This week we are sharing  five fun hands-on activities for kids to practice Spanish. The activities were created by awesome parent bloggers and resource websites. As the day for kids to go back to school approaches we want to make sure our kids exercise their bilingual minds and they have lots of fun doing it.

Spanish Numbers Ice Cream Cones

Julie of Open Wide the World shared how her daughter will be soon attending a dual language immersion school and how she is preparing her for it. Since her daughter will be attending a Spanish immersion program Julie shared a Spanish number practice activity with her readers. Check out Julie’s story and the activity here.

Learning Spanish through Literature

Kali of For the Love of Spanish shows us how to extend the Spanish reading fun after finishing a book. In this post she decided on a monster theme and shares a book recommendation, monster craft, educational Spanish monster printable and if that’s not enough she also shares a recipe suggestion! Check out all the monster fun in Spanish here.

8 Spanish Games for Kids Using Bean Bags

Spanish Playground shared 8 games with bean bags that prompt kids to practice Spanish. Check out the post for instructions on how to make simple bean bags and a list of games in Spanish to play with your kids.

A Learning to Read Game : The Letter Roads

Actividades Infantil shared this simple way for kids to practice reading and tracing their initials in a fun, hands-on way. Click here to read the post on “Como Enseñar A Leer: El Juego de la Carretera de las Letras” and activity instructions.

Spanish Language Summer Program Day 6: Los Animales (The Animals)

Frances of Discovering the World Through My Sons Eyes has been sharing a Spanish Language Summer Program on her blog. On day 6 she shared wonderful resources for teaching kids all about animals in Spanish. Check out her Spanish Language Summer Program series and Los Animales resource post.

On this week’s #BilingualKids Activities round-up we are sharing educational printables in Spanish, fun games, and one awesome craft! Click in the links below for the resources and instructions.

Free Printables from Kinder Latino

Kinder Latino has a page for its readers to download free printables in Spanish! The page features five printable books full of activities for children starting kindergarden. You can also follow Kinder Latino and receive free weekly printables.

Free Beach Themed Printables

Mommy Maestra is sharing printables on ocean life in Spanish along with a list of marine life book suggestions.

Kids Learn Spanish with Familiar Books

Bilingual Fun shared four different games to practice Spanish using familiar books. We love that these games are simple yet engaging.

Aprendiendo A Leer y Escribir: El Juego de las Pinzas

We love this simple and fun activity by Actividades Infantil to help kids learn to read and write. All you need are clothespins and markers. Click here for the full description of the activity.

How to Make a Dreamcatcher and How to Make it Catch Bad Dreams

Mami Talks shared this cute dreamcatcher craft with her readers that helps kids deal with nightmares. Read the instructions for making the dreamcatcher as well as tips on how to use the dreamcatcher to help kids cope with nightmares. We love that MamiTalks is a bilingual blog so you can find all the instructions in English and Spanish.

This week we’ve put together a round-up with activities that encourage kids to explore in Spanish. Whether they’ll be traveling or staying home for the summer there are plenty of ways for our kids to explore the world around them through reading, music, and play. The activities below are hands-on and prompt kids to explore beyond their own horizons while practicing Spanish.

Learn Spanish through Play: At The Park // Actions (Verbs)

This fun activity by For The Love of Spanish is all about playing at the park and learning actions and verbs en Español! Click here for a vocabulary list of verbs in Spanish to practice with you kids as you play.

Latin Children’s Song “Los Pollitos Dicen Pío, Pío, Pío“

Frances of Discovering The World Through My Son’s Eyes is providing her readers with a Spanish langauge summer program through a series of posts. The latests addition features a series of fun activities centered around the classic Los Pollitos Dicen children’s song. Click here for the Los Pollitos Dicen activities.

11 Easy Spanish Activities Using Printable Landscapes

This activity by Spanish Playground prompts kids to create a story, play, puppet show, game, and more by using a landscape for inspiration. These are all great way for kids to practice speaking, reading, and even writing in Spanish. Click here for the list of printables and instructions.

Virtual Trip Around The World

Becky of Kid World Citizen shared how using a country unit can serve as a catalyst for taking a virtual trip around the world. What’s great about this activity is that it exposes our kids to other cultures, values, and experiences reinforcing the importance each has. Click here for a list of activity resources and ideas.

Awesome Summer Activity: Explorer Journal

In Culture Parent shared this simple activity for summer: journaling! Since summer is great time to go on adventures, big or small, and practice Spanish why not record it in a journal? Journaling is a fun and simple way for kids express themselves and reflect on their growth in any area of their lives. Click here for a link to a cute explorer journal you can purchase or help your kids craft one for themselves!

Summer is a great time to take advantage of the free time our niños have and share educational and fun activities in Spanish with them. That is why this summer we will be featuring five activities and crafts  for bilingual kids every week! Many of these activities and  crafts come from Latina bloggers, Spanish teachers and sites dedicated to raising bilingual and bicultural kids. Check out the five activities and crafts that we chose to kick off this summer of bilingual fun!

Spanish Words On The Go

This activity by Kinder Latino is a very cute and creative way to encourage kids to practice their high frequency words in Spanish. All kids have to do is assemble a purse or carrying case and inside they can store 128 of their most common high frequency words. Kids can take this small carrying case wherever they go and practice. Click here for more details and a printable version of this activity.

Using Story Boards to Boost Your Child’s Reading Comprehension 

This free printable by Latinas 4 Latino Literature helps your child practice reading comprehension. The great part about these story boards is that you can use them in any language. Click here for more ideas and the free printable.

Learning Letters With Play-dough and Legos

This activity by Actividades Infantil is a fun way for kids to practice letter tracing. All this activity calls for is play-dough and building blocks which kids use to create the shape of a letter. Click here for a full description of this activity and more ideas.

Where In The World Is Your Food From?

There are many things we love about this fun activity by Kid World Citizen. This hands-on activity calls for our niños to explore where all the veggies and fruits that we eat come from and then map it all out. During summer we have a great variety of fresh products in our supermarkets so the timing for this activity is perfect! As every SpanglishBaby parent can imagine, this is also a great activity to learn the names of these fruits and vegetables in Spanish. Click here for the full description of this fun kids activity.

DIY Recycled Box Playhouse Tent

This final craft by Inspired By Familia is simple, fun, and a great way to spend time with our kids. It only calls for a few items most of us have around the house. Check out the instructions here.

Do you have any great activities for bilingual and bicultural kids that you’d like to share? Link it up below!

I love helping my kids think outside of the box particular one of my kids who has a really hard time doing that.  Encourage creative play by giving them flowers and other natural elements to serve as their paintbrush.

“Me gusta pintar. Me gusta pintar, mami,”  my little man says this with a big smile on his face.  I respond, “Yes, I know you love to paint.”  My 2 year old is so very happy when he gets to make a mess with paint. Remember to buy paint that is washable if you have little excited painters.

I remember when one of my boys’ teachers came to me with a concern, “Your son keeps painting the trees blue, orange… and I can’t put his picture up on the bulletin board because he’s not following directions.”  She showed me his picture. I looked at it, and this artistic mama couldn’t have been prouder.  It was absolutely lovely.  ¡Lindísimo!

I looked at her and I said, “I am sorry, it’s really hard for me to be upset at him for not following directions when the picture in your  hand is absolutely amazing for a little 5-year-old. I will talk to him about learning to follow directions, but there is nothing wrong with his picture.  A tree doesn’t have to be brown and green it can be blue, orange, yellow… and his sun can be purple.”  Unfortunately for my son, he had two teachers back to back when he was younger discourage his creativity — his artistic side. He is now nine and his trees are verde and café. It makes me sad.

I still haven’t given up though and I continue to give my boys opportunities to be creative with their hands. Sometimes they would rather run around pretending they are policemen and super cowboys shooting at each other, but I must say any kind of imaginative play makes me happy.

So before trashing your wilted flowers, give them another use!

Painting with Flowers

What you will need:

• paint in different colors
• flowers (I used my flowers that were wilting)
• paper

1. Place paint on a surface that is big enough to cover the flowers in paint.

2. Start painting away. Let them make flower prints or paint houses, cars, abstract art… whatever their little minds take them.

Note: When painting with kids it’s good to have something under the painting project to protect the surface; also wipes for quick clean up.

It’s officially Easter weekend! The kids and I have been busy preparing for our holiday. Recently my son asked me why not all bunnies had tails. Confused, I thought what he may have seen and where? I asked him why he asked. He didn’t have a straight answer — he’s only 4 years old. I decided to create a fun game just in time for Easter but great all year!

I explained to both my kids that we needed to help the conejito find his colita. I told him we had to toss these fuzzy tails into his bowl and if it landed then maybe it could be his. Our bunny was a boy because my son insisted the bunny was Peter Rabbit.

Here is what we used to create our Conejito sin Colita Game: 

• 2 foam sheets- 1 colored and 1 white
• A round lid- cardboard works best
• White Poms or Cotton Balls
• 2 Wiggly eyes
• Glue or glue dots
• A Marker
• Conejito Template -optional- (download below)

 DOWNLOAD TEMPLATE HERE

Let’s get started!

1- Cut a strip of foam sheet. Depending on your lid length will vary but we used a 2.5 inches wide strip. Having a gap is ok. It will get covered up with our bunny.

2-Glue around your lid. You may need to hold in place until it sticks.

3- Cut and trace your template onto the foam. Cut our the bunny shape in the colored foam and the ears in white. Glue them in place.

4- Add some wiggly eyes and a cute nose and smile. Glue to the back of your lid where the gap is. Hold in place until secure.

5-All done! Time to play!

We hope you are having a fantastic Spring season and Easter weekend. ¡Felices Pascuas!

Are you looking from some indoor activities for winter?  Snowman Bowling will keep the kiddos entertained while mami cooks or even for your holiday party fun.

Snowman bowling was featured in the Spirit of Christmas, Winter Issue and now I get to share it here with you, in detail.  The best part of this activity is it’s really simple and works for all ages.  Mi bebé who is 2 years old loves to knock the pins down with his feet and laughs hysterically when they fall.  He did try it with a ball but preferred to throw the ball at us and kick the pins with his little feet.

Everything you need for this Winter fun you should be able to find in your home. I used creamer bottles but you can also use water bottles and stuff them with white tissue paper to create that white snowman look or you can even use mini cereal boxes and cover them with white paper. Oh, another idea is to use a can: soda or from beans or corn….  Just paint it white or cover it with white paper.  I am sure I covered all the bases and you are bound to have one of these items in your home.

As I mentioned it’s easy set them up and let the fun begin. You can use any type of ball or styrofoam balls so it can look like nieve.

You will need:

• creamer bottles
• ribbon
• orange construction paper for the nose
• black permanent marker

1. Start by drawing the face don’t worry you don’t need to be picasso for this. All you need to do is draw 6 dots. 2 for the eyes and 4 for the mouth.

2. Cut a triangle for the nose and glue.

3. Wrap your ribbon around the neck. You may need to glue it on.

And for our over acheiver crafters, give frosty the snowman some buttons and a hat.

On December 7, Clarius will be presenting Dino Time. Dino Time is a family comedy that follows Ernie, his sister Julia, and his best friend Max. One day when they are playing in Max’s father’s lab they trip a time-machine into operation and travel 65 million years into the past! There they meet a T-Rex named Tyra and her son Dodger. The series follows this group  through their prehistoric jungle adventures as they aslo face Tyra’s dinosaur rivals.

We have shared three Dino Time Spanish-language activity sheets with you to enjoy with your dinosaur-loving niños!

For a printable version of these activity sheets click here

When my grandparents were alive the production was big. Food was served from morning to night. The grown ups would sit and talk while the kids went in and out of the house playing with each other.

I remember one year, my Tia O brought crafts to keep us entertained. She was always the crafty one.

This year I am far from the family, I decided to keep on with the crafts and make a thanksgiving craft with a Latino twist.

What cooler turkey to make then one made out of Hojas de Maiz???

One of the foods we cook during the holidays is tamales. I find that we over buy corn husk and so this is the perfect supply to make an activity with during thanksgiving. After the tamales are prepared and you have a pile of unopened hojas de maiz, Let’s Make a Pavo!

To make you own Pavo de hojas de maiz you will need:

•Corn husk about 3 or 4 hojas-it really depends how full you want your turkey feel free to go wild with it.

•Turkey Body Template You can download one HERE

•Permanent Markers- preferably bright colors highlighters work too.

•Adhesive- Glue dots seem to work best

•8.5×11 brown cardstock

•2×3 yellow & red cardtock

•stapler

•2 wiggly eyes

STEP 1- Color the corn husk. Get creative make designs if you want.

STEP 2-Trace and Cut out your turkey body. Here’s the Template!

Step 3-Cut the corn husk in half or thirds depending on how big the hojas are. Assemble them around your turkey body to see the shape and amount you want.

Step 4-Gather the hojas in groups and staple them together at the bottom. Once all groups are done staple them together to create one big feather-like element.

Step 5- Make sure to staple several times. You don’t want them coming apart. Then adhere glue dots all over the center where you stapled. I put about 6 -8 glue dots all around.

Step 6- Adhere your turkey body. This is what it should look like. Make sure to press firmly so the glue dots stick to the body.

Step 7- Cut out a beak and Gobble(the red part under the turkeys beak) Get creative any shapes work. For the gobbler I cut out a curvy tongue like shape and cut a slit in the middle. For the beak I just cut a triangle shape from the square shape paper.

Adhere the gobble first then the beak on top as shown below.

Make sure to add your eyes at this time also.

Step 8- From leftover hojas de maiz cut 2 little rectangles for legs. Adhere them to the back of the body. This is what it should look like.

ALL DONE! Hang your turkey and enjoy the holiday!

Click on the image to download the PDF

¿Qué Color Es?

What You’ll Need: Hula hoops and bean bags in the main primary colors.

Set Up: Lay the hula hoops out on the floor and have the children stand around them in any order. The teacher holds on to the same colored bean bags.

How to Play: Toss a bean bag to a child and say “¿que color es?” The child should then throw the bean bag into the matching hula hoop and yell out the color in Spanish.

Why it Works: Lango classes are taught using the Adventure Learning method, which combines movement, interaction, music, play-acting, repetition, and full language-immersion to assure that children learn and retain vocabulary.

Click here to download the printable activity sheet.

About Lango Lango teaches children ages 18 months to 11-years-old French, Spanish and Mandarin through Adventure Learning, an innovative approach that combines stories, music and movement, playacting, and game-playing. In addition to weekly year-round classes, Lango also offers a summer day camp program called Camp Lango. www.langokids.com. Lango is a division of Intrax, a family of organizations that provide a lifetime of high quality educational, work and volunteer programs that connect people and cultures. Intrax is headquartered in San Francisco with offices in 16 countries.