Blog

Role play for young learners? Yes, please! It’s no secret: in early language education (and even in middle and high school!), finger puppets are a win! Somehow, sometimes, it seems less intimidating to pretend you’re a puppet speaking Spanish rather than be yourself speaking Spanish.  Of course, young children usually love any kind of role […]

So, how are you today? ¿Cómo estás? It’s one of the first things we teach our learners to understand and answer, and for good reason.  Particularly young children will hear “How old are you?” quite a bit, and of course “What’s your name?” but right up there in the most common questions anyone hears in any […]

How can we help our kindergarten learners be successful in their Spanish language journey?  In this post, we offer some tips from the trenches of that sunny-yet-conflicted zone called kindergarten. 1. Establish successful routines. All elementary children thrive on routine, but we’ve especially seen this in kindergarten.  These learners have moved from a primarily play-to-learn environment in […]

Are you a teacher who has recently subscribed to the Calico Spanish Stories Program and wants to know what content you can share with parents at home?  We often receive this question – time for a blog post to answer it! What’s Calico Spanish Stories? Calico Spanish Stories is our all-digital program developed to fill a […]

Once upon a time, I thought I’d figured out how to teach elementary Spanish. Then, they asked me to teach preschool. Preschool is a different sort of animal. Standing in a line is a fluid concept. Rules my son’s 3-year-old class worked on last year: – We do not lick the wall. – We do not […]

The first time I taught a kindergarten Spanish lesson, I thought if I read the story La oruga muy hambrienta (The very hungry caterpillar) enough times, kids would learn something.  Right? – Follow us on Twitter – So, I faithfully came into my kindergarten classes, once a week for a 15-minute lesson, and read the book […]

Summer break = break from kids’ learning? Is summer break really a good idea relative to children’s learning journey?  That’s certainly a hot topic for teachers and parents, and we won’t debate here.  Surely, though, over two months of little to no contact with Spanish can only hurt language development. – Follow us on Twitter – Here’s an […]

Happy Mom’s Day! We recently saw an adorable Mother’s Day “My mom and I” printable activity in English.  We love these activities and thought it was such a great idea we’d do something similar in Spanish. In ours, we’ve featured some of our Stories characters with their moms and grandmothers.  Here at Calico Spanish, we are moms […]

Is there anywhere a fun song for early Spanish learners that targets prepositions of location?  We couldn’t find any.  So we did it ourselves. What phrases, exactly? We call this song “Pañuelito” (little handkerchief). It accompanies Level C of Calico Spanish Stories, themed “I Live Here.”  In this level, several of the Video Stories feature our characters […]

Ready for our next new song? It’s all about parts of the body!  In this all-new video for our song “Todo mi cuerpo,” a boy decides to dance and swim with his whole body. Like the English song “Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes,” this new Calico Spanish song helps children can learn how to talk about the parts […]