Spanish Fun Activity Sheets

              Spanish Fun Activity Sheets

                    for Flash Cards Set 1

Have you ever experienced teaching Spanish vocabulary and realized how quickly students learn them?  Do you find yourself with limited exercises and resources to further practice and review with your students or kids what has been learned? If so, you are not alone. I have felt the same way too.  I have purchased good books for teaching Spanish but more often than not there is not enough variety of worksheet materials to cover a unit or a subject.  You can’t just keep giving students the same material over and over. 

When I created my Flash Cards Sets 1 through 4, I included ideas and activities that can be done to help students learn the words.  But having new activities and ideas are always a plus; so I decided to create these Spanish Fun Activity Sheets to fulfill the need for new and different kinds of worksheets and variations to help students along the way as they learn and incorporate new Spanish words and to provide parents, teachers and instructors with a variation of activities that can be done over a period of time to keep alive in the student’s mind what has been taught and to help them further internalize it. The more activities and varieties are done with new and old Spanish words, the more familiar and comfortable students will become with them and most likely not forget them.

So I hope you and your students have fun with these activities.  As time goes on, I will be sharing more ideas and activities to do, including using the Spanish words in sentences and so on…

When you purchase the SpanishFun Activity Sheets for Flash Cards Set 1, you will also receive instructions and ideas on how to use each activity sheet.  Here, I will provide a few advance ideas to use with this package.

·         Have students pick out and say all or as many illustrations they saw on the memory game card instead of writing it down or coloring the box with the words.  (For this you will need to have a set of the cut outcards.) A variation to this idea is to do it with two students or even three and see which person remembers the most. (If doing two or three students at a time you will need two to three sets of cut out cards)

·         Select two students. One will call out the items on the card and the other student match the items on a blank card.

·        For the “Corta y Pega” activity, select three groups. Give groups 1 and 2 a page with the empty squares and group 3 the cut out cards. The two groups with the empty square page take turns by going to the other group to ask them for what they need. For example:  group 1 and group 2 take turns going to group 3 to ask for what they need to complete their page. For example someone from either group 1 or 2 goes to group 3 and say: ”necesito la bombilla” and a student from group 3 will give “la bombilla” The first group to fill out all the squares correctly wins!

These ideas and games work best when students are very familiar with the Spanish words and pronunciation.

Included in the Spanish Fun Activity Package is a game called: “¿qué falta?” 

You can download a Free sample of it here and use with your students! I also included a blank card to use with the game idea on bullet point 2.

To purchase Spanish Fun Activity Sheets for Flash Cards Set 1 click here.

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Thank you and….                                                                                                      

Have Fun!

8 Fun ideas to use with "Spanish Fun Bunny Color Cards

                  Spanish Fun 

            Bunny Color Cards

Spanish Fun Bunny Color Cards are a great way to introduce or reinforce colors to young children.

It’s great for summer camp activities where Spanish is part of a summer program. These bunny cards are appealing and engaging. They can be used in a variety of ways to engage children in learning and speaking the target language.  

Even though I know you will find so many ideas on how to use these cards I will share a few here that works well for me. The activities I recommend here are for different levels. Select the appropriate activity according to the age group. Feel free to adjust and make changes depending on your group’s needs. These activities range from age 5 to 12! For some activities previous knowledge in actions, adjectives, etc…is necessary. Before doing some of the activities I recommend the students be familiar with certain words so that it becomes easier to apply to conversation. So to get you started, here we go!

Use them for:

·         Teaching colors:  Instructor show and say the color on card and students repeat.

·         Teaching actions: Instructor introduces each bunny or selected bunnies by its color and says what each bunny likes to do. For example:

El conejito verde salta. (The green bunny jumps)

El conejito azul corre. (The blue bunny runs)

El conejito rojo camina (The red bunny walks)

And so on…. you can create other actions for the other bunnies.

·         Use for questions and answer activity:  After saying what each bunny does you can ask the following questions to evaluate comprehension. 

For example:¿qué hace el conejito verde? (What the green bunny does?)                      ¿qué hace el conejito azul? (What the blue bunny does?)                                                   and so on….. other questions could be: ¿cuál conejito salta, corre, camina?

·         Use for concentration and memory activity:  Show students a color bunny and have students do the action that color bunny does.

·         Seek and find game:  Have students look for the bunnies by color. For example you can say: “ María, busca el conejito verde” (María, look for the green bunny)

·         Use for engaging in descriptive adjectives:  Assign a descriptive quality to each bunny. For example you can say: El conejito gris es inteligente. El conejito negro es amable. El conejito café es honesto and so on….

Students can introduce a bunny of their choice.  For example:  student can pick a bunny they choose and talk about that bunny in the target language. For example student can say: “este conejito es blanco, es inteligente y es alegre.

·         Use it as a riddle game: instructor says this riddle and students say the answer. For example:

Instructor can say: “Soy el conejito saltador. Me gusta saltar, saltar y saltar”.  ¿Quién soy?

Student’s response should be: ¡El conejito verde!

Here is another example:

“Soy el conejito corredor. Me gusta correr, correr y correr”. ¿Quién soy?

Student’s response: ¡El conejito azul!

And so on….

You can assign any action and descriptive adjective you wish to any color bunny. I just gave some examples of how you can do it to engage students.

·         Create stories:  Create short stories involving more than one bunny. I created some short stories. If you would like to use them you can access them for free here or you can create your own.

Talking and asking questions in the target language and encouraging the student to answer in the target language is one good way of helping students develope their ears for the language and further prepare them  for more advance listening and conversational  skills.

Have any ideas? Please share!
And remember to ….Have fun!

To purchase Spanish Fun Bunny Color Cards click here. As a bonus I also included an English version of the cards! See example below.

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Ideas to build children counting skills!

   Fun Counting Cards

These fun counting cards are an excellent way to help your preschool child or students build number sense and counting skills! Even though they were created for my Spanish class it can also be used for English or any target language.

Here are a few ideas you can use with these cards: (the ideas and examples will be in Spanish but can be apply to any language)

1.                              Give each student a card. Tell them to count in Spanish the objects on the card. Students should say in the target language how many objects are on their card and then find the corresponding number to place on the card. You can ask students: ¿cuántos objetos hay en tu tarjeta?( how many objects are on your card?) Student respond saying for example: “tres”

2.                              The cards are also great for learning new vocabulary words. So you can be more specific and ask the student for example: ¿cuántas mariquitas hay en tu tarjeta? students response should  be: “seis”

3.                              For older preschoolers 4 and 5 years of age you can give them each one or more cards depending on size of the group and allow them to count the objects on the card then you can say: ¿quién necesita el número cuatro? (how needs number four?) and so on. Students will say: “yo necesito cuatro”. I work with students that do not come from a Spanish speaking background so we go over this many times and they pick it up very fast. When teaching a foreign language I realized that kids learn faster when you just speak the language. Doing translation is not as effective as just speaking it and allowing the kids to understand by logical deduction. Demonstration rather than translation is very effective.  

4.                              The cards can also be use to find out who has what. For example you can ask: ¿quién tiene la tarjeta con la rana? student with that card can say “yo”. It’s good for practicing how to say “me” in Spanish  which is “yo”

Variation

You can also use blank cards for this game and use manipulative to fill the cards instead. See examples below.

Some of the manipulative you can use are: different size and color buttons, counters, foam stickers, stones, etc…. you can even use foam or plastic numbers instead of the card numbers like in the example below. You may need to help your child or students as they count.

These kinds of game help encourage and engage students in speaking the target language.

You can access the blank cards and number cards here for free. 

If you will like to purchase the Fun Counting Cards click here.

 

Have fun!

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Five fun ideas to reinforce Spanish adjectives

      Adjectives on Stones

Here is a fun way to engage your older students in practicing adjectives.

You can purchase decorative stones or find stones and write the adjectives on them using white paint pens. (I used Sharpie oil based paint) You can get them at office stores for less than $3 (you can use either white or black color paint depending on the color of the stones)

It will help for students to be already familiar with the adjectives before doing the adjectives on stone.  Spanish adjectives flash cards will come in handy for learning and reviewing adjectives. I will provide a link at the end should in case you would like to purchase these adjectives cards.

Once students are more or less familiar with the adjectives the following activities can be done:

1.      Display the adjective stones in the classroom for reference and review.

2.      Have students pick up a stone to describe something or someone.

3.      Allow students to describe their friends by selecting stones to give to them. (you will need extra stones for this)

4.      Students can write on the stone an outstanding quality they like about someone and give that person the stone. (On one side of the stone they can write the person’s name and on the other side write the qualifying adjective of the person. (They could do it as a project for friends and or for family members)

5.      Play a game by selecting more than one qualifying adjectives to describe someone in the classroom. The group tries to guess who the person is. Select a student to describe someone in the classroom and have everyone else guess including the instructor.

These are just some ideas but I’m sure you will come up with some other ideas too! Feel free to share :-)

There is also another activity a came up with to help students practice and identify adjectives. This activity is called “Árbol de Adjectivos”  It’s a freebie on my TpT store.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  

To access it click here.

To purchase Spanish Adjective Flash Cards click here.

Have fun!

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Counting Fun part 2

              Counting Fun –part 2

¡Hola! and thanks for visiting! In this post I will share more counting fun ideas.

For this counting game we will use water balls and butterfly nets. These nets works well for this counting game and kids love it. Hold the net and give the student a basket with the water balls (I use 20 of them) the objective is to throw as many balls as possible inside the net. So the participant will stand at a distance established by the instructor and start counting as the balls are been thrown inside the net.  The whole group can count too or just the student.  As he/she throws the balls some will go in and some will not but the student should continue throwing and counting until all the balls are gone. Then student counts in Spanish to see how many balls are in the net.  Instructor at this point asks: “¿cuántas pelotas hay en la red? Student says: “hay once pelotas”

In most of the games and activities I incorporate questions in Spanish to encourage students to answer in the target language. The games help students to become more comfortable and less shy when it comes to speaking the foreign language. It provides a safe and non threatening environment while at the same time creating an immersion experience. 

Variations and suggestions:

For older students you can have several nets of different colors (see picture below)

 between four and six nets and have a student for each net throw the balls at the same time and at the end see which students has the most balls in the net. Instructor can ask: ¿cuántas pelotas hay en la red azul? the student that has the blue net counts in Spanish and then says for example: “hay cinco pelotas”. Then instructor can ask next: ¿cuántas pelotas hay en la red amarilla”? and so on… When doing more than one student at a time more balls will be needed. At least 20 per student. The water balls and nets can be found at dollar stores.

For younger children I recommend doing the game individually.

Here is a short video of this game.

Have an idea? I will be thrilled to hear about it. Your ideas, comments, feedback are all welcome!

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Counting Fun -part 1

             Counting Fun –part 1

If you teach a group of students you may notice when it comes to review time that everyone appears to knows numbers, colors, shapes and so on when the questions are directed to the entire group.  But I quickly realize that once students are tested individually it’s a different story.  So in teaching I do an assessment periodically to see who needs help and it what specific areas.

One of these areas is counting. As a group it seems like everyone can count from one up to a determine number.  This activity helps to make an assessment to see to what number an individual student can count up to without skipping a number.  It also gives me knowledge on the problem areas of connection between one number and the next. For example a student may count up to 19 and be stuck there but that does not necessarily means the student does not know the rest of numbers; sometimes it is just a number the student needs help in to continue the sequence. These and other observation can be detected with this ball activity I will share.

The activity is very simple yet I find it to be very effective. For some reason children enjoy games with ball.

This game is a favorite from ages 4 all the way to 12 but older kids will have fun too. For older students above 12, I will share some ball activities later on. But for now the activities I am sharing now works well for children 4 to 12 years of age.

Just have a bouncing ball. For younger students use a medium to big size ball. It doesn't have to be spiky as my students call my ball. It can be a regular smooth ball.

 For older students a smaller size works fine.

Tell students they will have a change to bounce the ball as they count. Tell them they will count as they bounce the ball and see which one counts to the highest number without help and without skipping a number.  Students love the challenge.  So as participants have their turn, they start counting each time the ball hits the floor and keep on going until they reach the highest number selected or up to whatever number they can count to. Once they skip a number then their turn is over. I will make a note as to what number they were able to count to without problems.  What I normally do before having the students start the activity is to practice before by bouncing the ball myself, and have students as a group count along with me as I bounce. To make it more coordinated and rhythmic, I instruct them to count only when the ball hits the floor not before; so we try it and practice it for a while. To encourage concentration and focus, without warning, I will withhold the ball from bouncing, so at that point they should not count…..I make it fun for them and they really enjoy it especially when I hold the ball back from hitting the floor. It keeps them alert and ready. Once we do the little practice now they are ready and know exactly what to do.

To keep track of students counting progress I created this assessment sheet for my records and for reference.

If you try the activity and would like to use the assessment sheet you can access it here.

Benefits using ball with young children:

·         It helps boost memory and concentration

·         It helps develop motor skills

·         It helps develop eye/hand coordination

·         It helps develop spatial awareness

·         It helps develop focus

·         It helps develop rhythmic coordination

My students never get tired of this activity. They always ask me if I brought the ball.

Another variation is to have students bounce the ball back and forth with a partner as they count.

Another idea is to have number cards face down on the table.  The student that is going to count picks a card up and whichever number is on the card student counts up to that number. If the student counted correctly student keeps the card and keeps picking up another card and counts up to the number on the card and so on until a numbers is skipped.  At the end instructor sees which student has the most cards.  The cards that students have serve as a quick reference guide for the instructor to see up to what number the students can count up to if instructor forgets to keep the score during the game.

Another game is to have a student throw the ball to another student.  This is excellent for practicing commands in Spanish.  Children have a natural tendency to understand a new language by deduction. Without previous explanation I will give the ball to a student and tell the student in Spanish “tira la pelota a Juan” (throw the ball to Juan) and so on…they automatically understand what I mean and throw the ball.  

Hope you have as much fun doing these games with your group as my students and I do! 

Give it a try and share your experience, comments, feedback, etc... they are welcome!

Bean bags and number fun

            Beanbags and number fun

Here is a fun way to engage little ones in a fun activity while learning is taking place.  This game or activity will help students recognize numbers independently.

So here is what you will need:

1.      A large black foam board. You can use two to make it larger.

2.       Then make your own multicolor number mats or if you prefer you can buy the round foam shapes and with a black marker draw the numbers on the mat.

3.      Place the mats on the large foam board.

4.      Select a student and have them throw a beanbag on the board. Student will say what number the bean bag landed on.

Kids will have fun with this simple activity and at the same time it will reinforce recognition of numbers in random order. I do notice that children will say their numbers well from 1 to 10 in Spanish but have difficulty naming an isolated number. This game will help repair that J

Variations and suggestions:

·         Make sure all students participate. Students, especially the younger ones will take it to heart if they do not get a chance to participate in the game. Sometimes I have a larger group making it difficult to include everyone in the game period part of the class. So I will explain beforehand that everyone might not get a chance in this session, but next session they will. (That really doesn't help too much) so now I make sure to include everyone the same day by using the entire session for the game if necessary.  After all, they are still learning!

·         To avoid the mats from moving when the bean bag is thrown you can place tape under the mats unto the board.

·         Sometimes the bean bag will fall on a number. Then ask in Spanish “¿sobre qué número cayó el saquito?” (on what number did the beanbag fall on?)

·         Other times the beanbag may fall between two numbers. Ask in Spanish “¿entre qué números cayó el saquito?” (between which numbers did the beanbag fall?) You can help students by responding to your question by saying “cayó entre los número veinte y treinta” 

·         By asking and responding to questions in Spanish will further train kids ear to the language and also help in the development of speech. After a while you will be surprised to hear them repeating the same questions and answers in Spanish. 

·         Another technique I use in helping students recognize numbers independently is to select two or three numbers at a time.  Let’s use for example 5 and 15. We review those numbers over two or three classes. Students can now recognize these numbers in whichever order they see it. You can even customize your number mats and make them with just the numbers you are working on.  Then doing the activity will serve as a strong reinforcement.

·         To add to the fun and excitement you can also have some of the mats turn down to where the number is not shown. If the beanbag happens to fall on one of those mats then I will say “adivina el número” (guess the number) students at this point start calling out numbers in Spanish. Every now and then they call out a number in English but then I will say  “en español por favor” (in Spanish please) Sometime my students remind their friends to say it in Spanish when someone says the number in English.  After a few chances we will turn over the mat to see what number it is.

Wishing you all the fun with this activity!

Los números del 1 al 20 is a fun song and a favorite among students and teachers! To hear a sample and or purchase it click here

Will love to hear from you! Please share your ideas and comments!

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