Before you read all this, let me preface it: I am not a native Spanish speaker. I live in Texas and wish I was bilingual. I took 4 years of Spanish over 20 years ago. Ugh, that makes me feel old. I can’t roll my r’s. I am just a momma trying her best to teach my littles the beauty of language and other cultures.
A few months ago, when my girl was still 5, she told me, “Mom, I want to learn Spanish.” This was one of the few times she has told me she wanted to learn more about something in particular.
As part of a Charlotte Mason education, foreign language is all about relationships. I want my children to build relationships between words and languages but most importantly, I want them to build relationships with others. I am trying to devote about 10 minutes a day to learning Spanish. I took 4 years of Spanish and know many words, but speaking in conversation is not something I am good at; however, I am excited to learn more!
As an Experience Early Learning (EEL) Blogger, I receive the EEL Preschool Curriculum in exchange for my honest opinions and authentic stories about our experiences using the curriculum. All opinions and thoughts are completely my own.
I knew I wanted to integrate conversation and not just vocabulary, so we started with greetings. We made paper bag puppets, which we do quite often with our Experience Preschool curriculum. They have become our Spanish speaking puppets. We use them to practice greetings like:
- Hola. (Hi.)
- Como te llamas? (What is your name?)
- Me llamo es ____________ (My name is__________)
- Como estas? (How are you?)
- Muy bien, gracias (Great, thanks!) / No estoy bien. (I am not good)/ Estoy triste (sad)
- Adios. (Goodbye)
Our Preschool curriculum, Experience Preschool, has lent beautifully to integrating Spanish. When we do our calendar, the kids practice counting in Spanish, and we have learned our colors and play eye spy in Spanish.
“Veo, veo una cosita _________ (color)”
I spy something _______ (color).
Last month with our All About Me theme, we had a week of learning about clothing. Experience Preschool sent us a bingo game on our Shirt Day. This was the perfect opportunity for us to practice our Spanish, so I pulled out my Usborne My First Spanish Word Book to help us play Clothing Bingo throughout the week.
I would ask, “Tienen un/una _______________ (clothing) ____________ (color)?
Ex. “Tienen una camisa azul?” Do you have a blue shirt.
I placed the blue shirt card between their two BINGO cards for them to see, and they would place a button manipulative on their blue shirt if they had it. Those buttons were also in this month’s box.
We played at least 3 rounds of this on our first day, which was about 10 -15 minutes of Spanish, before they needed a break. We continued to play this bingo game all week practicing our conversation and vocabulary.
Our newest month of curriculum just came it. It’s on Weather and Seasons! It’s going to be so much fun. While I prepped all our materials the other day, I thought that our new Weather board would be another great way to practice our Spanish.
So I looked up how to ask “What is the weather?” in Spanish and wrote “Que tiempo hace?” on our poster to remind me to ask each day. Instead of saying our answer in English, I wrote the answer on our weather popsicle sticks and my kids will respond in Spanish.
Well, that’s how we are slowly integrating Spanish into our daily learning. I keep thinking there’s more I could do, but if I can make a habit of one thing, than that is more than I was doing to begin with.
Little drops of water, Little grains of sand, make the mighty ocean and the pleasant land.
Are you teaching your littles a foreign language? How do you do it? I’d love to read it in the comments!
