It is October, which means 31 Days of ABC is in full swing over at All Done Monkey.
Letter-focused lessons tops the list as one of my favorite ways to teach Spanish to my kiddos! Participating in the 31 Days of ABC makes for a great way to get letter-learning ideas from parents and educators living around the globe. Be sure to check out the 31 Days of ABC home page over at All Done Monkey (link above). Then look up the words in Spanish, and use the activities to learn the Spanish letters as well!
For the letter A at our house (pronounced “ah” in Spanish) we did some fun araña (spider) activities. First we made a little spider story to practice counting and asking “How many?” I have shared the story below so you can print one out too and follow along at your house! Since the holiday Halloween is upon us where we live, I thought spiders would be a nice and spooky place to start with our alphabet learning in the month of October.
Before you print the story, let’s talk about how to read the story and understand what it means. Here’s a quick list of vocab. Click on the words to hear how they are pronounced.
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Spanish Word
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Spanish Pronunciation
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English Meaning
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ah-RAHN-yah
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spider
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KWAHN-tahs
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how many
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like the English word “eye”
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there are/are there
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EH-stah
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this
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tehl-ah-RAHN-yah
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spider web
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tee-EHN-ay
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has
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The title of the story is “¿Cuántas arañas hay?” or “How many spiders are there?” Each page has a picture of a spider web and the story tells how many spiders are on the web. For example, one page says “This spiderweb has five spiders.” Read each page with your kiddos and help them count out the spiders for each web.
We had some Halloween foam stickers left over from last year, and I was like “Oh those would be perfect!” They did turn out really cute, but they were a PAIN to peel off, and my big man could not do it by himself. It even took me a while and a few spiders lost a few legs. *Wince.*
Can you see the dimple in this picture? The activity was short enough that it held my big man’s attention and he enjoyed counting with me.
Of course, he wanted to do it in English first, which I obliged. I try not to push Spanish on him if I can tell he is not enjoying it. With this one, we learn best if we are having fun and not forcing learning.
So we counted first in English, then read it all together in Spanish!
I did not attempt the stickers with my little guy. I got out the paint and we finger painted the spiders on. Even that was not quick enough for him! And he lost interest pretty quickly. So I just held his hand and we counted swiftly for each spiderweb. Another thing I learned is that if you are going to paint your spiders, be sure to do that first before you assemble the book–that way the paint can dry without smearing onto the other pages.
Print off your own book here and let me know how it goes! We did some other fun spider-related activities that hopefully I will be able to post about later. And don’t forget to head over to All Done Monkey to check out all of the other amazing alphabet activities!!
