Teaching Spanish to my own kids has been quite the journey! My own Spanish learning adventure was full of twists and turns, as you may have read in the first installment of this series.

I also have a review of various Spanish curriculum in this Curriculum Review here, post, but if you really want to get down to the nitty gritty of what’s been working at what hasn’t, today’s post is the post for you.

Using Songs to Teach Spanish

One of the easiest, and frankly, sneakiest ways I have used to teach my kids Spanish is through songs! The reason I say “sneaky,” is because if a kiddo is young enough, they are enjoying the song and not necessarily realizing how much they are learning (wink wink!)

I tried Spanish songs exclusively when my daughter was little. She is my second-born, and my older son, who attended Spanish-immersion kindergarten, already had a good hold on Spanish. For whatever reason, my daughter just did not like it. She would get frustrated when my husband and I would speak to her in Spanish. This was when she was still young, around 2-3 years old, but I still felt disappointed that she was resisting the most simple, “immersion” model we had used with my son.

I had to quickly switch gears. I didn’t want to just continue speaking to her, if she didn’t like it, because I didn’t want to risk her turning off to the language completely. So, I looked up some Spanish playlists on a few of my favorite Spanish resource websites, and also thought of my own favorite songs as a kid!

I looked for classic songs like:

• Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes (Cabeza, Hombros, Rodillas y Pies)
• If You’re Happy And You Know It (Si Estás Feliz)
• Jesus Loves Me (Cristo Me Ama)
• The Hokey Pokey (El Hokey Pokey)

I also found this awesome book at the library, which has little songs typed out with sweet illustrations. It even comes with a CD! My daughter particularly loved the rhyme “Aserrín, Aserrán.” This is a sweet little lap-bouncing song that you can do with toddlers and preschoolers while they bounce on your knees. They love doing motions!

Making Songs Interactive in Language Instruction

Another idea with songs is to make them as interactive as possible. For example: “Aserrín, aserrán” is a naturally active song, because it’s a lap-bouncing song, one you can sort of direct with your young child. But what about older kids?

If your second grader is too big to fit on your lap now, have no fear! Last year, in our homeschool co-op, I taught a Spanish Class to 1st-2nd graders. I had to get creative in many ways, with both games and songs–especially because I only saw this kids twice a month!

For example: I wanted to teach them the vocabulary for various fruits, at the end of the year. I found a fun song on YouTube, but didn’t really want to be playing a YouTube video in class each week. I showed them the video once or twice to get the idea, and then just used the audio after that.

Here is what I did to make the song interactive:

• Purchased this $3 set of posters on TPT: great, colorful, with Spanish vocabulary on each one
• Thrifted some plastic fruit from my local Buy Nothing group
• Taught the kids the song using this YouTube video (see my safety note on YouTube, here): video once, then audio only (the video is too stimulating for my taste)
• Played a sort of “pass the fruit” game while the song played, and then I would randomly stop the song. Whoever was holding the fruit, would have to say the name in Spanish!

They loved passing the fruit; it made them giggle (which made me giggle too!). It created a sort of controlled chaos, a face-paced frenzy, because each week I would add in more fruits that we had learned, to be passed around. It was really fun, and I think it was memorable for the kids.

Using Card Games To Teach Spanish

Another sneaky way to teach Spanish, or really any topic, is through games!

If you’ve visited the blog before, you’ve probably seen a few other posts on Gameschooling–something I use now, but hope to use significantly more as my kids age.

Teaching Spanish through games is no exception- it works well. I started with basics like Memory games, Go Fish (Pesca) to teach simple concepts like colors, shapes, and other vocabulary words.

If you already speak Spanish, you don’t even need to purchase specific Spanish vocabulary cards. You can use other pictures you have lying around the house, or a Memory Game you already have! The same goes for Pesca (Go Fish)–as long as you have two copies of each card, you can use them for Go Fish.

I did this with this cute deck of letter cards–I repurposed it to be both letters in Spanish, and animals in Spanish! For example, for playing Go Fish (Pesca) I would say “Tienes el pato?” And if my kiddo had the other “pato” (duck,) they would pass it to me. If not, they would say, “Pesca!”

If you do not speak Spanish, no fear–you can also grab a Spanish Memory Game with the words included. Here’s a great example, of a Spanish Animal Memory/Matching Game we have!

Lastly, you could play common games like Slapjack or War, in Spanish, and simply have the kids shout out the number or card they see. So–if you are playing war, they could say “ocho!” if they lay down an 8, and it beats your 3. Or, to take it a step further, you could have them say, “Ocho es más que tres.” Get creative with it!

Other Popular Games to teach Spanish

Here are some other game ideas that I have used:

Guess Who / Adivina Quién: this one is SUPER fun. I actually bought a custom Guess Who template from Etsy, to create my own characters in Guess Who. I wanted my kids to practice describing people in our family, in Spanish.

Because of the types of questions typically asked in Guess Who, this was a great review of colors, and human body words. (“Does your person have blue eyes? Does your person have long hair?” Etc.) I actually created a life-size version of Guess Who / Adivina Quién for my Savvy Spanish Speakers Co-Op class, and it was so fun! The kids loved seeing their own faces on the gameboard, and they loved practicing various vocabulary while glancing at their classmates’ photos in real time! (If you’re interested in Co-Op lesson plans, check out these posts on planning an awesome co-op class, and these resources to help you out!)

Tabu: For more advanced students, you could play a game of Taboo, in Spanish! The basic concept of Taboo is to describe the target word, without saying a list of “prohibited words.” For example, if the target word was “Sister,” your list of prohibited words might say: family, daughter, girl, relative, home. You would have to describe the word “sister” without using those words, and your teammate would have to guess.

Think of how awesome this could be in Spanish! It provides such a great challenge to stretch your brain, in both languages.

How about you–how do you use games in your homeschool? If you kiddo loves inventing their own games, whether in English OR Spanish, I created a few things you might like:

• FREE board game templates for DIY board game creation
• A Board Game Planning PDF to help you plan out your perfect board game (this is my most popular item on TPT, and really helps them plan it out thoughtfully!)
• This Story Elements Game, that you can play over and over again to review favorite stories
• A Family Trivia Game: probably the most meaningful thing I’ve ever created for my kids

With love,

Cait