Pinky is getting really good with her Spanish since my super duper idea of just letting her to play all day long with her “we just speak Spanish” little cousins. We spent two weeks last summer in Puerto Rico where she just: played!

5 cute cousins sitting on a couch….there’s comes….

 

No lessons, no frustrations, no mommy interventions……just free time to play with other Spanish speaking kids.

Now that we are back home, she is speaking in English again!!! Arrrggg! Therefore, I am trying to start short lessons with her to keep practicing Spanish while we get to visit our family again.

We are sharing today our first lesson as a follow up of this post about the Spanish Vowels.

Montessori-inspired Spanish alphabet boxes

 

Since Pinky is reading pretty good in English, we are not using her Alphabet boxes anymore. Therefore, I decided to change them into Spanish Alphabet boxes just by changing the objects from their initial sound box in English into the initial sound name in Spanish. Easy!

 

First, we looked around the house and inside our English alphabet boxes for objects that started with each vowels sound. Then we made a pile. 

 

Later we matched the objects with their vowel initial sound.

If you will like to try this activity with your kids, here is a better look of each one of the vowels and their objects.

I bet you can find most of them right now at home!!

 

Letter a is for:

• ambulancia= ambulance
• almohada= pillow
• ave= bird
• abeja= bee
• arbol- tree
• avion- airplane
• aceituna= olive
• arana= spider
• azul= color blue
• auto= car
• alfombra= rug
• anillo= ring
• anaranjado= color orange
• abanico= fan
• arcoiris= rainbow
• amarillo= color yellow
• agua= water
• ardilla= squirrel
• angel= angel
• alce= elk

Letter e is for:

• Elmo= Elmo
• elefante= elephant
• espejo= mirror
• escalera= stairs (vowels)
• elastico= elastic band
• emparedado= sandwich
• estrella= star
• espada= sword
• escoba= broom
• escritorio= desk

 

Letter I is for:

• iman= magnet
• iguana= iguana
• insecto= insect
• indio= indian
• iglu= igloo

 

Letter o is for:

• Olivia= Olivia
• oso= bear
• oveja= sheep
• orca= killer whale
• octagono= octagon
• ojos= eyes
• olla= pot
• ovalo= oval
• ocho= number eight
• orangutan= orangutan
• oreja= ear
• oruga= caterpillar

 

Letter u is for:

• unicornio= unicorn
• uvas= grapes
• uno= number one
• uniciclo= unicycle
• Urraca= magpie (not pictured)

 

Do you have any hands-on-activity to learn a new language?

Linking to:

Everyday, after her traditional preschool classes, Pinky comes home to “learn” more. Yes! This little girl loves to learn. (Of course, she plays, too!)

This week we have been using our Phonetic Boxes, which are getting FULL! Here’s an example of 3 of our boxes and what’s inside them:

Wipes Box plus small objects and toys around the house.

Objects:

• X: xylophone (I made it with a craft stick, toothpicks and beads) X-rays (skeleton sticker),
• Z: zipper, zebra, zero, zig-zag (pinecleaner),
• K: kaleidoscope, knife (a mistake when you’re teaching NOT your first language…this is NOT good for phonics so it’s OUT of our box), kettle (eraser), kite (I made it with toothpicks, felt and a ribbon), koala (eraser), key
• V: van, vulture
• Y: yellow (eraser), yarn, yo-yo (it’s include it now)

Objects:

• O: octagon (felt) otter, ostrich, ox, olive, orange (included now),
• C: castle, cow, car (eraser), cake (eraser), cup (eraser), crab, camel, cabbage (eraser), cat, crayon,
• H: horse, helicopter (eraser), heart, happy face, hand, hippopotamus, hotdog (eraser, included now), hamburger (eraser, included now),
• P: peanut (eraser), pencil, polar bear, puppy, pacifier, pin, penny,

Objects:

• S: seal, shoe (I just took it out since it was hard for her…ok, I know…mommy has to learn more English lol), spoon, spider (it’s black, that’s why you can’t see it), shark (another hard one), seahorse, starfish, seal
• M: monkeys, man, mushroom, motorcycle (eraser), manta ray, mat (it’s black), microscope
• T: truck (eraser), tiger, tomato (eraser), turtle, tree
• A: airplane(eraser, I know this is NOT for a short sound but she knows it starts with A and wanted to included in the box), apple, alligator, ambulance (eraser)

Here’s Pinky working very hard!!! lol….she’s just having fun and loving her beginning sound boxes!

Linking to:

A farm theme is so fun!!! Furthermore, there’re plenty of activities to do, but, sadly, we don’t have enough time for them.

We are getting ready for VACATIONS!!! Almost a month at our lovely island: Puerto Rico!!! I am so excited about it because Pinky will have lots of new experiences with nature: beach, lakes, river, mountains, farms, gardens, insects and if we are lucky enough, a RAINBOW!!!

So, here’s what we got to do so far:

Lacing:

This is the second time she’s exposed to a lacing activity and she did the 8 animals at one! As you can see the rabbit was the last one (oh, my little baby!). Also, the small lacing animals were suppose to being use as a matching activity or memory game but she decided to match to the big ones. Great imagination!.

For this unit we are doing lots of hands on activities (literally). Here are our 5 little sheep puppets. Using these for a line time circle time song (5 little sheep)

Felt puzzle: Horse

Phonics: She is really good!!! (beginning sounds!)

Homemade poppets!: We looked for our small farm stuff animals (plus an octopus and Elmo that got on the way), attached them to popsicle stick with pine cleaners and the puppet show can start! She loved it!

Crafts: Handprint-footprint Farm. Plus the grass has eyes looking at you!

An extra for you my friends: Farm animals in Spanish by Pinky and mommy! That’s how we learn around most of the time….of course, when we are not shopping lol

Farm animals (Animales de la granja)

• Sheep: Oveja
• Cow: Vaca
• Pig: Cerdo
• Rabbit: Conejo
• Duck: Pato
• Chick: Pollito
• Horse: Caballo
• Turtle: Tortuga
• Rooster: Gallo

Pinky’s learning her farm animals in Spanish!

Take care…..and maybe one more post before we disappear for VACATIONS!!!  I hope I can have an easy flight all by myself with a 3 yrs old plus all the bags and the flight stops…..

As I promised, here is a more detailed post about our language boxes.

I divided each box by groups:

• Box #1- Letters SMAT
• Box #2-Letters BEFG
• Box #3-Letters DNIR
• Box #4-Letters HCOP
• Box #5-Letters JLQUW
• Box #6-Letters YKVXZ

Why am I introducing the letters in this order?

I think you can read an EXCELLENT post about this question here at Living Montessori now. As you will see there are different orders, I did mine following a Curriculum sheet I had (which I can’t find anymore). Also I took into consideration that my daughter’s name starts with letter M….this was our first letter! Here is another post from My Montessori Journey about the order.

For the boxes labels, I used this one by My Montessori Journey! (Changed it a little bit)

What’s inside the boxes? (Mine are 6 re-usable baby wipes boxes)

• Sandpaper letters- I made ours. Here’s the post about that. I just put the one we’ll be using for each box.
• Picture cards- I have been looking so hard for the source from which I got our pictures but sorry I can’t find it! However, here are some from My Montessori Journey, and from Montessori Materials. Here at The Joy of Learning you can find an useful list of words plus a detailed way of how you can do the activity. I had to make some vowels picture cards which you can find here. What I did is put them on snack Ziploc bags, so I have 4 bags, each with a set of pictures plus their beginning sound letter. We talk about the pictures, put them on line, vertical, horizontal, diagonal, etc…and sing…This last one is our favorite one! In this website, Mrs. Jones Room, they have different songs that you can sing for each letter but we love the song for short letter A with the tune of London Bridge (we use it for every letter, simple for my toddler!). Furthermore, we mix all the picture cards and Pinky tell me what’s the picture, what’s the beginning sound and classify it under the corresponding letter; it seems like a lot but she does it very good and we stop as soon as she starts to lose interest. 

Here is Pinky singing her beginning sound song (Soooo cute!)  

 
• Our sound books- This idea is from My Montessori Journey and I found some free books from Kidzone, I just needed to make the ones for the vowels.        

• Objects- We had just 3 objects for each letter, plus a magnetic upper and lowercase letter, all in 4 different Ziploc snack bags. Our objects are small toys we had already around the house. I just put 3 in each bag following my daughter: I want to keep her interested enough to don’t get bored….she’s just 32 months old and get distracted easily!) I added the words on pieces of index cards. I read the words for her pointing to the letters and let her matched with the object. Also she just love to play with them.                                              

How long are we planning to stay with each box?

I am planning to stay for two weeks with each box. Pinky knows already all her letters (upper/lower) and their sounds (sometimes mix them) but I don’t want her to lose interest. I still have to do some research about this; what do you think? Any advice for mommy???

Also we are doing other pre-reading activities like matching upper and lowercase letters, opposites cards, go-together cards, rhyming cards, sequence cards. (Posting about them later!). And we are playing our SMAT sound BINGO…..I did this one for Pinky….great tool at the beginning but after daddy was using it with her……she doesn’t want it anymore….maybe daddy was a little bit hard with little princess??? I am waiting a bit to introduce it again later.

Also, thanks Lori from Montessori MOMents (Amazing blog!!!) for letting me know about an Object boxes Worksheet she did for her son about these same letters: SMAT. It is so great! I am adding it to our package. Sorry Lori, I cut it so it can fix nicely on our box. Thanks!! Also check her felt mat (great!)

If you find any “horror” on my pintables, let me know….mommy is still learning English…The images are from searching Google, so if you see any that has copyright, let me know and I take it out. I did those for Pinky and thought to share them with you.

Blessings!