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Take Spanish on Summer Vacation + FREEBIES Y’all, it is finally summer vacation. Our kids deserve a summer filled with fun activities like going to the pool, selling lemonade on the front lawn, visiting cool museums, and maybe taking a trip somewhere fun (and so do we!). What else do they deserve? A chance to […]

Dual immersion programs are a great option to get more language learning in the early grades, but how can caregivers and teachers work together, especially if Spanish (or other target language) isn’t spoken at home? Read on for our tips. The (well-founded) pressure to raise bilingual kids In this modern world with all of its […]

Elementary Spanish teachers, how is your school year going?  You’re a quarter of the way through! As you move through this semester with your early Spanish learners, we wanted to help you help them with our YouTube Basics Playlist.  This is something we’ve put together to help you organize your class around target-language music.  This […]

How do you teach children clothing words in Spanish? Well, you approach it like any other set of vocabulary – in context. – Follow us on Twitter – There’s some spirited questioning in the early language (and secondary!) field about how best to present some concepts.  Daily activities, particularly reflexive verbs, is one.  You’ll hear […]

It’s a widely accepted truth at this point: children need less screen time.  This is a challenge, though, because not all screen time is created equal.  For example, I feel fairly safe saying there’s not a square inch of social media that a child needs to occupy.  In fact, as children get older, more screen time is linked […]

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 […]

We’re at it again!  We’re releasing another all-new music video for young Spanish learners, and this one has baila written all over it.  So, let’s dance! – Follow us on Twitter – (Side note: If you missed our other recent song releases, you’ll want to check them out: Move your body, find the pañuelito, and tell us what […]

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 […]