Here is our Spanish version of the letter crafts.

For this project you will need a couple of days. It’s better if you make a letter each day..like a week project!

Pinky liked it a lot! I am thinking about setting up a Spanish binder to keep all our future Spanish learning projects. Will see…

These are the pattern we used (click over each letter to follow the link to the 4shared website where I stored them). I have hand drawn everything and then cut over construction paper. For some we got creative and used felt, cotton and feathers. Sorry, but each vowel part is written in Spanish, just follow the next pictures in order to get an idea.

Letter A is for:

Angel- angel

Abeja- bee

 

Letter E is for:

Edificio- building

Elefante- elephant

 

Letter I is for:

Iguana- Iguana

Isla- island

Letter O is for:

Oso- bear

Oveja- sheep

 

Letter U is for:

Unicornio- unicorn

Urraca- Magpie

I hope you and your kiddoes have fun learning Spanish!

 

This post is for a new linky party over My Montessori MOMents. I thought about sharing our favorite language material from a Afterschool learning aspect (my daughter goes to school and everything we do is done AFTER school, weekends, holidays or vacations).

1. Alphabet boxes (DIY).

I made these using Pinky’s own toys, things we had at home or cheap mini-objects at crafts stores. We don’t use them as much as before now that Pinky is reading but they were really useful and I think they are making their way into the Spanish alphabet now that she is able to learn to read in Spanish, too.

Check them here and here.

 

2. Sandpaper letters (DIY).

These were a really great tool! They are good for letter recognition, writing, letter sounds, building CVC words and spelling. Well, since we don’t officially homeschool, it’s necessary to use our tools for as much activities as we can. Now, at age 5, we are using these as a different fun way to spell words/sight words and to practice the Spanish alphabet sounds. Here is a post about how I made the sandpaper letters.

3. Hooked on Phonics Reading program.

When Pinky was around 2 years old, someone in Freecycle was giving away (FREE) the complete program for Reading and Math. Since Spanish is my first language, I didn’t have an idea how to help my daughter to learn to read in English. Well, it was good that she started to read while she assisted a Montessori school this past Spring. However, we have been using the program at home to practice and to follow some order. It needs a radio cassette but we are using a cassette recorder I found at a thrift store for $5.00. Great deal!!!

4. Learn how to read box.

This one is a Dollar Bin that I fill mostly with printables like sight words flashcards (pink mini box), family words (_at, _et,_ap, etc.), and the Montessori Pink series word cards (now I remember that I need to make the Blue and Green series or maybe not?). There is also a Brain Quest questions and answers, some worksheets, a sight words Dolch word list (for me to keep track) and the great write/erase pockets from the Dollar spot at Target for homemade games and writing practices. The “CREATE” bin is full of stickers. Pinky loves to use her stickers to create stories. I will encourage her to write about her creation just to add a bit of writing practice. Here is another post about another sight words activity we tried.

5. Lakeshore classroom magnetic letters kit.

This has been our cheap version of the Montessori Movable Alphabet Box. We use them to write words and, in the upcoming weeks, sentences. We also have the magnetics letters from the Dollar store but I like these ones better because the aren’t that colorful.

 

Well, those were our favorite five language materials from an after-school learning home.

Now that Pinky is reading, I am thinking about adventuring into the Grammar Farm and Grammar symbols solids. Of course, the grammar farm is going to be a “I need your farm toys” project! lol Check this post from Living Montessori Now for more info about the Grammar Farm.

 

Thanks to Lori from My Montessori MOMents for hosting this useful link party!

We are raising Pinky, trilingual. It is NOT an easy task but we know that will help her in the future. Daddy speak in French, being Haitian, and mommy speaks in Spanish, being Puerto Rican. So far, Pinky loves English…ufff! However, she is doing really well with Spanish; hence, we are learning how to read. I can’t say the same about French, though!

I hope I would have a chance to blog more often about our Spanish adventures and not be so lazy!

First lesson is: Vowels!

We used the sandpaper letters just with the Montessori style!

You can see a Spanish phonetic book or “Cartilla fonetica” that my mother brought from PR. It reminds me when I was learning how to read just a couple of years ago! lol

Letter u is pronounced the same as when you have two o’s like in book or good. She got it right away!

For the rest of the vowels just pronounce them as the short vowels sounds in English. If your kid is learning how to read in English, you  can do as me and take advantage with  the Spanish, too. In English, kids start with CVC words….and those sounds are mostly the same in Spanish, just a few exceptions that you will get on later.

After, reviewing the sandpaper letters (Follow the Montessori sandpaper letters instructions….they are great!) we watched a few songs videos in YouTube. If your kid is still learning the letters, I recommend that you continue doing the Montessori sandpaper letters activity until they master them. After that, continue with videos or others activities. For Pinky, it was something that took a few minutes since she knows the letters in Spanish for quite a time now.

For the videos, search in YouTube the ones that say: Las vocales!!! Maybe you can stick to one until  they catch the song and master it!

Pinky working with  the sandpaper vowels.

Spanish phonetic booklet. They have some activities that we are making up into hand-on-activities or Montessori-related and will try to share later.

My silly girl having fun with Spanish!!!

If you put together 2 “ma”…….you get “mama” (Mother!!!)

 

Are you introducing another language?…..what is functioning so far for your family!!!! Any ideas to share!!!

Just an easy and fun idea to learn sight words for those mommies that need to spare their time. We are trying to simplified our learning around here.

You will need some garden signs, paper and markers or crayons. I got mine from Target at the dollar spot.

 

And we ended with these:

These are a great addition to our learning room. As soon as Pinky knows these, I just change the piece of paper with another one and add new sight words. You can play with them outside at the yard, hide them, play memory, a kind of Olympic running game, or my daughter’s favorite one: mommy monkeying around/marching/dancing and shouting 123 and holding the sign around the house while Pinky follows shouting the word and moving,too. You know what I mean: Have fun, move your body, learn and make it easy (that one is mostly for mommy!)

Here is my Pinterest PRE-READING ideas board!!! There are lots of great ideas to try!

123 123 ……Happy reading!!!!! and dancing!

I have been so lazy busy on these months that I have lots of activities without posting since St. Patrick’s (ufff!!!). I am not going to post about them right now, maybe next year…lol…So far, we got bored reviewed some old activities…..

Math

Language

Sensorial

Blessings!

Linking to:

 

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!