After listening to a podcast of The Parent’s Journal with Bobbie Conner and her guest Tracey Wood (July 16, 2012), a children’s reading specialist, I realized I needed to stop dragging my pies and begin to investigate how to implicitly teach Sofía to read. Yes, she’s only three-years-old, but really the reading process begins at birth (if not before) by constantly reading, rhyming, singing, reading, reading, and reading to our bebés.
There are also many studies that indicated that children, who learn to read and have strong literacy skills in their first language, will have success as they learn to read in their second language. So as I began fostering my toddler, oops—preschooler (as of last week), in the amazing world of reading, it would be in español of course.
Even though I’m an educator, I don’t pretend to know how to teach Sofía to read or even begin with developing pre-reading skills, but with the help of my knack for research, I was able to compile and create some activities to do my part at home. Here are the resources I have to share!
Abecedario Flashcards
I made Abecedario Cards en español for Sofía and me to read during breakfast. This is especially helpful to me before my morning café has kicked in! You are welcome to print, laminate and cut the flashcards for your personal use!
Interactive Abecedario Slide Show Game
Expanding on the flash card idea, I created a simple Interactive Slideshow Game of the Spanish Abecedario so that Sofía could at least actively participate while answering questions about letter sounds and the abecedario. This allows her to press buttons on the computadora, making letters and pictures appear. The Slideshow Game is monolingual español and does not include inglés. Again, you are welcome to download it for your personal fun!
(Read more about how to use the Interactive Abecedario Slideshow Game.)
Bilingual Abecedario Letter and Sound Recognition Mat Game 
My Etsy store, Dos Manos Fun, sells a Bilingual Abecedario Letter and Sound Recognition Mat Game that I created. Since the store is on vacation for a while, you can access the mat’s direcciones here. Feel free to print out and laminate the game mats for your personal use. Note that you will also need a complete set of abecedario letters (wooden, foam, or plastic, etc…) in order to play the game.
Español Alphabet Pocket Chart
There was one resource that I didn’t make myself because I really didn’t have the time or energy to do it! So I invested $29.00 and purchased an Español Alphabet Pocket Chart made by Learning Resources. We love it! The quality is excelente and the possibilities for varied activities are superb! If you are interested in purchasing your own Español Alphabet Pocket Chart, you can visit SpanglishBaby’s™ La Tiendita through Amazon.
(Read more on the Español Alphabet Pocket Chart.)
Resources from La Tiendita
For those of you with children just starting school, there are also three other useful tools available made by Learning Resources. The syllable and blends pocket charts and the syllable big book seem promising for teaching beginning readers in español and are available through our SpanglishBaby™ La Tiendita!
(Read more on resources available in La Tiendita.)
YouTube Video Clips
A simple search on YouTube can also be beneficial in one’s plight to promoting reading in our niños. One of my favoritos is El Jardín de Clarlilú: AEIOU from Disney junior.
Sight Words en Español
Tracey Wood recommended teaching our children sight words. Although she was talking about in inglés, the same concept can of course be applied in Spanish also. Scholastic makes a variety of resources such as a workbook to teach sight words en español and mini-books with sight words. I downloaded them for the whopping price of 99¢ each! Just another reason that Scholastic Rocks!
(Read more about Sight Words en Español.)
Although I’m not a Reading Specialist, I do feel comfortable engaging in research-based activities at home that will assist Sofía in developing good reading skills-and I hope my list will continue to grow as I explore más! If you have any questions or have ideas of your own to add about how you strengthen reading with yourSpanglish Baby at home, please share them with all of us!
¡Feliz Reading!
A great list of resources! Thank you.
My 4-year-old son is in a Montessori school (English only, though his teachers know Spanish). In the Montessori philosophy, they teach reading through sounds rather than letters (they skip the step of learning the letter names and immediately teach sounds associated with one or a few letters). I wonder if this same method would work in Spanish, and have been somewhat afraid to approach heavy reading aside from sight words in Spanish because I don’t want my methods to conflict with how he’s learning to read English at school. Anyone have thoughts or experience with Montessori’s reading approach?
I don´t know about the Montesori method, but that kind of sounds like how they teach reading in Spanish at my school in Colombia. I think that a lot of the focus is on sounds rather than letters. You dont really need to know all the letter in Spanish and you can already read somethings – Mi mama me ama…. for example.
I know that my colleagues and I that teach English always get frustrated that the kids get into 1st grade (1st year they are reading in English) and dont know how to say their letter names. I always thought it came from their experience in Spanish, but now I realize maybe it comes from the montessori method – they are big into Reggio Emilio. I don´t know the science behind it, but its just annoying when the kids dont know what to call letters when you are trying to spell, sound things out, and write.
Ali, thanks for sharing your experience. I think your input is good to keep in the back of one’s mind as we all begin picking and choosing which route to take for our kids! And as to your frustration…..I just smile. I’ve been there before! Thanks for stopping by!
Thanks for stopping by Chelsea! Sorry for the delay in responding to your question, but I wanted to look up the answer and consult other Reading Specialist info first. It is recommended that we really emphasize sounds first before drilling the names of the letter. Or if one is doing sound with letter let’s say, then to make sure that what is really important is sound first. Although I’m not all that familiar with the Montessori approach, what I did find indicates that letter recognition comes once sound has been mastered, which would vary for every child according to their philosophy. So I am not really, really seeing a HUGE difference between the two styles at this stage of the game. Most definitely you can implement the Montessori approach in Spanish. I think what is important here is that your son has input into his reading skill mastery from home definitely in Spanish but also in English. (You know…children whose parents are involved in their education tend to do better!) But in terms of what style to use….that is up to you. Some would say to model in Spanish what he is learning in school in English. Even if you choose to not follow Montessori approach to teaching him reading in Spanish, he won’t be confused – rather he will learn to transfer the skills from one language to the other. Do what is comfortable for you and what you know and what you know you will actually have time, resources and knowledge to do at home.
My daughter is in a dual-language spanish immersion kindergarten class and I would love to use the sight word printables with her. Do you have a more specific link for the printables? The link provided just leads to the general scholastic website. And you mentioned they were only .99 cents each, but do you need to pay a subscription service on top of that? Thank you!
Our situation is a bit different. My children’s maternal language is English and their paternal is Spanish. We live in Spain (mostly rural no English). I don’t know our learning method. I was just determined that my daughter (she’s 6 now) speak English and she does beautifully. She also speaks Spanish Beautifully. My concern is that since she was 4 she started reading in English and she’s doing great, but at school ( in Spanish) she’s struggling. Lately it has fallen to me to help her in both languages and its sooo frustrating as I continually have to remind her to speak to mommy in Spanish. I just don’t know what to do. I sometimes am just really frustrated as I think its way more complicated to read in English because of phonetics and what not. I’m hoping it will just work it’s self out… Also this year in her school She’s going to start French. She has mandatory English classes here and is bored to tears as the teachers aren’t native and don’t speak very well. Actually I’ve never been able to have a simple conversation with any of her English teachers…. So placing her in a school with more than one Foreign language meant less time concentrated on English. Any advice would be helpful. I feel as if my children’s 1st language is their maternal English. I also have a son he’s 12 months old and already starting to babble in both.
Regards for all your efforts that you have put in this. Very interesting information. “To flee vice is the beginning of virtue, and to have got rid of folly is the beginning of wisdom.” by Horace.
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