A bilingual homeschooling plan from a family who homeschool in Spanish and English with resources to help you with your own bilingual homeschool

Aloha! I want to thank everyone for stopping by and taking a virtual vacation with me. It really is fun to share my little part of the world with you. Today I am taking a break from the sun and happily joining in on Chapter 1 of the Daily 5 book study, hosted by Mel D. at Suesstastic Classroom Inspirations and Nicole at Teaching With Style. I found out about the Daily 5 from everything I was seeing on Pinterest. I was curious and it led me to so many great blogs and ideas, that I ordered it immediately. It has been an amazing resource for me and I am so happy to be able to share out some ideas and find out what everyone else is doing in their classrooms. I actually started my Daily 5 journey back in January when I discovered the book. I read it quickly and then reread it. Such simple ideas to make my teaching easier and more productive. I couldn't wait to get started. Chapter 1 takes us through the evolution of our teaching style. The authors discuss how they went from full teacher control of the classroom to giving more choices to their students and releasing some of that power. I know this sounds scary. How many of you want to give your kids all those choices? I envision mass chaos in the classroom doing this! I fully admit to being a Control Freak! But as you read on and begin to implement these ideas you really do see children taking ownership and becoming more responsible for themselves and their peers! These are some excellent questions to help you get started on your journey: 1. On pages 4-6 the author's present 2 different pictures for their classrooms. In thinking about and reflecting on you own practice, how would you characterize your literacy block? Does it look more like the 1st or 2nd scenario, or is it somewhere in between? How will you change it? In my classroom I use centers during my main literacy block. Each child rotates through a set schedule while I meet with a particular group. I was in full control of this. I had a scheduling map, certain centers, and who was in each group. Again, control freak. The kids loved most of the centers, but I was always getting up and talking to someone or answering questions, or helping with the computer or..... I was maybe getting in a quality 10 minutes with my guided reading group. Sounds like the first scenario in the book. Okay so I want to give my students more control, but how? A phrase you will learn in this book is-"Building Stamina". Building stamina is giving your students time to practice and add a little more each time. The sisters take you step by step on how to give your students that control and let you work more efficiently. "Work smarter, not harder!" I am so excited to begin my year slowly building stamina with my students and teaching them explicitly how they should be working in the classroom during our literacy time. This takes time, and you need to go through the process for this to work, but it pays off in the end! 2. The typical teacher is very busy having students do lots of different activities. How is what you are having students do now in your classroom creating quality readers and writers? This is such a powerful question to make you reflect on what is happening in your classroom. I know I have all these cute centers set up and it looks wonderful, but what are they really gaining from these activities? Is filling out that worksheet helping them to become indpendent learners or did they just copy from their partner? If Johnny is really engaged in reading why did he just get up to go to the bathroom for the 3rd time? I had to really look hard at my class and be honest with myself. Some of my students were fully engaged and many of them were off task...alot! How do I get them to stay on task and engaged when I am not hovering? The next few chapters will get more into this:) 3. What sets the Daily 5 structure apart from what you are doing in your classroom? I think the main thing again for me is the independence of your students. The more control you have in your classroom, the less independence children develop. If you want your students to take control of their learning, you have to give them some choices. What's great about the Daily 5 is that it gives choices within limits. Daily 5 Structure: Read To Yourself Read To Someone Work on Writing Listen to Reading Spelling/ Word Work In my literacy block I usually had 6-8 centers going at once. Students were all over the place. They couldn't remember what each center was and they spent so much time transitioning, that their time for reading and writing was greatly diminished. By setting up, teaching the structure and giving your students time to practice these skills, the on task time will greatly increase. There is so much to explore and I look forward to delving into the next chapters for more in depth ideas and ways to get started. If you would like to link up and share out your ideas or your reservations sign up below:)

Inside: Practical advice and tips for raising bilingual kids, from the creators of Veoleo. Raising a bilingual child takes dedication, consistency, and a lot of creativity. Here at Veoleo, we’ve broken it down to 10 tips on what you can do at home to help support your little one’s bilingual education. It feels like a daunting task,

Before I decided to take the interactive notebook plunge this school year, I began exploring the idea of spicing of note taking with flip books. I often hear heavy sighing when announcing "Saquen los cuadernos para tomar apuntes", so it's good to change things up every now and then. The idea behind flip books for me is that students are able to create a more meaningful study tool while being more engaged with the learning experience. I have my students add their flip books to their interactive notebooks, but they can just as easily stand alone or be 3 hole punched to add to a binder. I created a template using PowerPoint which I now just edit each time I'm making a new flip book...it involved a bit of trial and error at first with printing, cutting, and stacking the pages, but now I'm good to go when a new idea pops in my head. You can pretty much create a flip book for any topic or theme. I like to use my grammar point flip books as a way for students to take notes, practice acquired info, and then use as a study tool when reviewing for an assessment. In the example above, students write in the meaning and conjugations of the given verb during the note taking time, they then write original sentences in Spanish using the verb and illustrate one of the sentences during the classwork practice time. The final page of the book is a conjugation practice page where students conjugate the given verb or choose between 2 verbs and conjugate. It takes the idea of a traditional worksheet and incorporates it into the flip book. This last page works well as a homework assignment. They then use these books to review for quizzes. Here's another example using Reflexive Verbs as the topic. So, there you have it...an all-in-one note taking, practice and study resource! Do you use flip books in your classrooms? I'd love to hear about it! For more examples of Spanish Flip Books, click HERE.

Teaching your children Spanish will give them many advantages. People may ask Why are you teaching your children Spanish? Here are 20 good answers!

Learn to recognize the gender of Spanish nouns, masculine or feminine, through pictures and sample sentences with audio. Practice with interactive quizzes too.

Elementary Spanish Curriculum for Schools. Year-long, reusable themed teaching curriculum packages. Teach new and returning students together!

Basta game boards and rules for playing with Spanish learners. Spanish vocabulary is fun to practice with these printable boards with categories for kids!

Spanish listening activities make the most of a video, song or story. Listening activities to focus on syllables, words and sentences before you start.

Freedom Homeschooling lists free high-quality homeschool foreign languages curriculum for all grades. Over 100 foreign languages available!

Here you can find a list of Spanish Homeschool Curriculum. There is also lots of other resources for families who are homeschooling as well

Here is a Printable Spanish Interactive Learning Folder that teaches the alphabet, numbers, and basic Spanish vocabulary.

There's so much to love about Montessori, but did you know it's great for raising bilingual kids? Here's more on teaching a second language with Montessori.

A song to teach your kids how to distinguish betwen the different preposition of place. Difficult level!

I have seen many plans over the years that give students an opportunity to show their work ethic and social skills by completing creative tasks together. My sub plans were not like this. I spent most of my years in a middle school with large classes of 35 squirrely, defiant pre-teens and teens, and sub…

Spanish speaking practice is easy to structure with theme-based activities. Short, no prep speaking activities. Free download includes English version too.

Spanish sentence strips to make mini-books for fluency practice. 4 sets of 7 sentences describe pictures with high-frequency words. Free download.

Easy Spanish speaking activities in a fun challenge for kids. Bingo-card challenge encourages kids do easy speaking tasks. Free printable at 2 levels.

Are you working on parts of speech this school year? This printable pack includes a game for finding the difference between a noun and a verb, nouns vs. proper nouns, multiple parts of speech, and a create your own option. Even better, this is a free printable pack! Each game includes its own set of rules and printable word cards to go with it. There are even two game boards to offer some variety in game play.

Master the use of reflexive verbs in Spanish! Check out this useful grammar guide with plenty of examples and a quiz for you to practice!

Spanish verb worksheets are essential tools for anyone learning the language. Whether you are a beginner or just need some extra practice, these worksheets provide a structured way to review and reinforce verb conjugation. With a variety of exercises focusing on different tenses and verb forms, they help learners solidify their understanding of the complex verb system in Spanish. If you are looking to improve your Spanish grammar skills, these worksheets are a must-have resource.

Printable Spanish book about summer uses short sentences and useful vocabulary. Fun, free download for kids includes coloring book and mini-book.

Inside: Los pollitos dicen pío, pío, pío lyrics, printables, and activities for kids. Los pollitos dicen is one of my favorite songs in Spanish for kids. It’s also perfect for families learning Spanish– the song is packed with high-frequency phrases like tengo hambre, tienen frío, and duermen. We like it so much I created an entire Spanish Preschool series based on the

Practice with two reading exercises in a PDF worksheet based on the vocabulary for family members and their relationships in Spanish.

Learning Spanish verb conjugation for kids doesn’t have to be hard or boring. Keeping it fun with simple activities makes the process easy and effective. One option is to follow the Spanish present tense verb conjugation activities in order below: Have your child make a set of flashcards for the verbs you’d like to practice. […]

Free printable flashcards and board games to teach English vocabulary about health and sickness. These are great for ESL kids and beginner learners of English.