Summer fun is here! Even if it’s still cool in your part of the world your little ones can still enjoy this ice boat water play activity without having to place their little hand inside. If it’s hot, then go all out and take out the kiddie pool and let the kids play with their mini ice boats.

If you are like me and you try to squeeze an educational twist to activities you can also have your little ones draw a boat and write about it.

The boats will twirl and move around on their own so if they don’t want to get their hands wet they don’t have to. But my kids are very hands-on and they couldn’t keep their hands out of the water.  Either way works.

You will need:

• Ice tray
• water
• food coloring
• tooth picks
• paper cut into triangle shapes
• tape
• plastic tub

1. Fill your ice trays with water and have your little ones (my 2 yr old helped me with this) drop food coloring in each slot.  Stick in freezer.

2. After an hour, if the water has solidified some then you can insert your sticks.  If the water hasn’t hardened it’s hard to keep the sticks up they just flop over.

3. Once they are completely solidified grab your triangle shaped paper and tape on to the tooth picks.

4. Fill your tub with water and place your cubes inside.

Your kids will love watching the water turn colors as the ice melts.

For many families, the coming months are filled with gatherings, family and muchísimo español. Playing question games together provides an opportunity to tell family stories, talk about our values and laugh together. Of course, you know your friends and family, but this simple question game will help you all get to know each other aun mejor.

This printable board game is a fun Spanish language activity for children. Many children love to have the floor and answer questions about themselves. Playing with family and friends, they get to talk about their ideas and experiences with people who are important to them. For Spanish language learners, you can add questions at any level. They can be as simple as ¿Cuál es tu libro favorito? or as complicated and conceptual as you like. Also, the structure of board games includes everyone equally. More reserved children (and adults) have a chance to share and others have the opportunity to listen.

The game has a set of 24 question cards. If you want to make more and need ideas, there are many lists of “conversation starter” questions online. Print the game board and cards on cardstock and laminate them if you want them to be more durable.

Click here for the printable game board with instructions. Click here for the question cards.

There are two simple ways to play.

1) Players move ahead by rolling a die and following any instructions on the square. Just take turns rolling, drawing a question card, answering. The first one to the meta wins.

2) You move ahead by rolling a die. If you land on a blue square, you answer the question yourself. If you land on a green square, you ask the question to someone else. If you land on a pink square you can choose to answer the question yourself or ask someone else. The first one to the meta wins.

Special thanks to Spanish Playground for providing this activity. Visit their site for more activities to teach Spanish to kids.

When it was forecasted that Huracán Sandy, was eminently going to strike our area, the first thing we did was go out and collect the beautiful fall leaves that colored our barrio. I knew that after the storm, we would be left with few vibrant reminders of fall.  Even so, I felt like we needed to add a little more color of fall into our lives.  So I reverted to a favorite childhood activity that my sister and I used to always enjoy.  As it turns out, this is a great activity to teach science concepts of solid and liquid changes of state through temperature.

What you will need:

• Cardstock, white
• PDF print out of letters O-T-O-Ñ-O
• Wax paper
• Red, orange, brown, and yellow crayolas
• Scissors
• Hot glue or tape
• Sticks
• Ribbon
• Iron
• Scrap cardboard

First print the OTOÑO PDF on white cardstock.  Carefully scrape the crayolas with scissors and let the shavings lightly speckle a piece of wax paper and the cardstock, leaving space between shavings.  Since you will be melting the crayolas, less is best.  Cover each with another piece of wax paper.

For Sofía, I made the shavings ahead of time and allowed her to sprinkle them on the wax paper and cardstock.

Using an iron on the lowest setting, carefully hold down the wax paper and cardstock, and pass the iron over the top wax paper to JUST melt the crayola shavings.  Sofía had to just watch this, but older niños could assist the adult. (I also placed all of the above on top of scrap cardboard for easier clean up.)

For the leaves, trace your niño’s hand and make a pattern out of cardboard.  Then trace the pattern 5 times on the wax paper with melted crayolas.  Be sure to cut out the hands/leaves only once the shavings are very cool.  The letters to spell out OTOÑO can be easily cut out by evenly folding the cardstock into fourths first.

Using tape and/or a hot glue gun, connect the letters and hands/leaves with small sticks or real stems of leaves.  String each letter (now connected to the hand/leaf) with ribbon or twine and use tape or hot glue to hold together.

Want to change up the activity a little bit?  Just use the hand/leaves to decorate your windows or mantel.   Instead of O-t-o-ñ-o, use the letters to spell Gracias!  Trace the hand pattern 5 times on cardstock also and use them as the feathers to make a turkey, using a traced foot as the body.  Maybe you want to make your own family or Thankful tree out of brown paper and use the wax paper hands/leaves to write names or things for which you are thankful.

Even if your barrio is left without those vibrant orange and red hues, this art and science activity will be sure to brighten your casa and hopefully spread a little bit of fall warmth.

It’s that time of the year again when routine must kick back into gear because school is back in session.

I’ve been working with the kids on our own routine here at home. I learned early on how kids loved to know and to pick what activity would be next as well as letting others know what they were up to.

This activity sign is the best thing yet especially if you have other kids in the neighborhood who may want to come over and play before your little one is ready to.

To make an Activity Sign of your own here is what you need!

Supplies:

1-Scissors

2- A picture of your kiddo

3-Adhesive- we used photo splits

4-Markers and a pen

5-Patterned card-stock

6-a small gift bag

7-a brass fastener(or brad)

Let’s get started!

1-Cut your picture out and adhere to a piece of cardstock. Cut around to outline the picture.

2-Using another piece of the card-stock in a rectangle shape. Size will depend on your bag and image. This will create the pocket for your picture.Fold the sides about 1/4 inch on the sides and bottom

3-Cut the bottom corner square so that it makes folding and adhere easier and finish your pocket.

4-Adhere the pocket to your bag in a place where your picture can slide in and sit well. Preferably in the lower portion of the bag.

5-Cut out speech bubble shapes they don’t have to be perfect and make a tiny hole on the same side of each shape. Make a hole on the picture as well. The whole needs to be big enough for the fastener to fit.

6-Customize your speech bubble messages.

7-Attach the message bubbles behind the picture and secure with fastener. Add a name to the pocket and all done!

Now choose a message to display and  hang your sign where it can be seen.

We hope this makes homework time and play time fun! Have an awesome school year!

This game is a good activity for a group of 2 or more kids between 6 and 9 years old. It will help them write in a logical way, increase their vocabulary and have a better pronunciation. The idea was taken from a game called “Cadáveres exquisitos” played by surrealist poets at the beginning of 20th Century.

You will need:

• ONLY ONE sheet of paper
• Different colored pencils- one for each kid
• A list of words that all rhyme with each other, as in these examples:

EXAMPLE LIST 1

• mesa
• esa
• inglesa
• promesa
• princesa
• fresa
• traviesa

EXAMPLE LIST  2

• mamá
• ojalá
• papá
• sofá
• panamá
• allá
• acá

EXAMPLE LIST  3

• canción
• corazón
• atención
• dragón
• pasión
• camión
• lección

Ask the kids to sit in a circle. Give each one a different colored pencil. Read out the word in your list and review their meaning with them. Tell them that they’ll have to choose two words and write two short verses on each turn, one under the other. The verses must end with the words they chose.

Start the activity by choosing two of the words and writing the first two verses, as in this example:

Teresa estaba debajo de la mesa

Cuando llegó a la sala la princesa

Fold the paper to cover the first verse and pass it on to the first kid. He or she has to write his/her two verses and then fold the paper hiding everything but the last one.

Cuando llegó a la sala la princesa

The next kid has to do the same.  If the group is small, keep going until you have at least 10 verses. At the end you will have the entire sheet folded as an accordion.

Unfold the sheet and you will have a nice poem, absurd some times, beautiful others. Read it to the kids and together choose a title. This is fantastic practice for writing and phonics.

For a printable version of this activity click here.

Special thanks to Heritage Language for providing this activity. Visit their site for bilingual books and resources.

{first photo via: seeveeaar}

Adriana Pacheco Roldán, is a children’s books author who has taught Spanish as a second language for most of her professional life. She has always found news ways to teach Spanish, not only as a tool for communication, but as a tool for developing critical ways of thinking and understanding culture, history and traditions. With her husband she founded Heritage Language, a publisher of bilingual books. She is currently a doctoral student of Hispanic American Literature at the University of Texas at Austin. Adriana was born in Puebla, Mexico, and she is very proud of having raised three multilingual and multicultural boys and one girl.

Wow!  Not sure how summer has started in your barrio, but here in the Nation’s Capital, hace calor!  This means we have had lots of pool-time and fun with water.

Until recently, I really thought there wasn’t a way to make playing in the pool more fun, but my daughter Sofía found a way!  When I wasn’t looking, a little hand went into my glass of water and hielo (ice) and voilá…a whole new fun dimension of playing in the water! I can’t really take credit for this activity because literally she thought it up and I just took it up a notch!

What I like most about this activity is that not only is it super fun, it is a great way to learn about science concepts.  Liquids change to solids and back again to liquids through temperature changes.

Expanding on Sofía’s idea, I simply organized the making of lots and lots of hielo for her to play with.

We colored our water with Crayola Color Bath Dropz (They are non-staining.), filled the hielo trays and waited.  (Not only a lesson in science, but a lesson on me learning to be more patient!)

Really, you don’t need to add the color to the ice for it to be fun or educational, but it does bring about some aesthetic pleasure and helps the young learner actually be able to see some concepts such as melting.

The first time we did this activity, Sofía threw all the hielo into the pool at once. She was happily playing in front of her with a handful of hielo and when she turned around for more, she exclaimed, “Dónde está el hielo?”  (Where is the ice?) Obviously, this became our first lesson on solids changing to liquids using heat. So the second time we played with hielo in the pool, Sofía wanted to put it all in a tub.  She used a measuring cup to pour the hielo and observe it slide, color the water, and change shape.

The last little note about this Icy Hot Fun activity is that you don’t have to limit it to pool time either.  This can actually be a year-round activity, by dumping the hielo into a tub with a tiny bit of water to create a different version of a water table that can easily be played with indoors as well.

My one complaint about this activity is that Sofía wants hielo to play with all the time now!

¡Feliz Verano and Happy Water Play!

Thank you to Elizabeth for providing this article. Check out more activities and fun posts at La Mother Tongue.

My kids loved libritos when they were small. The little pages were the right size for their hands and they would color the books just the way they wanted.

My students like making mini-books too, especially one I think of as the “add-a-sticker” librito. These books have an object or simple background on each page as a setting. Children use identical stickers to add a “character” and create a wordless book. Then they can tell their story. This is a wonderful language activity for kids learning Spanish.

The stickers can be circles – they become una pelota in the story – stars or an animal. The other day I found a cute sheet of abejas. The stickers should all be the same though, so that kids can tell the story of one character.

For a printable version of the instructions below click here.

Making the Mini-Book

- Use the PDFs below or make your own book with a simple picture on each page. You can use photos of family, friends, or your home. Cut each sheet of paper into four pages, add a cover and staple it all together.

- If your child is learning Spanish, choose pictures of things that she can talk about with the words she knows.

- You can reuse materials by making covers out of old calenders, cereal boxes or brown paper bags.

Adding the Stickers And Telling the Story

How much support you give your child to tell the story will depend on her age and language level. Here are a few ways you can help her tell a story in Spanish:

- Make your own book as you help your child make hers. Talk about the pages as you put the books together so that she hears the words.

- When the book is ready, your child should put one sticker on each page. She does not have to have the story in mind at this point.

- Model telling a story with the book you made. Let your child help you by filling in key words.

- Sequence your story using words like entonces and después. Add cause and effect with porque and por eso.

- Help your child by telling her story together. Start with Un día, una…. and let your child fill in pelota (abeja, estrella….). Continue the story letting her fill in key words.

- Accept your child’s ideas even if they are not logical. This is fun, imaginative play, and it is her story.

- Encourage your child to read her librito to family and friends.

- The story may be different each time she tells it. That is great! It is excellent language practice.

The pictures and the sticker character help children organize a narration and provide support for the language. With an add-a-sticker librito, kids can have fun creating and telling a story in Spanish.

Click here to download two printable libritos.

Creative Commons clip art courtesy of Sweet Clip Art

Special thanks to Spanish Playground for providing this activity. Visit their site for more fun games and activities for kids in Spanish.

This Easter, instead of doing the same old boring egg hunt we do every year, I’ve decided to turn it into an opportunity for Vanessa to practice her Spanish reading skills while hopefully having a ton of fun!

The premise is simple: a scavenger hunt with clues in Spanish, but with a twist. All you’re going to need is a bunch of different color plastic eggs, paper, marker and whatever you’ll need to make your children’s Easter baskets, which I had no problem finding at my local Walmart.

Scrambled Clues

First, come up with a clue that will lead each child to his or her Easter basket. For example, “debajo de la almohada azul en tu cuarto” or “detrás de la puerta de mi baño” or where ever you chose to hide the basket.

Write the clue on a piece of paper and then cut up each word separately. Assign each child a plastic egg color and stick each word into a separte plastic egg. In Vanessa’s case, for example, I know I’ll be assigning her the pink ones. So let’s say I use the second clue, each one of her pink plastic eggs would include a scrap of paper with just one word, such as “detrás,” “puerta,” “baño,” “de” and so on.

Then you need to hide the plastic eggs just like you normally would. Explain the game to your children and have them go hunting for their assigned color. Once they have all their eggs, they have to work on arranging the words to be able to figure out the clue and go get their Easter basket!

I think my daughter, who’s totally into pirates, maps, clues and treasure hunts, is going to absolutely love this! And she’ll get to practice her Spanish reading skills along the way. Can’t wait to see if she’s able to unscramble the words and figure out the clue!

Disclosure: As part of the Walmart Moms program, SpanglishBaby received compensation and the product to facilitate this post. As always, all stories and opinions are our own.

Spring, is near! Hurrah! Hurrah!

Between the winter weather and rain you  may be stuck in your casa, more than you would like to be. So pull out your craft box and let’s get started.

Your main supplies are basic things you may already have in your house: cereal box and tissue paper. You can also use leaves, Spanish moss, ribbon or scrapbook paper to personalize your Easter basket.

These are great to use as party favors, Easter class treats or for your little ones at home.

For the precious little chick you can go here for the easy instructions on how to make it.
 
 
 
 

What You’ll Need:

Glue

Ribbon

Pipe Cleaner

Tissue paper

Cereal box

Instructions

Primero, cut your tissue paper into long strands. Then you will cut the strand the desired size of the rosette and twist them. I personally don’t like my rosettes to have a tight look to them so I loosely twist them for a puffy rosette look. For my mini cereal box I used 5 rows of 4 Rosettes.

Segundo, you will begin to roll the tissue paper creating your rosette.

Tercero, glue them on to the box.

Cuarto, make a hole on each side of the box so that you can insert your pipe cleaner and tape it on the inside for additional support.

Just four easy steps for this adorable personalized Easter basket.

What can be cuter than pretend play with this osito de la amistad puppet?

My kids love their stuffed animals especially this old raggedy looking bear. I wanted them to express their love and friendship through pretend play.

I knew that creating my favorite childhood activity-a paper bag puppet- would encourage them to do so.

Here are the step-by-step directions to make one of your own.

Supplies

• Paper bag
• glue
• marker and pencil
• scissors
• 2 sheets of 8.5×11 colored paper
• 1 sheet of glitter paper- Optional
• Template shapes {Download here}

 Prep your craft

Print out your template and trace each shape on to the paper color of your choice.

Cut each shape out.

Step by Step Tutorial

Step 1- Measure the circle against the paper bag and with your pencil, draw a line to know where to cut.

Step 2- Cut where you drew your line.

Step 3- Glue your ears on to the bag. Make sure to adhere them to the flap of the bag this will be the head portion of your puppet.

Step 4- Glue the bigger half of your bear head. Make sure to line up the edges to each other.

Step 5- Glue the smaller half of the bear head directly under the flap to line up the edges to recreate the circle.

Step 6- Cut your nose circle in half. Glue them the same as you did on steps 4 and 5.

Step 7- Make sure your circles are aligned.

Step 8- Glue the eyes and the nose. Tip- the nose should be the upside down heart.

Step9- Draw the mouth for your bear with a maker.

All done. ¡A jugar! 

Enjoy these Friendship bears from our familia to yours.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

¡Feliz día del amor y la amistad!

Check out all the Valentine’s goodies we have for you here and our Valentine’s Pinterest board is really cute too!