Giveaway- Mama Latina Tips

I am always looking for fun material in Spanish for the boys. I have quite a large collection of DVD's, CD's, and books. I am planning to share some of my favorites in an upcoming post since I have been asked by several moms who are teaching their children Spanish too.

Today, however, I am trying to add to my collection by passing on the word that Mama Latina Tips is giving away two Spanish CD's by 1-2-3 Spanish Together™.

I visited their site and listened to a sample of the music and it sounds like something that the boys would love. Head over to Mama Latina Tips to register to win.

Don't try this a home kids.....

Decoding Secret Messages

We rarely go out to eat. Partly because of the cost and partly because eating out with small children can be more of a chore than a treat. Diego, however, is at an age where he can keep himself pretty occupied with the activities on the children's menus. The other day we went for pizza and the menu included a secret message decoding activity. Diego was thrilled because he often is off on a secret mission or a "secreta missión" as he calls it. The next day I recreated this activity for Diego using words and phrases that he recognizes. Below is the first one that we did. Obviously, I wrote the first line after he told me which letter to write and he took off from there. We have done several more since. (He usually writes his name much more clearly. I think that his artistic interpretation of his name was inspired by the symbols.)

Choo-Choo

Mateo loves trains (or as he calls them "Choo-choos"). Lately he has been lining everything (coins, toys, cards) up and calling it a train. This day he lined up some boxes and took his animals for a ride.

Vamos a China (Let's go to China)

For about six months now we have been doing our homeschooling activities based around a theme. For me this works the best for many reasons.

First, I have to find and gather resources and materials. We are very lucky to have a library system with lots of books in Spanish. I have to plan ahead and reserve them, however, because they are spread out among several libraries and would be impossible to find on my own. I also have to look for videos, printables, and websites in Spanish. They are out there, but again, not always easy to find.

Second, I think that the thematic approach allows us to get more indepth with a topic. The boys hear the same new words while we read, play games, color pictures, sing songs, and watch videos.

This past week we did a mix of Valentines activities and China. I had planned to start a new topic today but Diego is still interested in China so we will keep learning more. Isn't that the beauty of homeschool?

Here is a list of activities that we have done or are in the process of doing for our study of China.

Found China on the globe.

Set up chairs and pretended to fly to China.

Learned to write numbers 1-10 in Chinese (picture below)

Coloring pages (Great Wall, Dragons, etc.)

Color-by-numbers dragon (picture below)

Made Chinese Dragon out of toliet paper rolls (picture coming soon)

Made a Panda puppet

Played dominos (idea from Mouse Grows, Mouse Learns)

Made a Great Wall of China out of Legos (also from Mouse Grows, Mouse Learns)

Visited this website many times to learn about Chinese Dragons, Pandas, and Chinese New Year (This is an awesome website IN SPANISH for all of my bilingual buddies who are studying China.)

Diego's numbers are obviously on the right. He wanted to do this over and over again.

This was our first color-by-numbers page. He understood the concept but wanted me to do half of it with him.

Here are our topics since the beginning of the year. I do not allot of specific amount of time to each one. We just learn until we are ready to move on the next topic.

Winter

Penguins/Antartica

Valentines

China

Space (next)

Check out more Geography inspired activities at Children Grow, Children Explore, Children Learn.

Feliz Día de San Valentín

This was one of the best Valentine's Days that I can think of. There are a couple of memories that I want to record here.

1. Diego ask me several times a day leading up to V-day "Cuánto es más que once?" (How much is more than eleven?" I would obviously respond "doce" (twelve.) To which he would reply "Te quiero más que doce." (I love you more than twelve.) To him that is A LOT! :)

2. Diego looked up while he was coloring on Valentine's Day and said "je t'aime" which means "I love you" in French. Smart little sucker. It told me a minute to figure out what he said. His French is already better than mine.

3. Diego was so excited to give me the card that he made me and hid under the bed. It was supposed to be a secret so he told me that it had hearts on it but he couldn't tell me anything else. Oh, and not to look under the bed.

4. Mateo... well Mateo was his usual active, fun-loving, life is a fiesta self. He is such a funny little guy. I know that he is destined to be the life of the party.

5. We spend the afternoon at the Children's Museum where Diego got to see his first IMAX with dinosaurs. The first thing he told me when he got out was that he wasn't scared- which pretty much means he was. Mateo ran (and I mean ran) around and had fun.

6. After dinner we made a chocolate fondue, which the kids, of course, loved.

Valentines Puzzle

Diego LOVES puzzles and his little tag-along brother wants to do everything that big brother does. Diego (understandably) gets very frustrated when Mateo steals his pieces and otherwise destroys the puzzle that D is working on. I made this simple heart puzzle for Mateo to do to give his brother some breathing room.

I folded a large piece of paper several times and I cut out hearts of different sizes. I glued the hearts to a piece of cereal box cardboard to make them thicker.

I glued the red paper with cut-out hearts to a piece of pink paper to make the board.

This ended up being pretty easy for Mateo but he did it several times. His favorite game to play was to put it in all of the wrong spots on purpose and ask me "Aquí?" (Here?) until he landed on the right spot.