quite unlimited set of possibilities in terms of what they might be having for lunch. One way to support your students is, instead of expecting verbal output of what they have, have them SHOW you using PLAY FOOD! This then allows you, as the teacher, to facilitate interaction and reaction (oh, I like that too!, Mmm, yummy! I eat ___ that every day, too, etc) in the target language. You can then scaffold and support students in using some of the phrases mentioned above, and you can encourage more general words, like 'sandwich' (instead of peanut butter & jelly sandwich) or 'soup' (instead of chicken noodle soup) to keep it accessible for the Novice proficiency level. Don't miss our Sandwich Printable Props Pack for this activity! NEED PLAY FOOD FOR YOUR CLASS? Look no further! We have an ever growing set of play food in Spanish, as well as the same set unlabeled, as well as sets in German, French, Russian, and English! Visit our shop and grab it now- click here!

Great blog post with activities for Spanish class that are easy on the teacher for those days you aren't feeling well or need easy sub plans.

Spanish number games build skills and confidence with important vocabulary. Play these Spanish number games with your students to give them the repeated exposure and practice they need to use numbers in their new language. Spanish Classroom Games with Numbers The effectiveness of Spanish number games depends on students

Bilingual teachers have challenges and demands. Learn how these teaching tips can help during your first-year of teaching.

10 ESOL Teacher Must Haves As an ESOL teacher I worked with students in a variety of settings. Here are my 10 ESOL teacher must haves that I have found to be valuable tools for working with students in a wide range of ages and levels. Disclosure: This post contains Amazon affiliate links, which means

Simple 5 Question System for Choosing Preterite vs. Imperfect As Spanish teachers, we all know that one of the trickiest topics to teach is how to choose between the preterite and imperfect tenses. For years, I watched students struggle with this concept, and to be honest, when I was a newer Spanish teacher, I had

Movement in Spanish class is crucial for student engagement. Get your Spanish students up and out of their seats and moving around.

Are you looking for weather activities for your Spanish classes? Check out these plans and freebies for your novice middle or high school Spanish classes!

Fun Activities for Spanish class to bring back that joy that is missing. No tech activities and the best fun Spanish games using technology.

Differentiating your instruction can be overwhelming. I get it. When you hear the word "differentiation" do you automatica...

List of over 30 Free Beginner Spanish Lessons for new language learners. Links to Spanish Lessons for adults and kids.

I like to include listening activities in my Spanish classes as much as I can. It can be seriously challenging to find good listening activities for lower-level students, though. Textbooks only have so many (good) listening comprehension activities, and it can be tricky to find recordings of Spanish speakers who speak SLOWLY and CLEARLY. Here are five great websites that I've found and used in my Spanish 1 and 2 classes: 1. Quia There are listening activities for Level 1 HERE and for Level 2 HERE. Click "Start now>>" and you will see 10 multiple-choice listening activities. Each time you reload the page, it will give you new activities. (Good news if you want more options, bad news if you want to bookmark the page and go back in the future for particular recordings.) There are probably 30 listening activities that Quia randomly picks and loads on the webpage. Quia provides multiple-choice questions for each listening activity, so you can use those or make your own! I like to go through and listen to all the activities and record the ones I want to use in class. I used Audacity to record them, which is a free program you can download on your Mac or PC. It's super easy to use, and then you can save the recordings to your computer and use them year after year. 2. 123TeachMe There are listening activities for Novice Low HERE. There are 39 "groups", and each has two audio recordings. I just go through and listen to a bunch of them and record the ones I want to use in class. These recordings show up in the same order every time you load the page, so you can pull up the website in class and play the recording(s) you want. The website includes a question for each recording, so you can use that one or create your own! 3. University of Texas A reader sent me this link, so many thanks to Amanda B! The University of Texas at Austin has Spanish proficiency exercises, organized by Beginning, Intermediate, Advanced, and Superior. You can choose various topics for each level, and then there are several speakers from different Spanish-speaking countries, so your students can hear a variety of accents. You could easily pull this website up in class and play the recording you want, or record in advance whatever you want students to listen to. 4. Easy-Spanish.org A reader sent me the next 2 links, so many thanks to Robin P! This website has videos that will redirect you to youtube (so you could also just search "Super Easy Spanish" on youtube). There are 3 categories of free videos - Street Interviews, Grammar & Vocab Videos, and Videos for Absolute Beginners, and there are close to 300 videos total. I suggest you click the links (or just search "easy spanish" on youtube) and check out all the video options. Topics range from how to tell time in Spanish, to what people in Barcelona are reading, to imperfect subjunctive verbs. I have personally only worked in schools that block youtube, so if you also work in a school like that, then this won't be a good option for you unfortunately. 5. SpanishListening.org Thanks again to Robin P for letting me know about this website! This website has over 400 videos with native speakers from every Spanish-speaking country, so you can really let students hear a variety of different accents. The videos tell you if they are designed for Beginner, Intermediate, or Advanced, so you can make sure you aren't previewing videos that your Spanish 1 or 2 students don't have any hope of understanding. Unfortunately, you do have to click on the videos to see what the person is talking about, so you might have to click around for a while before you find something you can use this week and not some time next year. I hope these ideas have helped you include more listening activities with native speakers in your lower-level classes! Where else do you get good listening activities? I'd love to hear other suggestions!

Teach ser vs estar with this fun Spanish selfie project! This is a great alternative to ser vs estar worksheets or quizzes!

An important way to build relationships in your classroom is with a morning meeting. One of the components of morning meeting is a “game.” As a Spanish immersion teacher, I am always looking for easy, quick games that can be used during this portion of the day. I often use equity sticks and let the ... Read More about 12 Morning Meeting Games in Spanish

PDF Spanish conjugation chart: Having a good Spanish conjugation chart is the key to learn to conjugate your verbs fast and efficiently.

Learn more about project-based learning (PBL) as it is a great tool for student engagement and 21st-century learning.

Preschool Spanish songs, games, finger plays, stories and printable fun. Kids learn Spanish colors, numbers, letters and basic vocabulary as they play.

An elementary teaching blog sharing K-3 curriculum resources, teacher tips, fun activities, and inspiration for the lower elementary primary grades.

Looking for a quick and easy review game? Try Pass the Chicken! Great for any classroom, this blog post shows you how to play the game and gives you a free list of music themed categories to use. FUN for music class or any classroom.

Inside: Spanish vocabulary games for the language classroom. The best way to “learn vocabulary” is in context. I use to give long lists of isolated words, until I switched to proficiency-based teaching and threw out my textbook. I realized my students were memorizing the words to pass a quiz, and then forgetting them. Our students really need to see

Are you looking for ways to connect with your students and build community during the first week of class? Do you want to get to know your students, but also set the expectation of “Spanish only” from the start? Here are 5 games that accomplish both of those objectives! 1. ¡Corre, corre! Students form a ... Read More about 5 icebreaker activities for the first week of Spanish

Preterite vs. imperfect is a tricky concept. These activities will help your Spanish students better understand the differences between them!