The other day an impromptu Spanish reading lesson happened in our house! I’m no expert. I’m not trained as a reading teacher. I didn’t grow up learning how to read in Spanish as a kid. But! My daughter seemed to have fun with what we did and I think she learned some things. 😉
So I thought it would be fun to share with you all what we did in case any of you out there are trying to teach your child to read in Spanish too!
Most of my experience with teaching kids to read in Spanish is limited to watching my friends do it on Instagram and countless hours of sorting through YouTube videos and blog articles in the wee hours of the night!
I actually have a blogger friend who plans to send out scripted Spanish reading lesson plans. We are signed up for that, and you can too. Just visit her website here. But, until those come start hitting my inbox, here’s what we’ll be up to…
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Teaching Spanish Syllables
First, I learned from my dear friend Frances that Spanish reading lessons start with learning the vowels, and then the syllables. Syllables in Spanish are the vowels paired with all the Spanish consonants and beginning sounds. (Sorry, reading teachers if I’m making you cringe with my layman’s terms.)
You can read about how Frances taught her son the syllables here and here.
(I should also mention, Frances teaches one-on-one Spanish classes for all ages…so you could have her teach your children to read in Spanish if that’s a better option for your family. Just visit her website here.)
Having Things On Hand
Second, I have found it helps to have a few resources on hand. This is especially great for strewing, which is my favorite sneaky way to get my kids engaged in learning.
Here’s what we had on hand that got my little girl playing with learning to read in Spanish of her own volition.
ABC printables—I’ve used both the ones from Mr. Printables and EducaPlanet. For my big kids I put all the letters in page protectors and then bind them all in a 3-pronged folder. For my preschoolers, I just have them color the vowel pages and we focus on those first.
Letter Tiles—We have the Pairs in Pears set. But you could easily use Bananagrams (*BONUS* if you can find the Spanish version!), or these or these. It’s soooo hard to find sets in Spanish, so if you know of any, PLEASE let me know in the comments below.
Spanish Reading Books—Most sources I’ve found that tell you how to teach reading in Spanish suggest using a silabario. It’s a book that walks your kids through, first the vowels, and then the syllables.
I bought my 5- and 7-year-old Coquito. But there are lots of others which you can see here. Nacho is one I hear mentioned a lot.
Having all this on hand is what lead to our first Spanish reading lesson!!
My daughter got out her Spanish folder (which we made last year) because she wanted to do school like her brothers.
So I got out our letter tiles for fun, and her Coquito book.
We read through one of the pages looking for beginning vowel sounds. When we found the matching ones we covered it with a tile.
You can see what we did in the picture below. This is a shot from inside our Coquito book.
After that, she thought it was funny to put the WRONG tile on top. This was even better because she thought it was soooo silly and wanted to do soooo many! We were practicing vowel sounds for way longer than if I had made her do a lesson I planned myself. 😉
Being silly is such a good idea to get kiddos involved in learning.
What she did here reminds me of these silly songs that mix up vowel sounds. They might not work for Spanish learners, but are great for Spanish-speakers that are learning to read.
You can read about the silly the Veo, veo lyrics here.
Spanish Vowel Songs on YouTube
Finally, later in the afternoon that day we watched two videos on YouTube to reinforce those vowel sounds we were learning.
My faaaaavorite song for learning the vowels is this one:
Then we watched this one as well:
I will tell you that since that first reading “lesson” we have been doing more things to learn to read in Spanish that I hope to share here soon!! Stay tuned.
xo, Kali
P.S. Tell me in the comments what you’ve done in your casas to learn to read in Spanish!!
