Teaching Emotions in Spanish

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Emotions can be tough vocabulary to teach, because of the lack of activities to go with the subject matter. Over the years I have slowly added ideas to my repertoire for teaching feelings. Here is a collection of ideas for you to use.

I recently bought these cards. My students are intrigued by the faces and find them funny. I had my husband at one point draw these faces onto ping pong balls. You can see my post about them here. I use these cards and the ping pong balls to talk about feelings in the target language. For example, with the ping pong balls I will put them in a bag. Each student picks one out and tells me how he or she is feeling according to the face on the ball. With the cards, you can print out labels with emotion vocabulary words on them and have the students match the word with the picture card as a review activity at the beginning of class.

 I do like the cards as they are larger than regular playing cards. I will, however, say that there are several cards in the deck that give the words for all the feelings in different languages. So for example, there is a card with all the faces from the deck with the Spanish words for those emotions underneath them. There are similar cards for French, German, Polish, etc. There are 25 of these language cards which may not be useful to you except for the one language you are teaching. I still feel that  they are worth it for me to have as visual aids. I believe there are thirty emotions cards (just with one face on it) total. So if this makes sense: 30 emotion cards (see the first two pictures in this post), 25 language cards (see the third picture) for a total of 56 cards.

Así Me Siento Yo is by far the BEST emotion book out there for kids. {And please, if you come across another, let me know!} The illustrations are beautiful and clearly depict the emotion even if kids are still learning the vocabulary. Here are two posts with feelings activities that you can do with your students after reading the book. This first one is great during the fall, and the other would be a great spring activity. There are free printables on each post.

If you are working with younger kids this set of bricks would work well when introducing feelings.

Another activity I do with my students involves these stick figures from Spanish Playground. You will notice that the printable has descriptions under each figure, but sometimes I turn this into a listening activity for my kids. I will describe what the person is wearing, how they are feeling, and even the weather (which kids normally draw above the figure...like a sun for example or clouds). The students then must draw all the items in. It's a great way to review lots of different vocabulary!

And finally, if you have students who can read try the Caramba game. It can review all many different sets of vocabulary including emotions. Lots of fun!

Spanish in the Summer

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Summer is rapidly approaching. There is a plethora of ideas, books, and resources out there to teach Spanish. Here is a list of all the ideas that would work well with summer to help your students/kids learn more Spanish.

{By the way, if you are a teacher and thinking of hosting Spanish summer camps, check out my series here with a ton of games, activities, and crafts to do your own camp.}

Here is the unit I developed on Oceans. {Free printables available.}

Si Quieres Ver Una Ballena is such a sweet and funny book about how to spot a whale. I have developed some activities for it here.

Here is a post with a list of Ocean-themed books in Spanish for kids.

 Books for summer...a great time to read!

I love doing this unit with my students in the summer! {Free printables available}

Insects are another great subject to study during the summer.

For the younger set, here is an activity to go along with La Oruga Muy Hambrienta.

Enjoy teaching Spanish this summer!!!

Silly Sentences in Spanish

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I love using flashcards to help kids review vocabulary, but let's face it, review with flashcards is rather boring. So when I can, I use flashcards as a basis for creating crazy sentences. Most of my flashcards are stored in categories. For example, all modes of transportation are together or all items in a house are in another pile. {NOTE: I make flashcards with the pictures from these books: Basic Vocabulary Builder and Practical Vocabulary Builder.}

I pick about three categories of vocabulary cards and lay the piles face down. For example, I could use professions, places in a city, and modes of transportation. A student picks up the top card of each pile and then says a sentence based on the three pictures. For example...

El mecánico va al cine en la moto.

The next student then turns over the next set of cards to create a new sentence. Many of the sentences will be "crazy"...like "The doctors go to the supermarket in a helicopter."

There are tons of card combinations you can use to create sentences. Here are just a few ideas with the cards you would use and an example sentence:

• Subject pronouns~Verb~Place  {Yo bailo en el banco.}
• Family Members~Food~Colors {La hermana come las fresas verdes.}
• Household Items~Rooms in a House {La cama está en la sala.}
• Clothing~Colors~Seasons  {Uso la camisa blanca en el verano.}
• Animals~Preposition~Items in a House {El mono está a la derecha de la mesa.}

Don't want to make your own cards? Here are cards that would go well with this activity...


Photo Cards {Already separated into 16 categories}

Photo action cards











Noun Cards {Things Around the Home}

Toys for Language Learning

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For young kids (and even some older ones), there is incredible value in having items that they can manipulate as they learn. My students eyes light up when I bring out any type of item that is toy-like to help them acquire Spanish. That's why this list of building sets could be incredibly valuable when you are teaching another language to kids.

These LEGO^® sets would work really well if you are teaching young kids a foreign language...

The first one that caught my eye was the Build Me Emotions set. For years I have struggled to come up with ideas for teaching emotions so I am always on the lookout for new ideas. I see so much potential for this set like...

• Telling students "Edifica triste" or "Edifica contento" then having kids build a character with that emotion.
• Calling out an action in the target language and having them make a person with an appropriate emotion on its face. For example, the teacher says "Yo como el chocolate" and a happy person is built.
• Describing a person (what they are wearing) and what they are doing then having kids make that person with the correct colored clothing and a facial expression for the action.

The Animal Bingo set is a like a bingo game in which kids pick a building card that allows them to create an animal as they collect the pieces for it. With this game, there is the opportunity to learn animal names, colors, and shapes.




The World People Set are great props for physical description of people and clothing. The vocabulary for family members would work well with these also. I would use this set by displaying all the figures and then describing in Spanish one of the people to see if my students can guess who I am talking about. Students can also describe the people in the target language. Another idea is to categorize the people into groups by calling out a characteristic like "pelo moreno" or "lleva azul" and have your students separate out those that fit into that category.



Community Minifigures - a great set for discussing occupations and descriptions of people.



Time Teacher with Constructible Clock- A clock that kids can build and that you can use with them to teach them to tell time!



Family and House Kit- Build this house and then there are opportunities to talk about the rooms of the house and what they contain. This set would be great to work with prepositions. Students could describe where things are located in the target language or the teacher could tell students where to put certain items.



This Food Set has a plethora of pieces so that kids can "build" different foods. This is definitely on my wish list as I know my younger students would adore it! There are opportunities to discuss the colors of the foods, learn new food words, and even do categories of foods (like fruits, veggies, meats, etc.)

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¡Caramba! Game

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I am closing out the school year with my Spanish lessons and wanted a way to review the vocabulary we have been working on. I came across on Pinterest a post about Kaboom! It was created for elementary classrooms, but I thought it would be perfect for language learners also! So here is how you go about it:

First of all you will need...

Jumbo Craft Sticks
Sharpie Markers
Cups (Not see through)

Since I work with a lot of different levels of students I had several categories of vocabulary I wanted to use like house items, the alphabet, clothes, opposites, etc. I decided to color-code the sticks  on one end. This helps with two things. Kids will know how to put them in the cup with the colored part sticking out. This allows me to  select which sets of vocabulary to use with certain sets of students. For example, I know that the orange sticks are emotions and the pink sticks are foods. {See the final set of pictures for the list I made for myself.}

After you color the tips, you write one word towards the other end of the stick. I tend to use about 15 sticks for a vocabulary-themed set. Three of those sticks will have the word "Caramba" written on them. The rest will have vocabulary words you want kids to review.

To play the game you put one set (or maybe two or three if you have more advanced students) in a cup with the colored tips up. Students take turns pulling a stick out of the cup and giving the translation of the word. They keep the stick if they can say what it means in English. Otherwise, they put it back in the cup if they don't know. If they pull a "Caramba" stick they have to put back ALL their sticks! I time the game for about three minutes. The student with the most sticks at the end wins!

This is a fun way to review vocabulary which at times can be tedious!

Spanish Compound Words for Kids

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Each year with my younger students I try to have a set of words for vocabulary building. Two years ago, we did rhyming words. This past year we did synonyms and antonyms. For the coming year I am planning on doing compound words.

The beauty of compound words is that it is a three for one deal. When you learn a compound word you can also learn the two words embedded in it...hence, three new words added to your vocabulary. Here's a look at what I will be doing with my students with these words in the near future...

I bought these cards from Teachers pay Teachers. I chose thirty words and created cards so that we can play Memory and Go Fish with them. The idea is to match the two words to make one compound word. 

My students also like the game we call Golpea. In this game, I lay out the cards and call out a word. My students then try to slap the correct cards. In this case, if you call out a compound word there are two words to get. The student with the most cards at the end wins.

I also bought Easter Eggs and created these...

The first part of the word goes on the top and the second one on the bottom. I can now separate the eggs, mix them up, and have my students put them back together again. I can also show them pictures of the compound words and see if they can form the word with the eggs.

Another option for compound words is to call out part of the word and see if your students can tell you the other half. Also, you can call out the words, either the parts or the total compound word, and see if they can draw them.

So have you taught compound words to your students? I would love to hear what you have done. Leave me a comment.

Easter Resources {Spanish for Kids}

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Easter comes early this year at the end of March. So here is a look at resources that are available if you teach Spanish to kids.

First of all, I have a post filled with books related to spring. You can find it here.  Look through the list of books to find ones that might work around Easter time.

Here are some books that are more specific to Easter.



LA Sorpresa De Mama Coneja- This sweet book is about some little bunnies who decide to surprise their mom with eggs from different birds.


The Legend of the Cascaron- A bilingual book on how the tradition of "cascarones" came to be.

Easter is a great time to review emotions and to use eggs as the base for "emotional faces". My absolute favorite book about emotions is Así me siento yo . In the fall, we read this book and do pumpkin faces. During Easter, you can do the same thing but with eggs. {See this free printable.} We read the story and then each student gets an faceless egg page. I call out things like, "El huevo contento" or "El huevo triste", and my students draw the faces. Because this printable has color to it you can make it more difficult by saying, for example, El huevo anaranjado está nervioso.

Here are some fun eggs that can be used in your lesson on emotions. Read this post for teaching ideas.



Emoji Easter Eggs

Goofy Easter Eggs


Egg Face Stickers- You can go to this post to get ideas on how to use stickers in language learning.