Blog

The Calico Spanish Curriculum is a robust elementary Spanish program containing over 365 lesson plans ranging from the pre-novice low proficiency level up through the novice high proficiency level. With so many lessons to teach and choose from, we find that the most common question we’re asked is, “How will I make it through a […]

Hey Spanish learners and teachers, it’s almost Mother’s Day in the U.S.! Mother’s Day PDF! In previous years, we have offered a free Mother’s Day Spanish printable to help your learners celebrate their moms and abuelas and what makes them special. We know that family dynamics change from child to child, so we also wanted […]

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 […]

I am the curriculum specialist in charge of developing Stories here at Calico Spanish, but I am also a mom to three young kids. For the last few years, we participated in a homeschool co-op that met once a week.  At the co-op, I taught Spanish.  For my younger age group (K-4th grade), I used the […]

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 […]

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 […]

It’s undeniable: when it comes to contact time with students in world language classes, elementary teachers have the short end of the stick. (Don’t miss a post; follow us on Bloglovin’!) (This GIVEAWAY is CLOSED.) In part one of this brief series, we shared some tips on how you can partner with your school’s computer […]