Valentine's Day Ideas for Spanish Class

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El Día de San Valentin can be called by many different names depending on which country you are in. It's El Día de los Enamorados (Argentina and Chile), El Día del Amor y La Amistad (Mexico, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador) or El Día del Cariño (Guatemala). Regardless of its name, it's a great time to do some activities surrounding the ideas of love and friendship.

Need some ideas for Valentine's Day to use in your lessons in February? Here's a list of books, games, and ideas!

Books

Adivina Cuánto Te Quiero-A sweet book between a father and son and their love for each other.

El Primer Beso de Froggy-My students love Froggy books! This one is about the gifts and the kiss he receives from Froguilina.

Mi Amor Por Ti-Cute book that uses numbers 1-10 and comparisons like "taller than" and "bigger than".

Oso Cariñoso y La Tarjeta del Día de San Valentin-Story of a bear that has a hard time expressing his feelings.

El Primer San Valentin De Clifford

Activities

El Cupido

Have your students been learning prepositions? This ¿Dónde está el Cupido? drawing activity will help them review. I even modify this and make it into a listening activity instead of a reading one.

Roll and Write

These charts allow your students to practice creating whole sentences with guidance. You will need some dice for the activity. The vocabulary is related to the holiday.

Media Naranja Sentences

I am planning on using this silly sentence game this year with my students. It is based on the idea of "media naranja", the Spanish phrase for "soulmate".

Conversation Hearts Printable

A printable and ideas to go with it.

Valentine Questions and Answers

Using the photo given in this post you can have a question and answer session with your students. I like the fact that the photo is from a Valentine's Day fair in Chile.

Bingo
You could play bingo using Spanish vocabulary instead of English.

Valentine's Day Glyphs
I love these glyphs! Students answer the questions in Spanish by coloring each section of the picture with the color assigned to their answer. These would be great to do and then hang up to display!

Valentine Podcast Activities
These activities are for upper level students (Third year of Spanish in high school and above). All of it is in Spanish!

Extras

Terms of Endearment

I love these lists that Spanish Mama has come up with...terms of endearment for kids and for couples. A great way to add more vocabulary and culture into your lesson!

Conversation Hearts in Spanish

Seasons Activities in Spanish {Free Printable}

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Seasons are hard words to remember in another language. Over the twenty years I have been teaching I find that even though it is only four vocabulary words they can be forgotten quickly. So I was really pleased to come across a book in Spanish that beautifully illustrates the changing of the seasons...

Las 4 Estaciones Desde el Gran Arbol shows the progression of the seasons with a tree in the forest. The animals around it come and go as the year passes. The weather changes. The plants grow and become dormant or die. And during the whole time there is an owl in the tree watching the events around him. The book has cut outs that allows you to see the animals in the tree. There are several activities that you can do as you read the book and then afterwards. Let's take a look...

For my students that can write I have them re-create the four seasons with pictures and words in Spanish. (You can download this page here.)  They can draw in the way a tree would look for each season and then label the squares with the correct word. I also have them add color and weather words related to each season in the appropriate square. Another set of vocabulary that could be added are the months in the appropriate season, but be careful with this! What if you are in the southern hemisphere? This would be a great time to discuss how summer happens in December, January, and February in South America (like in Argentina and Chile).

During the reading of the book you can point out all the animals that are throughout the story. One of the reasons that I love this book is because there are so many animals and they reoccur several times on the different pages. For younger kids, I call out the name of an animal and they can count them. For older kids this is a great time to play Spot It! (the animal version) to review the names of animals. (See here how I use Spot It! as a teaching tool AND game at the same time.)

For more advanced students that know their prepositions, you can do a drawing activity with them. Students start out with a blank piece of paper and you describe a scene with a tree in Spanish that they have to draw. Here's a sample description that could be drawn:

Hay un árbol grande con un sol brillante en el cielo. En el árbol hay dos búhos y tres ardillas. Debajo del árbol, hay una familia de zorros. Un zorro persigue una mariposa. El árbol tiene manzanas en las ramas y un nido lleno de huevos.

Finally, here are some resources that are great for working with the seasons...

Y De Pronto Es Primavera-A sweet story about waiting for spring to come.

Froggy Se Viste- Frogs are not supposed to go out in the snow and play! A story filled with winter words (especially clothing).

Un Recorrido Por Las Estaciones- Scenes from all the seasons with an emphasis on each month.

A simple puzzle for younger kids.  Actually, this concept for be great for kids if you make flashcards. Can they put the objects in the right season?

Finally, I use this vocabulary sorting activity with older students. It's a great way to familiarize them with more words that they need to put into one of the four seasons.

All Things Winter for Spanish Teachers

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Winter is fast approaching so now is the time to get ready with some learning activities that go with the season.

Froggy book and activities- Froggy Se Viste is a great book to share with your younger students during the winter months. There is a ton of clothing vocabulary related to the cold.

Winter books- a list of great books in Spanish to read during December, January, and February.

Of Ice Blocks and Penguins- A cute way to review prepositions.


Polar animals unit- A full unit with books to read, activities to do, and a free printable.

Christmas teaching-Ideas for December!

Christmas gifts for bilingual kids-Ideas for those kids in your life that are learning more than one language. {NOTE: This post also contains ideas for kids that speak languages other than Spanish.}

Froggy Se Viste

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Froggy Se Viste is one of the best books to use in a clothing unit in Spanish. I have used this book repeatedly over the years to introduce and review clothing vocabulary. Let's take a quick look at learning activities you can do with this story...

Although Froggy Se Viste is set during the winter, you can use the book to discuss the four seasons and different weather situations. This cute, printable "Dress-A-Frog" set would be useful as it contains clothes for each season and weather cards. You can have students pick a weather card. In Spanish, you can discuss what the weather is and the potential season. Then you can have the student dress the frog accordingly. After "Froggy" is dressed you can then have students tell you what he is wearing in Spanish. There is also this free set of Froggy with his mom.

Another possibility for this book is to go over body parts. For example, call out an article of clothing that Froggy wears and have your students tell you what body part that piece of clothing is used on. To extend this activity, you can use Mr. Potato Head. See this post on how I use this toy to teach/review body parts and clothes in Spanish. See below for different sets of Mr. Potato Head that have clothing for winter and summer. If you work with Mr. Potato Head you can incorporate reflexive verbs into the activity. You can talk about Froggy using the verbs: vestirse, quitarse, ponerse, mirarse. You can also use those verbs to ask your students questions about what they put on in the morning or in the winter, etc.

With this book, you can add in some science by studying the life cycle of frogs. There are two units on Teachers Pay Teachers that I have used to teach the life cycle and parts of a frog.

Unit 1

Unit 2

Have fun with Froggy!

Teaching Seasons in Spanish

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There are only four, but at times they are really hard to remember. The seasons can be a challenge to learn especially for younger kids. Here are a few teaching ideas for the seasons...

When I teach the seasons and if the students are old enough {junior high and up} I try to give them tips on how to memorize the names. Here are the ideas I use...

El otoño - It sounds similar to the word "autumn".

El invierno - This word actually comes from the word "to hibernate". I also teach my students that it is the "inverse" (opposite of summer). "Invierno" kind of sounds a little like "inverse" so sometimes that helps students remember.

La primavera - Spring comes from two words "prima" (We have words in English like "prime" and "premiere" which refer to "one" or "first") and "vera" (This is similar to the word "green", verde). So basically this word means "first green" which totally fits for spring!

El verano - Summer starts out with "ver" similar to "verde" the season that is all green.

One of the activities we do after I have introduced the seasons and months is to categorize the months into the four seasons. I do this with cards...I have four different pictures of trees to represent the seasons and twelve cards with the months on them. We do it for the northern hemisphere and then talk about the southern hemisphere since there are many Spanish-speaking countries in which the seasons are flipped like Argentina and Chile. Another version of this activity is for my students to categorize clothing and/or weather into the appropriate season.

For older students I have them do this page which lets them work with other vocabulary related to each season.

If you are exploring the seasons with younger kids then children's books are the way to go. Un recorrido por las estaciones covers all the seasons and months. It also has some cool information on the days of the week in the back.

Also, I have several posts on books for each season of the year...

Fall books

Winter books

Spring books 

Just recently I came across a cute book about waiting for spring called Y de pronto la primavera . Well worth the read to young kids!

Summer books

So how do you teach the seasons? I would love to hear your ideas!

Mi Calendario {Teaching Dates, Seasons, and Weather with a Free Printable}

Over my years of teaching Spanish to young kids, I have found that the calendar, seasons, and the weather can be a challenge for them to cement in their brains. It takes a lot of review, and the best way is to talk about it each day for awhile until the concept of the passing of time becomes familiar to them. I recently purchased this calendar at half price and have been using it with my students. I am seriously wondering if I bought the last one available {I know I did from the company I ordered it from}. I wanted to have a smaller take-home version for my parents to be able to use with their kids at home.

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So I created this calendar that reviews yesterday, today, tomorrow, the date, season and weather for the day. You can download it and print it using the link below. {On the screen the page looks off, but print it out and it will be fine.} I then laminated these pages using this laminator {If you are looking for a laminator to use at home this is it! Inexpensive and works really well!!}. By laminating them I can give one copy to each parent and they can have their kids use a dry erase marker to pick the date, days, etc. It can be used over and over again. {Note: Some colored dry erase markers are harder to remove. The black seems the easiest. Also, rubbing alcohol helps the cleaning process.}

So here is the file...There is also a second page with questions in Spanish that parents can use as they review the calendar each day.

Mi Calendario

Here are some more items to use with kids to teach weather and seasons...




Weather and Clothes Puzzle-With this puzzle you can go over clothes, weather, colors, and seasons.




Pink "Mi Calendario"-Similar to the one above that is no longer available.


Laminated Weather Chart in Spanish

Froggy Se Viste

This post is part of a series, 31 Days of Spanish Books for Kids. Please click HERE for the complete list of posts. {Each of these posts contain affiliate links. Thanks for supporting this blog!}

If you are planning on teaching clothing vocabulary to kids then you absolutely need Froggy Se Viste! Not only is there humor in the story line, there is also a ton of vocabulary of clothes. What makes it a great teaching book is that the clothing vocabulary is repeated over and over again in a delightful (not boring) way. In the story, Froggy wakes up in the middle of the winter and decides to go out and play in the snow. Each time he reaches the great outdoors his mom reminds him that he forgot to put something on. So he heads back inside to take off part of the clothing so that he can add the missing article. In the end, it all becomes too much for Froggy, and he decides to go back to bed.

Here is a list of the clothing vocabulary that is in the book:

las medias

las botas

la gorra

la bufanda

los guantes

los pantalones

la camisa

la chaqueta

la ropa interior

This book would also be great to use in a frog unit or to introduce weather and seasons.

There are lots of great Froggy books out there that you can use for teaching purposes. Check them out!

Of Ice Blocks and Penguins {Teaching Prepositions}

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I have been teaching a Polar Animals Unit to my elementary-age students these past two weeks. One of the concepts we have been working on are prepositions which work well with penguins and ice blocks. I have used these free posters to introduce all the vocabulary dealing with prepositions. While showing my students one of the posters I have them recreate the preposition using a toy penguin and a clear tupperware container as the ice block.  This week we will be doing the exercise on paper.  I created a page with numbered ice blocks and bought a bunch of penguin stickers.  I will use these stickers and pages with my students by describing one of the penguins (what they are wearing) and telling them where to put him in relation to one of the ice blocks on the page.  Here are some examples:

Pon el pingüino que tiene un sombrero rojo y azul cerca del bloque número seis.

Pon el pingüino que tiene los esquís y una bufanda anaranjada encima del bloque número uno.

If you would like to read a story related to penguins along with this activity here are a few...

Perdido y Encontrado - My students loved this book when I read it to them last week! I have to admit it is one of my favorites!

Arriba y Abajo - A penguin that wants to fly!

To see my Polar Animal Unit, click here.

Books for Winter in Spanish

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Reading a picture book is a great way to have younger students learn another language. They get the opportunity to hear the language and match it with the pictures. This allows them to make sense of words or concepts they might not otherwise understand.  Since the cold weather is upon us and the holidays will soon arrive, here is a list of great books to read to kids during the cold months:

Una Senora Con Frio Se Trago Un Poco De Nieve!- Follows the plot idea of the old lady who swallowed a fly.

La Mejor Navidad De Froggy - Froggy books are a favorite among my students. This book is no longer in print, but can be found cheaply on the used market. Hibernation is touched on as this is the first Christmas that Froggy has experienced because he is normally sleeping.

Un Dia de Nieve- A classic on the wonders of snow in childhood.

Copos y Cristales: Un Libro Sobre la Nieve - A science book for older elementary kids.

El Invierno -All about winter. More of an informational book.

El Mitón- A classic, but out of print.

¡ Cómo el Grinch robó la Navidad ! -Christmas...Grinch-style.

Estela, Reina de la Nieve- My students and I are loving Estela books! She and her little brother explore the world together. Cute conversations happen between the two of them.

Tren de Invierno - Beautiful book on how the animals escape winter.

Perdido y Encontrado- A penguin gets lost, but is ultimately found.

Oso No Para De Roncar - Bear keeps on snoring.

El Primer Beso de Froggy- Set in late winter (February), this story is for Valentine's Day.

Froggy Se Viste - An extremely humorous book about getting dressed to go out in the snow. This book is great for teaching clothing related to cold weather.

Also, if you are interested in a winter theme I have a post on a polar animals unit here.

Do you have favorite books that you share with your kids during the winter season? I would love to hear your ideas!

Also, here are some books for every season!

Spring Books
Summer Books
Fall Books