My toddler and I made this fun Spanish Valentine’s Day story to have fun practicing the colors in Spanish. He is two and had a blast with it. You can print a copy for yourself from the link at the end of this post. And for those of you who are learning Spanish with your kids, there is a pronunciation guide in it as well. If you saw this post you know how much I love those little Usborne books that say, “That’s not my ____.” They make for such a fun and simple way to learn new words in story form. I feel like learning the color words by themselves is less meaningful, than if you put them in a simple story line.
That’s what I did with this story. Each pages says in Spanish, “That’s not my heart. It’s ____.” For example, “That’s not my heart. It’s blue,” or “That’s not my heart. It’s yellow,” until finally on the last page it says, “That’s my heart yes! It’s red.”
I simply printed two pages per sheet to get the booklet size. Then I cut all the pages in half and put them on a clipboard for him. You’ll want to gather a coloring marker or crayon for the following colors: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, pink, black, white, gray, brown.
He wanted to jump right in and start coloring, so I handed him the color the page called for, and said that color in Spanish. So for this page below I said: Anaranjado! and handed him the orange marker and let him at it! In classic two-year-old fashion he colored for five seconds and was ready for the next page.
Originally I thought I might color the pages myself, and then read the story to him. But this turned out so much better. He really enjoyed it, and it makes the story “his” so he’s more inclined to want to read it with me as well.
For older kids, you might even want to have them circle the color word with the marker or crayon to reinforce learning that specific color word. Or if you are printing this story for students, circle each color word yourself before handing out the pages to be colored. You could give one page to each student and make the book as a class.
A couple of pages have more than one color on them because I was moving too slow for his liking! Like I said, this is a QUICK and easy activity for two-year-olds.
You can put the pages in any order you choose, just make sure the last one is the red one. Once you finish coloring all the pages, staple the book together and read! The link below has a pronunciation guide for all the words in the story if you need help reading it in Spanish.
The repetition in this story is great, because the kids can memorize it and “read” it with you, helping them practice simple sentence structures as well. Read it with enthusiasm and inflection for the best language-learning results.
Feliz hearting!
