Introducing Spanish to Young Children

¡Hola! My name is Romi, I was born in Argentina and moved to the United States 17 years ago. I have been a bilingual preschool teacher since 1994, and currently I am a Spanish teacher in a Lower school (JK-4th). I am excited to be a guest blogger for the Children’s Museum of Richmond.

My classes are full of educational content. Do my students realize this? Not really, because everything is done through games, songs, and lots of repetition. That is key in acquiring a new language. We need to hear it and repeat it in different contexts in order to internalize it. This makes our language learning it part of our system. Some of my other most important tips include: Don’t forget to allow mistakes, be silly, make voices, tell stories, dance, move, play and repeat, repeat, repeat the vocabulary you want to teach.

So, here are some videos to start this journey of introducing Spanish to your children no matter how young or old they are.

Learn with Videos

We can start saying good morning, and learning how to say “Hola! mi nombre es…”

Want to learn and practice colors? After watching the video, you can play around the house by looking for different colors. Go outside, to the park, or to CMoR to see what colors you can find. Play “I spy with my little eyes” and say the color in Spanish.

Let’s sing a song about numbers! After the video, count your fingers, count toys, or how many bananas you have in the kitchen. Numbers can be incorporated into our everyday activities! 

And don’t worry if your children do not repeat the words right away, just keep saying them, keep singing them, and one day it will come naturally. 

Choices

One of the “tricks” I use in the classroom is giving the children choices. For example, “¿quieres tú el crayón rojo o el crayón azul?” (do you want the red crayon or the blue crayon), then repeating the color and showing the crayon “¿rojo? ¿azul?”. As I said before, they might say the color in English at first because it is what they are most familiar with. After songs, games, and showing them the object of the vocabulary we want them to know, they will begin to connect to the Spanish word.

For more videos, ideas, and StoryTime in Spanish, check my YouTube channel “Spanish with Ms. Romi” – “Español con Señora Romi”. Subscribe to receive videos every week!

See you next time!

Ms. Romi / Sra. Romi