Learning the days of the week in Spanish helps children talk about their activities and schedules. The easiest way for teachers to present the days is with daily calendar time, but many of us have class only once or twice a week. Here are a few Spanish days of the week activities that you can adapt to your class schedule or use at home.

Poems for Spanish Days of the Week Activities

Publisher Lee & Low Books recently sent me the wonderful new bilingual picture book Family Poems for Every Day of the Week/ Poemas familiares para cada día de la semana. This beautiful collection of poems in English and Spanish is by Francisco X. Alarcón and illustrated by Maya Christina Gonzalez. You should definitely add this book to your Spanish days of the week activities!

The poems in Family Poems for Every Day of the Week/ Poemas familiares para cada día de la semana center on home, family and school, so the vocabulary is appropriate for language learners. There are several poems for each day of the week, including a short poem about the origin of the name of the day and how it relates to the gods and planets. Most of the poems are in the first person, and young readers will identify with the speaker as he explores weekly routines and how he feels on different days.

These poems lend themselves to many Spanish day of the week activities. In addition to reading and reciting the poems, children love exploring the amazing illustrations and creating their own drawings to illustrate a day of the week. Family Poems for Every Day of the Week/ Poemas familiares para cada día de la semana is available from Lee and Low and on Amazon.

Picture Your Week Calendar

This fall, I made this cut and paste calendar to add to my Spanish days of the week activities. My students needed an activity that would give them lots of repetition of the days and high-frequency verbs in a meaningful, personal context.

I chose small pictures to represent activities I knew my students did regularly, either every day or at least once a week. For example, there are pictures for brushing teeth, reading a story, soccer practice, riding the school bus, going to church etc. I provided a one-week calendar with the days, but no dates. Then, students cut and pasted pictures to show what they did each day. If I didn’t have a picture for an activity, students drew a simple symbol.

I was really happy with how this activity turned out. Also, the kids loved seeing their week in pictures! In addition to saying the days of the week over and over as they made their calendars, we used the calendars to talk about the week when they were done. For example, they could answer questions like ¿Lees cuentos los lunes? ¿Qué haces los martes? ¿Qué día juegas al fútbol? etc. Depending on the level of your students, you could add the first person of the verb with the picture.

You can download a PDF of my week calendar and the clip art I used for the activities. Of course, you will have add clip art for other activities and be sure to add additional houses of worship for all of your students.

Download the La Semana Calendar and the Activity Pictures.

Songs for Spanish Days of the Week Activities

I use several songs for learning the days of the week in Spanish. We sing these before we begin other Spanish days of the week activities so that students are familiar with the vocabulary and pronunciation.

You can listen to my favorite Spanish days of the week songs here. One I like for my younger groups is Los días de la semana by Dámaris Gelabert. This fall I added movement to this song by putting 7 lines on the floor and we jumped through the week as we sang each day. The tempo of the song is perfect! You can hear it in the video below and can download the song from iTunes: Los Días de la Semana – Dámaris Gelabert

Printable Wheel for Spanish Days of the Week Activities

I also use a printable wheel to practice the days of the week in Spanish. I made this years ago, but it works well, so why reinvent the wheel? That was a pun for those of you who are is still reading.

There are several versions of the printable wheel. One has extra vocabulary, and another has verbs. You can find them all in this post: Spanish Days of the Week Printable Wheels.

Spanish Days of the Week Activities with a Calendar

I also use a monthly calendar for a variety of Spanish days of the week activities. With a calendar, you can ask questions such as

¿Cuántos días tiene el mes de…?
¿Qué día de la semana es el primer día del mes de …?
El otoño/invierno/primavera/verano comienza el 21 de ….  ¿Qué día de la semana va a ser?
¿Cuántos días lunes tiene este mes?
¿Cuántos días domingo (u otro día) tiene este mes?
¿El mes de …. tiene más días lunes o más días jueves?
¿Qué día de la semana va a ser el último día del mes de …?
¿Cuántas semanas completas tiene este mes?

Read more about Spanish days of the week and calendar questions and download a Spanish calendar for December.

Do you have favorite Spanish days of the week activities? If you have games, books, or songs you like, please share them with us in the comments below. Thank you!

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This is an easy poem Spanish poem about fall. It is about leaves falling in autumn. I made it up to include the key vocabulary we had been learning and added actions to reinforce the meaning of the words.

Our poetry resource page Spanish Poems for Kids has more poems for children and information about sharing them with language learners.

Preschoolers love dramatic play, and poems like these are an excellent way to encourage it. Include props that you use with simple poems in your dramatic play area. For example, for this Spanish poem about fall, you would have leaves available. You will see children incorporating what they have learned into their dramatic play. Learn more about the benefits of dramatic play.

I call this Spanish poem about fall Yo soy un árbol. You can download a printable of the poem..

My kids like to act out this Spanish poem about fall because they like dropping the leaves. I give each child two leaves. They can be real leaves, paper, or the artificial ones you get at craft stores. I got artificial fall leaves on sale and took them off the plastic branches. They have lasted for years and the bare branches have come in handy for talking about fall, too.

Spanish Poem about Fall with Actions

Soy un árbol. (Arms out like branches, each child holding 2 leaves.)
Tengo hojas. (Wiggle the leaves.)
Viento, viento, viento (Sway from side to side.)
Una hoja se cae. (Stand still and drop one leaf.)
Viento, viento, viento (Sway from side to side.)
Otra hoja se cae. (Stand still and drop the other leaf.)
Soy un árbol. (Arms still out like branches.)
No tengo hojas.

Translation:
I’m a tree.
I have leaves.
Wind, wind, wind.
One leaf falls.
Wind, wind, wind.
Another leaf falls.
I’m a tree.
I don’t have leaves.

You can make up simple Spanish poems for any topic. Then add actions to help them understand the words. There are also many traditional short rhymes that work well with kids learning Spanish. Poems, rhymes and songs are the easiest way for children to begin to produce the language. Reciting and singing they use correct structures and learn lots of vocabulary. Of course, adding actions enhances learning.

Do you have a favorite Spanish poem for fall?

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I love these two short Spanish poems about fall. They are perfect to use with Spanish language learners. The vocabulary is not complicated, and the rhythm helps children read them aloud and recite from memory. You can find more poems for children and information about sharing them with language learners on our poetry resource page Spanish Poems for Kids.

Douglas Wright,  a well-known author and illustrator from Argentina, wrote these two Spanish poems about fall. In addition to his books, he publishes poems on his blog, El jardín de Douglas. He generously gives me permission to share them here.

Follow the links in the titles below to the author’s blog and you will find the illustrations for these Spanish poems about fall.  Douglas Wright illustrates all of his poems. The images make the language easier for children to understand. The drawings clarify and reinforce the Spanish and help parents and teachers talk about the poems with kids learning Spanish.

The illustration for the poem La última hojita del árbol, establishes the setting for the poem. You see the narrator of the poem, the tree, and the last dangling leaf. You can talk about how the leaf might last one more day, but eventually it will fall. This is a perfect tie-in to another of Douglas Wright’s poems, El árbol quedó sin hojas.

This second poem, El árbol quedó sin hojas, also has an wonderful illustration to use with Spanish language learners. The poem mentions el cielo de otoño. The illustration shows this sky and helps children answer the question ¿cómo es el cielo de otoño?  In fact, the illustration is a complete visual representation of the poem.

Both of these poems about fall create strong mental images and combine them with clear, concise Spanish language. Children may well find similar images in their own world. The poems give them the language to describe them.

2 Spanish Poems about Fall

La última hojita del árbol

La última hojita del árbol
¿caerá o no caerá?
Yo creo que, si no hay viento,
un día más quedará.

El árbol quedó sin hojas

El árbol quedó sin hojas,
las ramas no tienen nada,
y contra un cielo de otoño:
sólo las ramas peladas.

You may also be interested in reading Spanish Poem about Fall: Dramatic Play and Printable.

Photo Credit: chrisbb@prodigy.net via Compfight cc

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One of the biggest challenges elementary and middle-school Spanish teachers face is finding quality content at the right level. Pomelo Books has published a wonderful anthology of Spanish poems for kids. The Poetry Friday Anthology for Celebrations is an amazing resource for teachers and parents.

Be sure to check out our poetry resource page Spanish Poems for Kids.  It has more poems for children and information about sharing them with language learners. Also visit our Spanish Books for Kids Resource Page for reviews and activities for picture books.

Poetry Friday started in 2006 as a way to allow children to enjoy poetry on a regular basis. To that end, Janet Wong and Sylvia Vardell have published several anthologies of poems for children in elementary school and middle school.

Their new book, The Poetry Friday Anthology for Celebrations, is dual language, with 156 poems in English and 156 poems in Spanish. If you are looking for Spanish language material to use with children in class or at home, you are going to love this book!

In addition, audio tracks, in both English and Spanish, are available for 35 poems from this wonderful book. The poem recordings were made by David Bowles, Pura Belpré Honor Book winner for The Smoking Mirror, and a dozen of his students from the University of Texas, Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV). This is a fabulous resource for language learners!

The audio is on Soundcloud and you can find them here: Bilingual Poem Performances from The Poetry Friday Anthology for Celebrations

Anthology of Spanish Poems for Kids

These are a few of the features of The Poetry Friday Anthology for Celebrations that make the Spanish poems for kids an excellent choice for language learners.

• The poems are short, accessible and interesting. This poetry is meant to be enjoyed by children ages 4-12. It is wonderfully appropriate for Spanish learners.
• There are Spanish poems for kids to fit every theme. The editors have tapped into dates to include relevant topics from the first day of spring to National Pet Week to World Egg Day. You can share the Spanish poems for kids in any order. I guarantee you will find material to fit your curriculum.
• The poems have an impressive cultural component to share with Spanish learners. In addition to poems about celebrations such as Día de Reyes and Día de los Muertos, you will find poems about pan dulce, piñatas and more.
• The content reflects our diversity. The poems include and embrace a wide range of ethnicities, religions and experiences. Children will find themselves and their classmates in this poetry.
• An amazing group of poets contributed to the collection. The anthology includes poems by award-winning authors Alma Flor Ada, Jorge Argueta, Margarita Engle, Pat Mora, Jack Prelutsky, Kenn Nesbitt, Marilyn Singer and many, many more.
• The Teacher/Librarian edition has a Take 5! mini-lesson for each poem. These 5 tips include suggestions for reading the poem aloud, ideas for engaging kids in reading the poem aloud, a discussion topic, a suggested picture book, and related poem titles.

The editors have generously given me permission to share a poem from the anthology here.  While all the Spanish poems for kids are different and one poem can not represent an anthology, I do think this poem captures the tone of the collection. It will also give you an idea of the language level.

Día familiar
por Francisco X. Alarcón

el día domingo
lo pasamos en casa
de nuestros abuelitos

junto con tíos y tías
muchos primitos
parientes y amigos

mientras los niños
nos ponemos a jugar
pelota en el jardín

los adultos por horas
comen y charlan todos
a la vez pero callan

cuando Abuelito cuenta
cómo un domingo conoció
a Abuelita en México

su cara entonces
reluce una sonrisa
radiante como el Sol

I recently had the pleasure of hearing Eric McHenry, the poet Laureate of Kansas, speak as part of a 100 Thousand Poets for Change celebration. He pointed out that often we are not patient enough with poetry. We listen to many songs and read many books. When we come across one we don’t like, we don’t declare that we do not like music or novels.

Children deserve the same repeated exposure to poetry that we give them to other forms of art. The Poetry Friday Anthology for Celebrations makes it easy for teachers and parents to offer exactly that, with the confidence that children will find poems that speak to them.

I encourage you to make these Spanish poems for kids part of your routine. The Poetry Friday Anthology for Celebrations will give you more language and content to share with children learning Spanish than any other purchase you can make. For more information and updates, follow Pomelo Books on Twitter and Facebook.

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I recently wrote about The Poetry Friday Anthology for Celebrations published by Pomelo Books. This wonderful collection has 156 poems in English and in Spanish. The poems are for children ages 4-12 and cover a wide variety of topics. The book is perfect for a school, class or home library.

The Poetry Friday Anthology for Celebrations provides teachers and parents with poetry to read with children learning Spanish. The poems are short and focused, with vocabulary related to a specific topic. They are also concrete enough to be used successfully with language learners.  Read more about The Poetry Friday Anthology for Celebrations here.

Pomelo Books is very generously giving 10 copies of the Teachers/Librarian edition of The Poetry Friday Anthology for Celebrations to Spanish Playground readers. Enter the giveaway using the Rafflecopter below. Read the official giveaway rules here.

It is one of those conversations I can’t forget, although I wish I could. Don’t you ever do anything with ideas?  I was doing my student teaching. An English teacher asked me that question – Don’t you ever do anything with ideas? – as we stood chatting at the copy machine. Taken aback, I reassured her that of course we did. Inside, though, I cringed, because it wasn’t true.

If only I had been using The Poetry Friday Anthology for Celebrations! I imagine my confident answer: Of course! We use poetry to work with all kinds of ideas. The poems relate to the National Social Studies Standards and themes, so we talk about culture, power, global connections, science, you know, so many important concepts.

The Poetry Friday Anthology for Celebrations did not exist then, and I doubt the answer I gave was very convincing.  Now though, things are different. I am so happy that this book is available, along with many other excellent materials. Language teaching keeps getting better!

Be sure to enter the giveaway to win a copy of The Poetry Friday Anthology for Celebrations. For more information and updates, follow Pomelo Books on Twitter and Facebook. They also have an excellent Pinterest board with poems that you may want to follow.

Win The Poetry Friday Anthology for Celebrations!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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Recetas graciosas y saludables by Graciela Castellanos has simple recipes in Spanish. Best of all, these recipes are extension activities for short poems. The poems and recipes in Spanish have illustrations and photos, making the book a wonderful language learning resource. Recetas graciosas y saludables is published by Languages4Kidz.com.

In the photo below, you can see the four related components: poem, illustration, recipe and photo.

There are two kinds of readings in this book, poems and recipes. The two are related in that the recipe is for a snack that represents a key element of the poem. The two types of readings use different types of vocabulary, are at different levels of difficulty and let children practice different skills.

The poems are at a range of difficulty with themes that are familiar to kids, such as ants, pirates, and the moon and stars. All of the poems have illustrations to support language learners. For beginning learners, talking about the illustration provides an excellent alternative to reading the more difficult poems.

Recetas graciosas y saludables has kid-friendly, nutritious snacks. The simple, no-cook recipes in Spanish are perfect for beginning readers and cooks. Talking about the photo first will help kids with both reading and cooking. It also makes a great follow-up as kids compare their results to the picture. Eating the snack is the ideal opportunity to re-read the poem and talk about the illustration again. This is wonderful hands-on language learning. Kids will love it!

A Book of Recipes in Spanish: The Essentials

Recetas graciosas y saludables by Graciela Castellanos

The poems in Spanish
– have basic themes.
– are at a range of difficulty.
– have illustrations that support the language.

The recipes in Spanish
– use basic ingredients and vocabulary.
– are a fun, hands-on activity.
– have photos to support the ingredients and instructions.

The snacks
– represent something in the poem
– are nutritious
– are super cute!

Languages4Kidz publishes curricula for both elementary Spanish and English learners. They also publish many content-rich Spanish picture books written by Graciela Castellanos. The Languages4Kidz Spanish picture books correspond to thematic units included in most elementary curricula. You can learn more about the Languages4Kidz picture books in this post.

Visit the Languages4Kidz website to learn about all of their elementary Spanish learning materials.

You can follow Languages4Kidz on Facebook.

Disclosure: The company sent me a copy of this product to be able to write the article. I may have been compensated for my time. All of the ideas and opinions are my own.

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Douglas Wright writes short poems for children. Many of them are at a perfect level for language learners. His poetry revolves around daily experiences as children interact with the natural world. Kids will relate to these two poems about night. I love Spanish poems for summer reading!

Be sure to check out our poetry resource page Spanish Poems for Kids.  It has more poems for children and information about sharing them with language learners.

I like these Spanish poems for summer reading because most kids will be familiar with moon-lit nights and star-filled skies. The poems have familiar vocabulary and are short enough that kids approach them with confidence. Many thanks to Douglas Wright for allowing me to share his poems on Spanish Playground.

Two Spanish Poems for Summer Reading

The first poem is called Bajo la luna. You can find an illustration of the poem on El Jardín de Douglas by clicking on the title below. This is a wonderful poem for children to practice reading aloud and to memorize.

The structure of this poem makes it easy to use. The first two and last two lines frame the middle lines. The first lines establish a general setting. The third and fourth lines mention elements of the landscape – they are the todos in the first line. Readers build a mental picture as the poem adds elements.

Kids today are very familiar with cameras and video. Point out that the poem starts with a wide angle, zooms in, and zooms out again.

Children can use this structure as a model to write their own poems. They can start with a general view, then give specific examples, and then repeat the more general statement.

Bajo la luna
Todos callados,
bajo la luna;
el bosque, el lago,
el cerro, el monte,
bajo la luna,
todos callados.

The second poem is El brillo de las estrellas.  You can find an illustration of the poem on El Jardín de Douglas by clicking on the title below.

This poem is a comparison of fireworks and the stars. Many Spanish learners in the U.S. learn the word cohete for fireworks, so be sure they are also familiar with fuegos artificiales.

Again, children can use the structure of this poem to write their own comparison poems. This is also fun to do as a class. The second and fourth lines rhyme, so you can use the poem to talk about rhyming words.

El brillo de las estrellas
Mejor que todos los fuegos
que llaman artificiales,
el brillo de las estrellas,
esos fuegos naturales.

Illustrating Spanish Poems for Summer Nights

Illustrating the poems is a simple and fun way to reinforce vocabulary. Try using colored chalk on black construction paper. It is a satisfying and easy way to create a night sky.

Photo Credit: DncnH via Compfight cc

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Learning the days of the week in Spanish helps children talk about their activities and schedules. The easiest way for teachers to present the days is with daily calendar time, but many of us have class only once or twice a week. Here are a few Spanish days of the week activities that you can adapt to your class schedule or use at home.

Be sure to check out our other Spanish for Kids vocabulary activities arranged by theme. We have lots of ideas and materials to use in your Spanish lessons.

Video for Days of the Week in Spanish

When you’re introducing the days of the week in Spanish, it helps kids to hear them repeatedly in context. Try this Kids Learn Spanish Habla video where Pamela takes about her week using high-frequency language.  You can also check out our YouTube playlist of videos and songs to learn the days of the week in Spanish.

Poems for Spanish Days of the Week Activities

Publisher Lee & Low Books recently sent me the wonderful new bilingual picture book Family Poems for Every Day of the Week/ Poemas familiares para cada día de la semana. This beautiful collection of poems in English and Spanish is by Francisco X. Alarcón and illustrated by Maya Christina Gonzalez. You should definitely add this book to your Spanish days of the week activities!

The poems in Family Poems for Every Day of the Week/ Poemas familiares para cada día de la semana center on home, family and school, so the vocabulary is appropriate for language learners. There are several poems for each day of the week, including a short poem about the origin of the name of the day and how it relates to the gods and planets. Most of the poems are in the first person, and young readers will identify with the speaker as he explores weekly routines and how he feels on different days.

These poems lend themselves to many Spanish day of the week activities. In addition to reading and reciting the poems, children love exploring the amazing illustrations and creating their own drawings to illustrate a day of the week. Family Poems for Every Day of the Week/ Poemas familiares para cada día de la semana is available from Lee and Low and on Amazon.

Picture Your Week Calendar

This fall, I made this cut and paste calendar to add to my Spanish days of the week activities. My students needed an activity that would give them lots of repetition of the days and high-frequency verbs in a meaningful, personal context.

I chose small pictures to represent activities I knew my students did regularly, either every day or at least once a week. For example, there are pictures for brushing teeth, reading a story, soccer practice, riding the school bus, going to church etc. I provided a one-week calendar with the days, but no dates. Then, students cut and pasted pictures to show what they did each day. If I didn’t have a picture for an activity, students drew a simple symbol.

I was really happy with how this activity turned out. Also, the kids loved seeing their week in pictures! In addition to saying the days of the week over and over as they made their calendars, we used the calendars to talk about the week when they were done. For example, they could answer questions like ¿Lees cuentos los lunes? ¿Qué haces los martes? ¿Qué día juegas al fútbol? etc. Depending on the level of your students, you could add the first person of the verb with the picture.

You can download a PDF of my week calendar and the clip art I used for the activities. Of course, you will have add clip art for other activities and be sure to add additional houses of worship for all of your students.

Download the La Semana Calendar and the Activity Pictures.

Songs for Spanish Days of the Week Activities

I use several songs for learning the days of the week in Spanish. We sing these before we begin other Spanish days of the week activities so that students are familiar with the vocabulary and pronunciation.

You can listen to my favorite Spanish days of the week songs here. One I like for my younger groups is Los días de la semana by Dámaris Gelabert. This fall I added movement to this song by putting 7 lines on the floor and we jumped through the week as we sang each day. The tempo of the song is perfect! You can hear it in the video below and can download the song from iTunes: Los Días de la Semana – Dámaris Gelabert

Printable Wheel for Spanish Days of the Week Activities

I also use a printable wheel to practice the days of the week in Spanish. I made this years ago, but it works well, so why reinvent the wheel? That was a pun for those of you who are is still reading.

There are several versions of the printable wheel. One has extra vocabulary, and another has verbs. You can find them all in this post: Spanish Days of the Week Printable Wheels.

Spanish Days of the Week Activities with a Calendar

I also use a monthly calendar for a variety of Spanish days of the week activities. With a calendar, you can ask questions such as

¿Cuántos días tiene el mes de…?
¿Qué día de la semana es el primer día del mes de …?
El otoño/invierno/primavera/verano comienza el 21 de ….  ¿Qué día de la semana va a ser?
¿Cuántos días lunes tiene este mes?
¿Cuántos días domingo (u otro día) tiene este mes?
¿El mes de …. tiene más días lunes o más días jueves?
¿Qué día de la semana va a ser el último día del mes de …?
¿Cuántas semanas completas tiene este mes?

Read more about Spanish days of the week and calendar questions and download a Spanish calendar for December.

Do you have favorite Spanish days of the week activities? If you have games, books, or songs you like, please share them with us in the comments below. Thank you!

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One of my favorite activities with children learning Spanish is to act out short dramatic poems. Here are two Spanish Thanksgiving poems we recite and act out in November.

You can also find poems about other themes on our poetry resource page Spanish Poems for Kids.

I made up these Spanish Thanksgiving poems to include the key vocabulary we are learning and added actions to reinforce the meaning of the words. You can write simple poems like this about any content.

The first of the Spanish Thanksgiving poems is about a turkey. It has actions and we all say recite it and act it out together. The second of the Spanish Thanksgiving poems is for two voices. In other words, it’s a little conversation.

Preschoolers love dramatic play, so I make the props we use with these Spanish Thanksgiving poems available for free play. I love seeing them incorporating what they have learned into their creative play! Early Childhood News has information and tips for dramatic play if you’d like to read more.

You can find another fall poem in Spanish to act out here: Spanish Poem About Fall: Dramatic Play and Printable

Check out more resources for celebrating Thanksgiving with Spanish learners.

Spanish Thanksgiving Poems: Soy un pavo

My students love to act out animals. As they act out this poem, they walk, eat and talk like a turkey.

We make a turkey tail prop by gluing construction paper feathers to a wedge of paper plate. The kids hold the tail behind them for the entire poem and rustle their feathers (move them) when they say Tengo una cola.

You can download a printable of this Spanish Thanksgiving poem:
Soy un pavo – Thanksgiving Poem in Spanish.

Soy un pavo (with actions)

Soy un pavo.  (both hands behind back holding tail)
Tengo una cola. (move the tail like rustling feathers)
Camino así.  (walk like a turkey 3-4 steps – lift feet high, bob head)

Soy un pavo.
Tengo una cola. (move the tail like rustling feathers)
Camino así (walk like a turkey 3-4 steps – lift feet high, bob head)
Y como así. (lower head and pretend to eat).

Soy un pavo.
Tengo una cola. (move the tail like rustling feathers)
Camino así. (walk like a turkey 3-4 steps – lift feet high, bob head)
Y como así. (lower head and pretend to eat).
Y hablo así: gluglú, gluglú. (move around randomly and gobble at each other)

Spanish Thanksgiving Poems: La cena

This poem is a conversation, so we do it in pairs, and all the Speaker 1 students speak together and all the Speaker 2 students speak together. The two groups alternate the first 8 lines. The last two lines everyone says together.

The setting of this poem is Thanksgiving dinner, and Speaker 1 passes food to Speaker 2. So, you will want kids sitting or standing beside each other. We use picture cards for the food, but if you have enough play food, that would be really fun.

You can easily change the food items in this poem. I use these words because I teach them, but there are endless possibilities.

For the two syllable words papas and pavo, you could use anything that has the same stress pattern like pasta, sopa, fruta, agua, leche, huevos, queso etc. ¿Y verduras? can be replaced by y and a 3-syllable word (¿Y manzanas?) or a single 4-syllable word (¿Ensalada?).

Get a printable version of the Thanksgiving poem in Spanish and the picture cards: La cena – Spanish Thanksgiving Poem and Picture Cards.

La cena

(1) ¿Quieres papas? (offers potatoes)

(2) Sí, gracias. (takes potatoes)

(1) ¿Quieres pavo? (offers turkey)

(2)  ¡Qué rico! (takes turkey)

(1) ¿Y verduras? (offers vegetables)

(2)  ¡Me gustan! (takes vegetables)

(1) ¿Pan? (offers bread)

(2) Un poquito. (takes bread)

(together)
Amigos, familia y buena comida.
Damos las gracias por este día.

Spanish Thankgiving Video

Of course, Thanksgiving isn’t only about turkey and food. It is about being thankful for what we have. This short Thanksgiving video is an excellent way to introduce the concept of dar gracias to kids learning Spanish.

Little poems like these are terrific language activities, and I enjoy them as much as my students. Dramatic play is fun! Let us know if you try these Spanish Thanksgiving poems or if you have favorite activities to celebrate Thanksgiving in Spanish class.

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Spanish tongue twisters, or trabalenguas, are authentic language and packed with culture. Try learning a new tongue twister in Spanish for Hispanic Heritage Month! Also be sure to check out the amazing collection of Hispanic Heritage Month resources below.

Tongue twisters are a fun cultural connection. They are also short, with rhyme and rhythm, so kids love them. But how do we make them useful for Spanish learners? A language has to be meaningful for kids to learn. That is the catch with Spanish tongue twisters.

Tongue twisters play with sound, so meaning is secondary. For native speakers, that is part of the fun. However, my students have limited exposure to Spanish, so I need to use that exposure to maximum benefit.  As teachers, if we share Spanish tongue twisters, we need to make sure students understand them and can use the language in other contexts.

Is it worth the trouble? I think so! Spanish tongue twisters are fun, a good way to practice pronunciation, and a great way to expose kids to more culture.

Tongue Twisters for Pronunciation

Tongue twisters give kids a reason to pronounce the same sounds over and over. One of the drawbacks, that kids are not communicating information, actually makes tongue twisters useful for this very specific purpose.  Students can focus on sound and pronunciation, which is something we often don’t take time to do in class.

For example, the letter t in Spanish is different than in English – it is dental, so the tip of the tongue goes right behind your teeth. With the classic tongue twister Tres tristes tigres tragaban trigo en un trigal, kids can focus on getting their tongue in the right place, and also practice the flap of the single r.

Spanish tongue twisters also give kids practice with repeated vowel sounds. Pronouncing vowels correctly is essential to being understood in Spanish.

And of course, there are whole tongue twisters created specifically for learning to roll your Rs. There are many versions featuring guitarra, cigarro, barril, carros, and ferrocarril in combinations with the verb rodar and rápido. This is just one short example: R con R guitarra, R con R barril, qué rápido ruedan las ruedas del ferrocarril.

Pakapaka, an educational TV channel from Argentina, has some excellent videos of kids trying to say orginal tongue twisters. Here’s an example of Pakapaka’s trabalenguas Escandalosos escultores se esconden en esquinas a escupir escorpiones.

Make Spanish Tongue Twisters Meaningful

Pictures For Clarification

One of the best ways to clarify the meaning of Spanish tongue twisters is with pictures.  I included two tongue twisters in Season 2 of our YouTube series Buena gente.

In the show, Alejandro is learning tongue twisters and has pictures to share with his students. You can see them in the video below.  The first tongue twister is the classic Tres tristes tigres tragaban trigo en un trigal. There are longer versions of this tongue twister, but this first line is a great place to start.

We made the image for the series, to clarify the words in the trabalenguas. I’m sharing a version here with Spanish Playground readers, too. There is a PDF in color and another in black and white for kids to color.

Get the Tres tristes tigres printable in black and white.

Get the Tres tristes tigres printable in color.

Questions to Build Context

One of the ways to make Spanish language meaningful it to treat them as real language. Explore the content, instead of just playing with the sound.

For example, in the case of Tres tristes tigres tragaban trigo en un trigal, we have to ask ¿Por qué están tristes los tigres? It is also logical to wonder why the tigers are eating wheat!

You can see Sandra ask these questions as she thinks about this Spanish tongue twister in Episode 2 below. The relevant content is in the first minute of the video.

Tongue Twisters as Cultural Content

There is no doubt that many Spanish tongue twisters are culturally relevant, and that is another reason to share them with students. Treating the them as real language and exploring the content give us the opportunity to tap into the culture.

For example, the other tongue twister in Season 2 of Buena gente is about coconut. Coconut grows in many Spanish-speaking countries, along with other tropical fruits. The tongue twister says Como poco coco como, poco coco compro.

To expands on the cultural component, it makes sense to explore how people in these countries use coconut and the other fruits they buy and eat.

You can see a good example in Episode 3 below. The relevant content is in the first minute of the video.

Choosing Spanish Tongue Twisters for Language Learners

Spanish tongue twisters are fun, so I do think it’s worth choosing a few to use with Spanish learners. Again, because I have limited time with my students, I choose Spanish tongue twisters that lend themselves to pictures, questions and conversations.

First, I look for trabalenguas with concrete, familiar language. This is because I have an easier time representing them with images. Also, if the language is familiar it means it is something they will use in other contexts.

Next, I decide whether to use just part of the tongue twister, rather than teaching the whole trabalenguas. Some of them are long, and shorter segments are meaningful. With those Spanish tongue twisters, I use a relatively short segment and the kids repeat it. That is the case with Tres tristes tigres tragaban trigo en un trigal and Como poco coco como, poco coco compro.

With other Spanish tongue twisters, the meaning depends on using the entire trabalenguas. Because meaningful language is my priority, I teach the entire tongue twister. That is the case with Pancha plancha.

Pancha plancha con cuatro planchas.
¿Con cuántas planchas Pancha plancha?

For this tongue twister, I usually have to teach noun plancha and the verb planchar. I have also had to explain the action itself – in today’s world of knit and wrinkle-free fabrics, not all kids know what ironing is!

This tongue twister also lends itself to a discussion of gender roles. You can talk about housework and who traditionally had responsibility for which tasks. This makes a great review of house vocabulary.

Spanish Tongue Twister Book

In his picture book El torneo de trabalenguas / The Tongue Twister Tournament, author Nicolás Kanellos offers a wonderful selection of Spanish tongue twisters. The author also makes these rhymes accessible to language learners by creating a context for reading and practicing Spanish tongue twisters.

The characters in El torneo de trabalenguas / The Tongue Twister Tournament participate in a tongue twister contest where “el mejor torturador de nuestras lenguas” wins. In other words, the story incorporates the idea that readers will say the trabalenguas and decide which is the most difficult.

You can read more about the book and find suggested activities here: Spanish Tongue Twisters: Book and Activities

How do you use Spanish tongue twisters in class? We would also love to learn new tongue twisters, so if you have favorites, please let us know.

Be sure to check out these other ways to celebrate Latino culture during Hispanic Heritage Month!

We are so excited for our eighth annual Hispanic Heritage Month series! Now through October 15, you’ll find great resources to share Hispanic Heritage with kids, plus you can link up your own posts on Hispanic Heritage!

Find even more ideas on our Latin America Pinterest board.

September 16
Pura Vida Moms on Multicultural Kid Blogs: Celebrating Latino Culture

September 17
Discovering the World Through My Son’s Eyes: Julia de Burgos, Puerto Rico’s Most Famous Latina Poet

September 18

Hispanic Mama: Raising Kids to Be Proud of Their Latino Heritage

September 19
Spanish Playground

September 20
MommyMaestra

September 23
Kids Spanish Book Club

September 24
Embracing Diversity

September 25
el Mundo de Pepita

September 26
Little Nómadas

September 27
De Su Mama

September 30
Baby Devotions

October 1
For the Love of Spanish

October 2
Tiny Tapping Toes

October 3
LadydeeLG

October 4
Bicultural Familia

October 7
Spanish Mama

October 8
The Multilingual Home

October 9
Bookworms and Owls

October 10
Jeddah Mom

October 11
Pretty Mama Breastfeeding

October 14
Multicultural Kid Blogs

October 15
Maritere Bellas

Don’t miss all of the great posts from previous years as well: 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018.

The post Spanish Tongue Twisters for Kids appeared first on Spanish Playground.

This is an easy poem Spanish poem about fall. It is about leaves falling in autumn. I made it up to include the key vocabulary we had been learning and added actions to reinforce the meaning of the words.

Our poetry resource page Spanish Poems for Kids has more poems for children and information about sharing them with language learners.

Preschoolers love dramatic play, and poems like these are an excellent way to encourage it. Include props that you use with simple poems in your dramatic play area. For example, for this Spanish poem about fall, you would have leaves available. You will see children incorporating what they have learned into their dramatic play. Learn more about the benefits of dramatic play.

I call this Spanish poem about fall Yo soy un árbol. You can download a printable of the poem..

My kids like to act out this Spanish poem about fall because they like dropping the leaves. I give each child two leaves. They can be real leaves, paper, or the artificial ones you get at craft stores. I got artificial fall leaves on sale and took them off the plastic branches. They have lasted for years and the bare branches have come in handy for talking about fall, too.

Spanish Poem about Fall with Actions

Soy un árbol. (Arms out like branches, each child holding 2 leaves.)
Tengo hojas. (Wiggle the leaves.)
Viento, viento, viento (Sway from side to side.)
Una hoja se cae. (Stand still and drop one leaf.)
Viento, viento, viento (Sway from side to side.)
Otra hoja se cae. (Stand still and drop the other leaf.)
Soy un árbol. (Arms still out like branches.)
No tengo hojas.

Translation:
I’m a tree.
I have leaves.
Wind, wind, wind.
One leaf falls.
Wind, wind, wind.
Another leaf falls.
I’m a tree.
I don’t have leaves.

You can make up simple Spanish poems for any topic. Then add actions to help them understand the words. There are also many traditional short rhymes that work well with kids learning Spanish. Poems, rhymes and songs are the easiest way for children to begin to produce the language. Reciting and singing they use correct structures and learn lots of vocabulary. Of course, adding actions enhances learning.

Do you have a favorite Spanish poem for fall?

The post Spanish Poem about Fall: Dramatic Play and Printable appeared first on Spanish Playground.

I love these two short Spanish poems about fall. They are perfect to use with Spanish language learners. The vocabulary is not complicated, and the rhythm helps children read them aloud and recite from memory. You can find more poems for children and information about sharing them with language learners on our poetry resource page Spanish Poems for Kids.

Douglas Wright,  a well-known author and illustrator from Argentina, wrote these two Spanish poems about fall. In addition to his books, he publishes poems on his blog, El jardín de Douglas. He generously gives me permission to share them here.

Follow the links in the titles below to the author’s blog and you will find the illustrations for these Spanish poems about fall.  Douglas Wright illustrates all of his poems. The images make the language easier for children to understand. The drawings clarify and reinforce the Spanish and help parents and teachers talk about the poems with kids learning Spanish.

The illustration for the poem La última hojita del árbol, establishes the setting for the poem. You see the narrator of the poem, the tree, and the last dangling leaf. You can talk about how the leaf might last one more day, but eventually it will fall. This is a perfect tie-in to another of Douglas Wright’s poems, El árbol quedó sin hojas.

This second poem, El árbol quedó sin hojas, also has an wonderful illustration to use with Spanish language learners. The poem mentions el cielo de otoño. The illustration shows this sky and helps children answer the question ¿cómo es el cielo de otoño?  In fact, the illustration is a complete visual representation of the poem.

Both of these poems about fall create strong mental images and combine them with clear, concise Spanish language. Children may well find similar images in their own world. The poems give them the language to describe them.

2 Spanish Poems about Fall

La última hojita del árbol

La última hojita del árbol
¿caerá o no caerá?
Yo creo que, si no hay viento,
un día más quedará.

El árbol quedó sin hojas

El árbol quedó sin hojas,
las ramas no tienen nada,
y contra un cielo de otoño:
sólo las ramas peladas.

You may also be interested in reading Spanish Poem about Fall: Dramatic Play and Printable.

Photo Credit: chrisbb@prodigy.net via Compfight cc

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One of the biggest challenges elementary and middle-school Spanish teachers face is finding quality content at the right level. Pomelo Books has published a wonderful anthology of Spanish poems for kids. The Poetry Friday Anthology for Celebrations is an amazing resource for teachers and parents.

Be sure to check out our poetry resource page Spanish Poems for Kids.  It has more poems for children and information about sharing them with language learners. Also visit our Spanish Books for Kids Resource Page for reviews and activities for picture books.

Poetry Friday started in 2006 as a way to allow children to enjoy poetry on a regular basis. To that end, Janet Wong and Sylvia Vardell have published several anthologies of poems for children in elementary school and middle school.

Their new book, The Poetry Friday Anthology for Celebrations, is dual language, with 156 poems in English and 156 poems in Spanish. If you are looking for Spanish language material to use with children in class or at home, you are going to love this book!

In addition, audio tracks, in both English and Spanish, are available for 35 poems from this wonderful book. The poem recordings were made by David Bowles, Pura Belpré Honor Book winner for The Smoking Mirror, and a dozen of his students from the University of Texas, Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV). This is a fabulous resource for language learners!

The audio is on Soundcloud and you can find them here: Bilingual Poem Performances from The Poetry Friday Anthology for Celebrations

Anthology of Spanish Poems for Kids

These are a few of the features of The Poetry Friday Anthology for Celebrations that make the Spanish poems for kids an excellent choice for language learners.

• The poems are short, accessible and interesting. This poetry is meant to be enjoyed by children ages 4-12. It is wonderfully appropriate for Spanish learners.
• There are Spanish poems for kids to fit every theme. The editors have tapped into dates to include relevant topics from the first day of spring to National Pet Week to World Egg Day. You can share the Spanish poems for kids in any order. I guarantee you will find material to fit your curriculum.
• The poems have an impressive cultural component to share with Spanish learners. In addition to poems about celebrations such as Día de Reyes and Día de los Muertos, you will find poems about pan dulce, piñatas and more.
• The content reflects our diversity. The poems include and embrace a wide range of ethnicities, religions and experiences. Children will find themselves and their classmates in this poetry.
• An amazing group of poets contributed to the collection. The anthology includes poems by award-winning authors Alma Flor Ada, Jorge Argueta, Margarita Engle, Pat Mora, Jack Prelutsky, Kenn Nesbitt, Marilyn Singer and many, many more.
• The Teacher/Librarian edition has a Take 5! mini-lesson for each poem. These 5 tips include suggestions for reading the poem aloud, ideas for engaging kids in reading the poem aloud, a discussion topic, a suggested picture book, and related poem titles.

The editors have generously given me permission to share a poem from the anthology here.  While all the Spanish poems for kids are different and one poem can not represent an anthology, I do think this poem captures the tone of the collection. It will also give you an idea of the language level.

Día familiar
por Francisco X. Alarcón

el día domingo
lo pasamos en casa
de nuestros abuelitos

junto con tíos y tías
muchos primitos
parientes y amigos

mientras los niños
nos ponemos a jugar
pelota en el jardín

los adultos por horas
comen y charlan todos
a la vez pero callan

cuando Abuelito cuenta
cómo un domingo conoció
a Abuelita en México

su cara entonces
reluce una sonrisa
radiante como el Sol

I recently had the pleasure of hearing Eric McHenry, the poet Laureate of Kansas, speak as part of a 100 Thousand Poets for Change celebration. He pointed out that often we are not patient enough with poetry. We listen to many songs and read many books. When we come across one we don’t like, we don’t declare that we do not like music or novels.

Children deserve the same repeated exposure to poetry that we give them to other forms of art. The Poetry Friday Anthology for Celebrations makes it easy for teachers and parents to offer exactly that, with the confidence that children will find poems that speak to them.

I encourage you to make these Spanish poems for kids part of your routine. The Poetry Friday Anthology for Celebrations will give you more language and content to share with children learning Spanish than any other purchase you can make. For more information and updates, follow Pomelo Books on Twitter and Facebook.

The post Spanish Poems for Kids: The Poetry Friday Anthology for Celebrations appeared first on Spanish Playground.

I recently wrote about The Poetry Friday Anthology for Celebrations published by Pomelo Books. This wonderful collection has 156 poems in English and in Spanish. The poems are for children ages 4-12 and cover a wide variety of topics. The book is perfect for a school, class or home library.

The Poetry Friday Anthology for Celebrations provides teachers and parents with poetry to read with children learning Spanish. The poems are short and focused, with vocabulary related to a specific topic. They are also concrete enough to be used successfully with language learners.  Read more about The Poetry Friday Anthology for Celebrations here.

Pomelo Books is very generously giving 10 copies of the Teachers/Librarian edition of The Poetry Friday Anthology for Celebrations to Spanish Playground readers. Enter the giveaway using the Rafflecopter below. Read the official giveaway rules here.

It is one of those conversations I can’t forget, although I wish I could. Don’t you ever do anything with ideas?  I was doing my student teaching. An English teacher asked me that question – Don’t you ever do anything with ideas? – as we stood chatting at the copy machine. Taken aback, I reassured her that of course we did. Inside, though, I cringed, because it wasn’t true.

If only I had been using The Poetry Friday Anthology for Celebrations! I imagine my confident answer: Of course! We use poetry to work with all kinds of ideas. The poems relate to the National Social Studies Standards and themes, so we talk about culture, power, global connections, science, you know, so many important concepts.

The Poetry Friday Anthology for Celebrations did not exist then, and I doubt the answer I gave was very convincing.  Now though, things are different. I am so happy that this book is available, along with many other excellent materials. Language teaching keeps getting better!

Be sure to enter the giveaway to win a copy of The Poetry Friday Anthology for Celebrations. For more information and updates, follow Pomelo Books on Twitter and Facebook. They also have an excellent Pinterest board with poems that you may want to follow.

Win The Poetry Friday Anthology for Celebrations!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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Recetas graciosas y saludables by Graciela Castellanos has simple recipes in Spanish. Best of all, these recipes are extension activities for short poems. The poems and recipes in Spanish have illustrations and photos, making the book a wonderful language learning resource. Recetas graciosas y saludables is published by Languages4Kidz.com.

In the photo below, you can see the four related components: poem, illustration, recipe and photo.

There are two kinds of readings in this book, poems and recipes. The two are related in that the recipe is for a snack that represents a key element of the poem. The two types of readings use different types of vocabulary, are at different levels of difficulty and let children practice different skills.

The poems are at a range of difficulty with themes that are familiar to kids, such as ants, pirates, and the moon and stars. All of the poems have illustrations to support language learners. For beginning learners, talking about the illustration provides an excellent alternative to reading the more difficult poems.

Recetas graciosas y saludables has kid-friendly, nutritious snacks. The simple, no-cook recipes in Spanish are perfect for beginning readers and cooks. Talking about the photo first will help kids with both reading and cooking. It also makes a great follow-up as kids compare their results to the picture. Eating the snack is the ideal opportunity to re-read the poem and talk about the illustration again. This is wonderful hands-on language learning. Kids will love it!

A Book of Recipes in Spanish: The Essentials

Recetas graciosas y saludables by Graciela Castellanos

The poems in Spanish
– have basic themes.
– are at a range of difficulty.
– have illustrations that support the language.

The recipes in Spanish
– use basic ingredients and vocabulary.
– are a fun, hands-on activity.
– have photos to support the ingredients and instructions.

The snacks
– represent something in the poem
– are nutritious
– are super cute!

Languages4Kidz publishes curricula for both elementary Spanish and English learners. They also publish many content-rich Spanish picture books written by Graciela Castellanos. The Languages4Kidz Spanish picture books correspond to thematic units included in most elementary curricula. You can learn more about the Languages4Kidz picture books in this post.

Visit the Languages4Kidz website to learn about all of their elementary Spanish learning materials.

You can follow Languages4Kidz on Facebook.

Disclosure: The company sent me a copy of this product to be able to write the article. I may have been compensated for my time. All of the ideas and opinions are my own.

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Douglas Wright writes short poems for children. Many of them are at a perfect level for language learners. His poetry revolves around daily experiences as children interact with the natural world. Kids will relate to these two poems about night. I love Spanish poems for summer reading!

Be sure to check out our poetry resource page Spanish Poems for Kids.  It has more poems for children and information about sharing them with language learners.

I like these Spanish poems for summer reading because most kids will be familiar with moon-lit nights and star-filled skies. The poems have familiar vocabulary and are short enough that kids approach them with confidence. Many thanks to Douglas Wright for allowing me to share his poems on Spanish Playground.

Two Spanish Poems for Summer Reading

The first poem is called Bajo la luna. You can find an illustration of the poem on El Jardín de Douglas by clicking on the title below. This is a wonderful poem for children to practice reading aloud and to memorize.

The structure of this poem makes it easy to use. The first two and last two lines frame the middle lines. The first lines establish a general setting. The third and fourth lines mention elements of the landscape – they are the todos in the first line. Readers build a mental picture as the poem adds elements.

Kids today are very familiar with cameras and video. Point out that the poem starts with a wide angle, zooms in, and zooms out again.

Children can use this structure as a model to write their own poems. They can start with a general view, then give specific examples, and then repeat the more general statement.

Bajo la luna
Todos callados,
bajo la luna;
el bosque, el lago,
el cerro, el monte,
bajo la luna,
todos callados.

The second poem is El brillo de las estrellas.  You can find an illustration of the poem on El Jardín de Douglas by clicking on the title below.

This poem is a comparison of fireworks and the stars. Many Spanish learners in the U.S. learn the word cohete for fireworks, so be sure they are also familiar with fuegos artificiales.

Again, children can use the structure of this poem to write their own comparison poems. This is also fun to do as a class. The second and fourth lines rhyme, so you can use the poem to talk about rhyming words.

El brillo de las estrellas
Mejor que todos los fuegos
que llaman artificiales,
el brillo de las estrellas,
esos fuegos naturales.

Illustrating Spanish Poems for Summer Nights

Illustrating the poems is a simple and fun way to reinforce vocabulary. Try using colored chalk on black construction paper. It is a satisfying and easy way to create a night sky.

Photo Credit: DncnH via Compfight cc

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Learning the days of the week in Spanish helps children talk about their activities and schedules. The easiest way for teachers to present the days is with daily calendar time, but many of us have class only once or twice a week. Here are a few Spanish days of the week activities that you can adapt to your class schedule or use at home.

Be sure to check out our other Spanish for Kids vocabulary activities arranged by theme. We have lots of ideas and materials to use in your Spanish lessons.

Video for Days of the Week in Spanish

When you’re introducing the days of the week in Spanish, it helps kids to hear them repeatedly in context. Try this Kids Learn Spanish Habla video where Pamela takes about her week using high-frequency language.

Poems for Spanish Days of the Week Activities

Publisher Lee & Low Books recently sent me the wonderful new bilingual picture book Family Poems for Every Day of the Week/ Poemas familiares para cada día de la semana. This beautiful collection of poems in English and Spanish is by Francisco X. Alarcón and illustrated by Maya Christina Gonzalez. You should definitely add this book to your Spanish days of the week activities!

The poems in Family Poems for Every Day of the Week/ Poemas familiares para cada día de la semana center on home, family and school, so the vocabulary is appropriate for language learners. There are several poems for each day of the week, including a short poem about the origin of the name of the day and how it relates to the gods and planets. Most of the poems are in the first person, and young readers will identify with the speaker as he explores weekly routines and how he feels on different days.

These poems lend themselves to many Spanish day of the week activities. In addition to reading and reciting the poems, children love exploring the amazing illustrations and creating their own drawings to illustrate a day of the week. Family Poems for Every Day of the Week/ Poemas familiares para cada día de la semana is available from Lee and Low and on Amazon.

Picture Your Week Calendar

This fall, I made this cut and paste calendar to add to my Spanish days of the week activities. My students needed an activity that would give them lots of repetition of the days and high-frequency verbs in a meaningful, personal context.

I chose small pictures to represent activities I knew my students did regularly, either every day or at least once a week. For example, there are pictures for brushing teeth, reading a story, soccer practice, riding the school bus, going to church etc. I provided a one-week calendar with the days, but no dates. Then, students cut and pasted pictures to show what they did each day. If I didn’t have a picture for an activity, students drew a simple symbol.

I was really happy with how this activity turned out. Also, the kids loved seeing their week in pictures! In addition to saying the days of the week over and over as they made their calendars, we used the calendars to talk about the week when they were done. For example, they could answer questions like ¿Lees cuentos los lunes? ¿Qué haces los martes? ¿Qué día juegas al fútbol? etc. Depending on the level of your students, you could add the first person of the verb with the picture.

You can download a PDF of my week calendar and the clip art I used for the activities. Of course, you will have add clip art for other activities and be sure to add additional houses of worship for all of your students.

Download the La Semana Calendar and the Activity Pictures.

Songs for Spanish Days of the Week Activities

I use several songs for learning the days of the week in Spanish. We sing these before we begin other Spanish days of the week activities so that students are familiar with the vocabulary and pronunciation.

You can listen to my favorite Spanish days of the week songs here. One I like for my younger groups is Los días de la semana by Dámaris Gelabert. This fall I added movement to this song by putting 7 lines on the floor and we jumped through the week as we sang each day. The tempo of the song is perfect! You can hear it in the video below and can download the song from iTunes: Los Días de la Semana – Dámaris Gelabert

Printable Wheel for Spanish Days of the Week Activities

I also use a printable wheel to practice the days of the week in Spanish. I made this years ago, but it works well, so why reinvent the wheel? That was a pun for those of you who are is still reading.

There are several versions of the printable wheel. One has extra vocabulary, and another has verbs. You can find them all in this post: Spanish Days of the Week Printable Wheels.

Spanish Days of the Week Activities with a Calendar

I also use a monthly calendar for a variety of Spanish days of the week activities. With a calendar, you can ask questions such as

¿Cuántos días tiene el mes de…?
¿Qué día de la semana es el primer día del mes de …?
El otoño/invierno/primavera/verano comienza el 21 de ….  ¿Qué día de la semana va a ser?
¿Cuántos días lunes tiene este mes?
¿Cuántos días domingo (u otro día) tiene este mes?
¿El mes de …. tiene más días lunes o más días jueves?
¿Qué día de la semana va a ser el último día del mes de …?
¿Cuántas semanas completas tiene este mes?

Read more about Spanish days of the week and calendar questions and download a Spanish calendar for December.

Do you have favorite Spanish days of the week activities? If you have games, books, or songs you like, please share them with us in the comments below. Thank you!

The post Spanish Days of the Week Activities appeared first on Spanish Playground.

One of my favorite activities with children learning Spanish is to act out short dramatic poems. Here are two Spanish Thanksgiving poems we recite and act out in November.

You can also find poems about other themes on our poetry resource page Spanish Poems for Kids.

I made up these Spanish Thanksgiving poems to include the key vocabulary we are learning and added actions to reinforce the meaning of the words. You can write simple poems like this about any content.

The first of the Spanish Thanksgiving poems is about a turkey. It has actions and we all say recite it and act it out together. The second of the Spanish Thanksgiving poems is for two voices. In other words, it’s a little conversation.

Preschoolers love dramatic play, so I make the props we use with these Spanish Thanksgiving poems available for free play. I love seeing them incorporating what they have learned into their creative play! Early Childhood News has information and tips for dramatic play if you’d like to read more.

You can find another fall poem in Spanish to act out here: Spanish Poem About Fall: Dramatic Play and Printable

Check out more resources for celebrating Thanksgiving with Spanish learners.

Spanish Thanksgiving Poems: Soy un pavo

My students love to act out animals. As they act out this poem, they walk, eat and talk like a turkey.

We make a turkey tail prop by gluing construction paper feathers to a wedge of paper plate. The kids hold the tail behind them for the entire poem and rustle their feathers (move them) when they say Tengo una cola.

You can download a printable of this Spanish Thanksgiving poem:
Soy un pavo – Thanksgiving Poem in Spanish.

Soy un pavo (with actions)

Soy un pavo.  (both hands behind back holding tail)
Tengo una cola. (move the tail like rustling feathers)
Camino así.  (walk like a turkey 3-4 steps – lift feet high, bob head)

Soy un pavo.
Tengo una cola. (move the tail like rustling feathers)
Camino así (walk like a turkey 3-4 steps – lift feet high, bob head)
Y como así. (lower head and pretend to eat).

Soy un pavo.
Tengo una cola. (move the tail like rustling feathers)
Camino así. (walk like a turkey 3-4 steps – lift feet high, bob head)
Y como así. (lower head and pretend to eat).
Y hablo así: gluglú, gluglú. (move around randomly and gobble at each other)

Spanish Thanksgiving Poems: La cena

This poem is a conversation, so we do it in pairs, and all the Speaker 1 students speak together and all the Speaker 2 students speak together. The two groups alternate the first 8 lines. The last two lines everyone says together.

The setting of this poem is Thanksgiving dinner, and Speaker 1 passes food to Speaker 2. So, you will want kids sitting or standing beside each other. We use picture cards for the food, but if you have enough play food, that would be really fun.

You can easily change the food items in this poem. I use these words because I teach them, but there are endless possibilities.

For the two syllable words papas and pavo, you could use anything that has the same stress pattern like pasta, sopa, fruta, agua, leche, huevos, queso etc. ¿Y verduras? can be replaced by y and a 3-syllable word (¿Y manzanas?) or a single 4-syllable word (¿Ensalada?).

Get a printable version of the Thanksgiving poem in Spanish and the picture cards: La cena – Spanish Thanksgiving Poem and Picture Cards.

La cena

(1) ¿Quieres papas? (offers potatoes)

(2) Sí, gracias. (takes potatoes)

(1) ¿Quieres pavo? (offers turkey)

(2)  ¡Qué rico! (takes turkey)

(1) ¿Y verduras? (offers vegetables)

(2)  ¡Me gustan! (takes vegetables)

(1) ¿Pan? (offers bread)

(2) Un poquito. (takes bread)

(together)
Amigos, familia y buena comida.
Damos las gracias por este día.

Spanish Thankgiving Video

Of course, Thanksgiving isn’t only about turkey and food. It is about being thankful for what we have. This short Thanksgiving video is an excellent way to introduce the concept of dar gracias to kids learning Spanish.

Little poems like these are terrific language activities, and I enjoy them as much as my students. Dramatic play is fun! Let us know if you try these Spanish Thanksgiving poems or if you have favorite activities to celebrate Thanksgiving in Spanish class.

The post Spanish Thanksgiving Poems to Act Out appeared first on Spanish Playground.

Spanish tongue twisters, or trabalenguas, are authentic language and packed with culture. Try learning a new tongue twister in Spanish for Hispanic Heritage Month! Also be sure to check out the amazing collection of Hispanic Heritage Month resources below.

Tongue twisters are a fun cultural connection. They are also short, with rhyme and rhythm, so kids love them. But how do we make them useful for Spanish learners? A language has to be meaningful for kids to learn. That is the catch with Spanish tongue twisters.

Tongue twisters play with sound, so meaning is secondary. For native speakers, that is part of the fun. However, my students have limited exposure to Spanish, so I need to use that exposure to maximum benefit.  As teachers, if we share Spanish tongue twisters, we need to make sure students understand them and can use the language in other contexts.

Is it worth the trouble? I think so! Spanish tongue twisters are fun, a good way to practice pronunciation, and a great way to expose kids to more culture.

Tongue Twisters for Pronunciation

Tongue twisters give kids a reason to pronounce the same sounds over and over. One of the drawbacks, that kids are not communicating information, actually makes tongue twisters useful for this very specific purpose.  Students can focus on sound and pronunciation, which is something we often don’t take time to do in class.

For example, the letter t in Spanish is different than in English – it is dental, so the tip of the tongue goes right behind your teeth. With the classic tongue twister Tres tristes tigres tragaban trigo en un trigal, kids can focus on getting their tongue in the right place, and also practice the flap of the single r.

Spanish tongue twisters also give kids practice with repeated vowel sounds. Pronouncing vowels correctly is essential to being understood in Spanish.

And of course, there are whole tongue twisters created specifically for learning to roll your Rs. There are many versions featuring guitarra, cigarro, barril, carros, and ferrocarril in combinations with the verb rodar and rápido. This is just one short example: R con R guitarra, R con R barril, qué rápido ruedan las ruedas del ferrocarril.

Pakapaka, an educational TV channel from Argentina, has some excellent videos of kids trying to say orginal tongue twisters. Here’s an example of Pakapaka’s trabalenguas Escandalosos escultores se esconden en esquinas a escupir escorpiones.

Make Spanish Tongue Twisters Meaningful

Pictures For Clarification

One of the best ways to clarify the meaning of Spanish tongue twisters is with pictures.  I included two tongue twisters in Season 2 of our YouTube series Buena gente.

In the show, Alejandro is learning tongue twisters and has pictures to share with his students. You can see them in the video below.  The first tongue twister is the classic Tres tristes tigres tragaban trigo en un trigal. There are longer versions of this tongue twister, but this first line is a great place to start.

We made the image for the series, to clarify the words in the trabalenguas. I’m sharing a version here with Spanish Playground readers, too. There is a PDF in color and another in black and white for kids to color.

Get the Tres tristes tigres printable in black and white.

Get the Tres tristes tigres printable in color.

Questions to Build Context

One of the ways to make Spanish language meaningful it to treat them as real language. Explore the content, instead of just playing with the sound.

For example, in the case of Tres tristes tigres tragaban trigo en un trigal, we have to ask ¿Por qué están tristes los tigres? It is also logical to wonder why the tigers are eating wheat!

You can see Sandra ask these questions as she thinks about this Spanish tongue twister in Episode 2 below. The relevant content is in the first minute of the video.

Tongue Twisters as Cultural Content

There is no doubt that many Spanish tongue twisters are culturally relevant, and that is another reason to share them with students. Treating the them as real language and exploring the content give us the opportunity to tap into the culture.

For example, the other tongue twister in Season 2 of Buena gente is about coconut. Coconut grows in many Spanish-speaking countries, along with other tropical fruits. The tongue twister says Como poco coco como, poco coco compro.

To expands on the cultural component, it makes sense to explore how people in these countries use coconut and the other fruits they buy and eat.

You can see a good example in Episode 3 below. The relevant content is in the first minute of the video.

Choosing Spanish Tongue Twisters for Language Learners

Spanish tongue twisters are fun, so I do think it’s worth choosing a few to use with Spanish learners. Again, because I have limited time with my students, I choose Spanish tongue twisters that lend themselves to pictures, questions and conversations.

First, I look for trabalenguas with concrete, familiar language. This is because I have an easier time representing them with images. Also, if the language is familiar it means it is something they will use in other contexts.

Next, I decide whether to use just part of the tongue twister, rather than teaching the whole trabalenguas. Some of them are long, and shorter segments are meaningful. With those Spanish tongue twisters, I use a relatively short segment and the kids repeat it. That is the case with Tres tristes tigres tragaban trigo en un trigal and Como poco coco como, poco coco compro.

With other Spanish tongue twisters, the meaning depends on using the entire trabalenguas. Because meaningful language is my priority, I teach the entire tongue twister. That is the case with Pancha plancha.

Pancha plancha con cuatro planchas.
¿Con cuántas planchas Pancha plancha?

For this tongue twister, I usually have to teach noun plancha and the verb planchar. I have also had to explain the action itself – in today’s world of knit and wrinkle-free fabrics, not all kids know what ironing is!

This tongue twister also lends itself to a discussion of gender roles. You can talk about housework and who traditionally had responsibility for which tasks. This makes a great review of house vocabulary.

Spanish Tongue Twister Book

In his picture book El torneo de trabalenguas / The Tongue Twister Tournament, author Nicolás Kanellos offers a wonderful selection of Spanish tongue twisters. The author also makes these rhymes accessible to language learners by creating a context for reading and practicing Spanish tongue twisters.

The characters in El torneo de trabalenguas / The Tongue Twister Tournament participate in a tongue twister contest where “el mejor torturador de nuestras lenguas” wins. In other words, the story incorporates the idea that readers will say the trabalenguas and decide which is the most difficult.

You can read more about the book and find suggested activities here: Spanish Tongue Twisters: Book and Activities

How do you use Spanish tongue twisters in class? We would also love to learn new tongue twisters, so if you have favorites, please let us know.

Be sure to check out these other ways to celebrate Latino culture during Hispanic Heritage Month!

We are so excited for our eighth annual Hispanic Heritage Month series! Now through October 15, you’ll find great resources to share Hispanic Heritage with kids, plus you can link up your own posts on Hispanic Heritage!

Find even more ideas on our Latin America Pinterest board.

September 16
Pura Vida Moms on Multicultural Kid Blogs: Celebrating Latino Culture

September 17
Discovering the World Through My Son’s Eyes: Julia de Burgos, Puerto Rico’s Most Famous Latina Poet

September 18

Hispanic Mama: Raising Kids to Be Proud of Their Latino Heritage

September 19
Spanish Playground

September 20
MommyMaestra: Tito Puente Lesson Plans, Coloring Pages, Crafts, Activities and More

September 23
Kids Spanish Book Club: Five Bilingual Picture Books

September 24
Embracing Diversity: 21 Inspirational Quotes by American Latinos To Uplift & Empower

September 25
el Mundo de Pepita: National Symbols for Each Spanish-Speaking Country

September 26
Little Nómadas: Quesillo Venezolano

September 30
Baby Devotions: Libritos to Grow Your Little One’s Faith, an Interview with Bianca Cerrato

October 1
For the Love of Spanish: All About Time in Spanish with Los Esqueletos

October 2
Tiny Tapping Toes: Toenails of Goats, an Amazing Musical Instrument

October 3
LadydeeLG: Books in Spanish for 8 Year Olds

October 4
Bicultural Familia: Latin Inspired Ice Cream Floats to Celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month

October 7
Spanish Mama: Top Spanish Apps

October 8
The Multilingual Home

October 9
Bookworms and Owls

October 10
Jeddah Mom

October 11
Pretty Mama Breastfeeding

October 14
Multicultural Kid Blogs

October 15
Maritere Bellas

Don’t miss all of the great posts from previous years as well: 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018.

The post Spanish Tongue Twisters for Kids appeared first on Spanish Playground.